Cut and Run (1985)

"Come give Daddy a kiss!"

I picked this up here at a local shop because Rugerro Deodato's name was on the cover. I had never heard of it before then, but the synopsis on the back looked like it might be okay. It ended up being way better than I expected it to be.

There's a short introduction at the beginning of the disc from Deodato himself explaining that this film was his answer to people begging him to do a sequel to "Cannibal Holocaust". While he liked working in that style, he wasn't interested in making a sequel, so with what he felt was the right script (written by Wes Craven) he made something he thought would satisfy audiences. He goes on to explain that the Italian market demands more violence in their films than the Americans prefer, so there were scenes shot specifically for the Italian release that we're never available here in the states. Because the original English audio doesn't exist for those scenes, they were re-inserted with Italian language and English subtitles.

To put it bluntly, this script is a mess, but I'll do my best to outline the plot. A string of grizzly, drug-related murders in the United States draws the attention of a cable news company. Fran, a reporter, recognizes one of the people in a photo she finds at a crime scene as Jim Jones' right-hand man at Jonestown and convinces her boss at CVN (Cable Video News) to fly her and a cameraman to Columbia in hopes of finding him and gaining access to an interview. He agrees, as his son (played by Willie Aames) ran away yeas ago to join the cult and he hopes to find him in the process. It's never clear how this new cult came to be or what the connection to Jonestown is, if any, but the members are held against their will and are being used to manufacture cocaine for sale in America.

The guy from the photo is Colonel Horne, a reclusive Colonel Kurtz-type character that just wants to be left alone. Horne runs another drug operation deep in the jungle and sends out his army of native Indians (led by the deformed dude from "The Hills Have Eyes") to kill his competition. Apparently, his family of killers extends to America and he's responsible for the massacres CVN is reporting on. Why he and his followers would need millions of dollars in drug money deep in the jungle is never explained.

The plane carrying the news crew arrives at the camp at the tail end of a massacre and the pilot is killed by Horne's' savages forcing the Fran and Mark to run for safety. They find a sole survivor from the camp, Ana (played by the yummy Valentina Forte), and together they take off on foot for the nearest camp thought to be 20 miles away. In the process, Ana is killed by Horne's men and the other two are captured. Horne vows to kill the reporters, but grants them their interview anyway. Help comes in the form of CVN's CEO to rescue them before they are killed.

Let's face it, we watch these kinds of movies for the blood and gore - not the plot. Deodato had quite a bit of money for this film, and it's evident in the results. The actors all seem to have had prior experience, the locations are visually stunning and the gore effects imaginative and well executed (pun intended). "Cut and Run" does a nice job of blending the cannibal/jungle genre with action/adventure, and there's even a side story about a father trying to locate his estranged son. It doesn't have the same impact as "Cannibal Holocaust", but I didn't expect it to. On a technical level, though, "Cut and Run" is leaps and bounds above Deodato's most famous film. There were so many terrible jungle films released to cash in on the success of just a couple, I was expecting this to be a total failure. Save for Willie Aames atrocious performance as Tommy, this was really enjoyable, but every time Tommy was on screen I wanted to punch him in the face. Fuck that guy. Just make sure you're getting the "hard" uncut version from Anchor Bay when you watch this, because without all of the blood, guts and rape scenes you're left with just the story, and the story itself isn't all that interesting.

3/5