Man from Deep River
Man from Deep River is a 1972 film from Italy, directed by Umberto Lenzi, running 94 minutes. reelscum files it under cannibal boom.
- Year
- 1972 · 1970s films
- Country
- Italy
- Runtime
- 94 min
- Director
- Umberto Lenzi
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (44/100)
- Also known as
- Deep River Savages · Sacrifice! · The Man from the Deep River
- Banned in
- UK
Defined in the glossary: Cannibal boom
A DPP video nasty under the title Deep River Savages, usually credited with starting the Italian cannibal cycle.
The one that started it, by remaking A Man Called Horse in Thailand.
The film that started the Italian cannibal cycle, by remaking A Man Called Horse in Thailand. A Western photographer is captured by a tribe, endures ritual ordeals, assimilates, and comes to love the people who took him, before the film's more lurid final act. It is more anthropological travelogue than gore piece for much of its length.
Umberto Lenzi bolts the mondo apparatus onto the story, real rituals, real animal slaughter, documentary inserts, and sets the template the cycle would follow. It sat mostly unnoticed for five years before the boom it started.
Historically the origin point, and tamer than what it spawned, though the animal footage is real.
Trailer
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Where to watch
Legal options in Canada (nearest we have)
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Written about
- Mondo: the shockumentary, 1962 to 1978
An Oscar-nominated love ballad, a beach of dying sea turtles, a murder charge beaten before the film even opened, and a monkey brain made of cauliflower.
- 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.
Filed alongside
Cannibal Apocalypse
Vietnam veterans as cannibals. Sillier and kinder than the jungle cycle.
Zombie Holocaust
Cannibals and zombies at once, reusing the Zombi 2 sets and cast.
Trouble Every Day
Cannibal desire filmed like an art installation, and it will not hurry for you.
Jungle Holocaust
Deodato's first pass. Slower, meaner, less interesting than what followed.
Eaten Alive!
Lenzi recycling other films' footage into a Jonestown story. Grim work.
Anthropophagus
Almost entirely people walking around an island. Then two minutes of infamy.
Frontier(s)
Texas Chainsaw with a French accent and a swastika over the door.
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals
Black Emanuelle wanders into a cannibal picture, and D'Amato lets both halves misbehave.
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 Holocaust
A serious film about media atrocity that committed real atrocity.