‘He wanted their money… They wanted his flesh!!’
Cannibal Mercenary is a 1983 Thai action war horror film directed by Chao Meekunsoot from a screenplay written by George Lam. The movie stars Chatchai Plengpanich [as Alan English] and various Thai actors with anglicized names.
Plot:
A Thai veteran of the Vietnam War and all-around master of combat leads a group of men on a mission into the jungles of Vietnam to topple a dangerous drug lord and his flesh-eating army…
Reviews:
” …there’s so much shooting, punching, kicking and hacking, and it’s all so consistently loud, that it becomes a numbing viewing experience in no short time. Still, there’s certainly enough going on here to make this highly appealing to action, horror, exploitation and war movie fans.” The Bloody Pit of Horror
“It’s so filled with action it never becomes boring, and boy is it bloody! Yeah, this deserves to be called jungle splatter with its fine assortment of decapitations, stabbings, limb-choppings, squibs, explosions, fights…” Schmollywood Babylon
“It’s as if the director decided that any downtime would be viewed as failure, so he made it bloody as hell. There are decapitations, death by skull crushed with rock, grenades in shirts, and a very strange snake wrestling scene that doesn’t seem necessary but, hey, why not?” Horror News
“Most of the movie is non-stop violent and brutal shooting or fightings […] Violently entertaining and pretty well done for the most part as far as Asian B-movies go.” The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre
“Idiosyncratically edited, Mercenary has scenes of high-stress, noisy, tension-ratcheting quick cuts that appear to be designed to strain the viewer’s nerves to the breaking point, such as when a henchman threatens to waste a whining kid and initiates a death countdown.” Ideological Content Analysis Reviews
“Incredibly violent. Extremely graphic. And the final half-hour packs a wallop.” Thomas Weisser, Asian Cult Cinema, Boulevard Books, 1997
Film Facts:
The Bloody Pit of Horror states that Filmark International acquired the rights, “cut out most of the gore, added brand new (and completely irrelevant) scenes featuring three Caucasian actors searching for a valuable statue and released it under several different titles” such as The Jaguar Project and Jungle Killers.
Some of the soundtrack music was lifted from Dawn of the Dead (1978).
