#Michele Massimo Tanrantini

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Massacre in Dinosaur Valley (1985)

There’s one genre of horror that feels particularly daunting to explore: the “cannibal horror” genre. Its best-known entry, 1980's Cannibal Holocaust is notorious for its real-life footage of animal killings and anyone whose interest is peaked hearing this probably needs psychological help. Then there’s the inherent racism of these stories: the plots almost always concern a group of urban people who encounter savage aboriginals that want nothing more than to butcher, cook and then eat white meat. You're curious why the genre was so prolific but you don’t want to be offended so you pick the most ridiculous-sounding entry of them all: Massacre in Dinosaur Valley. The idea is that when your hapless explorers are getting torn apart by prehistoric reptiles, it will be easy to forget about what’s socially acceptable and just laugh between the “yuck!” scenes.

Deep in the Amazon jungle live the reclusive Aquera Indians: a tribe of cannibals who have little contact with the outside world. Their territory contains the “Dinosaur Valley”, a bone-bed rich with fossils and hidden dangers. Palaeontologist Kevin Hall (Michael Spokiw), Professor Pedro Ibañez (Leonidas Bayer), his daughter Eva (Suzanne Carvalho), fashion models Belinda (Susan Hahn) and Monica (Maria Reis), Vietnam vet John Heinz (Milton Morris) and his wife Betty (Marta Anderson) are flying over the off-limits area when their plane suddenly crashes. The survivors must find a way back to civilization before they become victims of the jungle surrounding them.

Originally shot in Italian, then dubbed in English, no one - on camera or otherwise - gives a good performance. That only matters so much because you’re not here for high art. What you’re here for is the sleaze. You want nudity? Massacre in Dinosaur Valley has it in droves. We get to see the supermodels changing, Eva showering, a gratuitous sex scene that comes out of nowhere, a sadistic lesbian that can’t wait to tear Belinda’s top off and when the ladies get captured by the Aquera Indians (that’s what the movie calls them so I will too), the cannibals promptly rip off their clothes and give them new outfits that barely cover anything. The objective was to find as many ways to show the actresses barring it all - logic or tact be damned. When Eva is shown in the nude (there’s quite a bit of full-frontal nudity), she’s showering with the doors to the bathroom and hotel room wide open so anyone can walk in. When Kevin wanders inside looking for her father, he gets a nice view. He gives her a towel, but she only realizes a stranger provided the helping hand after about 30 seconds. My question is… who did she THINK was helping her dry off? Her father? Gross.

Speaking of gross, how’s the gore? Disappointing, unfortunately. With a title like Massacre in Dinosaur Valley, you expect to see the idiots who stumble into that green inferno getting dismembered, decapitated, flayed alive and otherwise brutalized before getting eaten - either by dinosaurs or racist caricatures. Someone does get eaten but it’s nothing spectacular and isn’t treated as such either, which is a letdown. By my count, there are two massacres in this movie. Too bad it’s not the people you expect that get reduced to deli meat. Most of our ill-fated adventurers bite the dust because of non-cannibal dangers, which you might not think is a big deal. It’s not called Massacre in Cannibal Valley, am I right? Just wait.

The film could essentially be split into three parts, only one of which has anything to do with that titular valley. Part one is a story filled with quicksand, flesh-eating jungle beasts and other clichés. Part two concerns the cannibals. Part three, the white slavers! Between these three hurried plots, fans of bad movies will have some laughs. There’s plenty of questionable behavior spread throughout, the gratuitous nudity is so outlandish it’s hard not to crack a smile, the body count is so extreme it's hilarious, there are plenty of ideas introduced and then dropped and at points, it’s hard to tell if the movie is implying certain things or if the filmmaking and continuity are just THAT BAD. A lot of stuff just happens because writer/director Michele Massimo Tarantini wanted it to happen. Logic had nothing to do with it.

Massacre in Dinosaur Valley is better shot than you'd think, the plot moves along quickly enough to prevent you from getting bored and it manages to be so incompetent you skip the phase where you’d be offended and go directly to rolling your eyes while chuckling at the pathetic attempts at storytelling. All this SHOULD make for a decent “so bad it’s good” cannibal film… if it weren’t for one glaring flaw. There are no dinosaurs in this movie. None! What a ripoff! (November 5, 2021)