Anthropophagus
Anthropophagus is a 1980 film from Italy, directed by Joe D'Amato, running 87 minutes. reelscum files it under cannibal boom and video nasty.
- Year
- 1980 · 1980s films
- Country
- Italy
- Runtime
- 87 min
- Director
- Joe D'Amato
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- known (31/100)
- Also known as
- L'anthropophage · Anthropophagous: The Beast · The Beast · The Grim Reaper · The Zombie's Rage · Anthropophagus: The Grim Reaper
- Banned in
- UK
Defined in the glossary: Cannibal boom, Video nasty
A prosecuted DPP video nasty, released in Britain as Anthropophagous: The Beast.
Almost entirely people walking around an island. Then two minutes of infamy.
Notorious for two minutes and fairly dull for the other ninety. Tourists on a Greek island are stalked by a deranged cannibal, and Joe D'Amato coasts on atmosphere and location until the film's two infamous gore set pieces, one involving a fetus, the other the killer's own entrails, that earned it a permanent place on the video nasty list.
George Eastman, who co-wrote it, plays the hulking killer, and there is a genuine sense of desolation in the empty island setting. But the film is mostly people wandering until the shocks arrive.
Reputation built on two scenes. The rest tests your patience.
Trailer
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The cycle in depth
- The Italian cannibal cycle, 1977 to 1985
Eight years, a dozen films, one arrest, and a court appearance to prove the cast were still alive.
- Banned, cut and confiscated
A Fulci print flown out of the country, an Australian rating that just means no, and a German court that filed The Evil Dead under criminal violence. Three states, three machines for making a film disappear.
On these lists
- Nastiest of the nasties
The tapes the DPP put on its seize-on-sight list. Prosecuting them in a country with ferries to France was the best advertising any of them ever got.
Filed alongside
Eaten Alive!
Lenzi recycling other films' footage into a Jonestown story. Grim work.
Mountain of the Cannibal God
The cannibal cycle in a dinner jacket, ex-Bond girl and real animal deaths included.
Cannibal Ferox
Lenzi chasing Deodato with none of the argument. Real animal deaths, no defence.
Cannibal Apocalypse
Vietnam veterans as cannibals. Sillier and kinder than the jungle cycle.
Cannibal Holocaust
A serious film about media atrocity that committed real atrocity.
The Driller Killer
Abel Ferrara's debut. More interesting as a document of downtown New York.
The New York Ripper
Genuinely nasty and hard to defend. The killer quacks. It doesn't help.
Frontier(s)
Texas Chainsaw with a French accent and a swastika over the door.
Jungle Holocaust
Deodato's first pass. Slower, meaner, less interesting than what followed.
Maniac
Savini's effects, Spinell's performance, and a very bleak little film.
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals
Black Emanuelle wanders into a cannibal picture, and D'Amato lets both halves misbehave.
Killer Nun
Anita Ekberg, morphine, and a plot that gives up around the hour mark.