Truly Dreadful Film

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This film is about a Thai Vietnam vet whose daughter is dying from polio agrees to go into the jungle and take out a drug lord who has an army of cannibals. Now if that ain't a cool plot I don't know what is. So it literally starts with our main character having a Vietnam flashback and then just doing some John Wick level stuff. So this guy offers him the job of saving some girl from the jungle and in return he'll get seven grand which I'm sure is enough to help is daughter. So when you see this characters hotel room, it looks kinda like the hotel room scenes in the opening of Apocalypse Now this film is basically a low budget horror version of Apocalypse Now.For Starters the English dub is bad, not the worst I've ever heard but its pretty bad although I think it adds to the cheesy entertainingly bad nature of the film, same goes for the writing. Really everything is of bad quality other than some of the camera work and technical aspects. Also the gore in the film is well done and one of the more memorable aspects of the film that in combination with the bonkers plot and bad dubbing makes for a good time. The movie has this problem when there are a few scenes where you go in and assume that it is either a flashback or actually happening and they film doesn't tell you so you have to kinda sit there and wait for the movie to let you know which adds to the hilarious ineptness and humorous confusion the film has going on. This film is quite the gem of a bad movie and its surprisingly entertaining while it doesn't live up to its title. Also the film steals music from Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead which I thought was pretty funny and it isn't just used once its used like 7 times and every time it seems just out of place also music from Goblin's soundtrack to Dawn of the Dead is used. Plus all the Viet-Cong wear bright blue shirts and shorts with racist conical hats which make the film all the more cheesy and unintentionally hilarious. Its got this almost Ed Wood like quality with some of its continuity errors and stuff like that.On the Gore Meter from one to ten One being something like Nosferatu and ten being something like Peter Jackson's Braindead Its a 4.5 not too gory but there is gore to be seenHonestly I'm sad that a company like Arrow Video hasn't picked this title up cause I'd love to see an HD widescreen transfer of this film. Its exploitation trash cinema gold and the fact that it doesn't have much of a following or at least a decent release is a shame. I will admit it gets a little bit boring toward the half way mark but it quickly picks up. I'm gonna give it a 3.5/5

I don't know anything about Hong Lu Wong, only that he is from Thailand and directed one weird movie: Cannibal Mercenary. Set in the Jungle, this is an action/war movie, with elements of Rambo and Cannibal Holocaust. The plot is just an excuse for all kind of tortures, and violent scenes. This is low budget but it manages to be effective and repulsive. The music score is great, yes, but only because they shamelessly use the Goblin tune of Dawn of The Dead(that was also used in some Matei zombie movie). That adds more cult value to this movie, i really liked a lot. I also found that its possible that Schnaass took some ideas from here to Violent Sh t 3, all the final segment is exactly the same premise.

The plot (of sorts) concerns a tough ex soldier who is coerced into undertaking one last mission in Vietnam in order to pay for the vital operation that will save the life of his daughter who is suffering from polio.Setting off into the jungles with a few rag tag comrades the mission is to locate a female contact who will reveal unto them the nature of their objective (why in the hell couldn't the bloke who hired them just inform them in the first place?!) The problem here though is that our boys don't actually meet up with the woman until about two thirds of the way into the film! In other words there is no discernible plot whatsoever until this point!!! All we get are our hero's wandering aimlessly around the jungle, falling foul to a number of grisly VC set traps and getting into a number of skirmishes every now and then.I have to say that the film suffers horribly from obvious padding throughout and is further ruined by truly some of the worst voice over work I have ever heard. Added to this, it's a badly structured and unforgivably boring affair for the most part.However…….. the last 30 minutes do admittedly pick up admirably when our hero's mission is finally revealed. Their task is to assassinate a drug dealing Colonel who is leading a bunch of cannibals! - Cue some pleasantly gory torture scenes which should certainly please all fellow gore hounds! The very best bit for me though was an hilarious scene in which three of our hero's are mistaken for VC forces and captured by some simple villagers who promptly tie them down and proceed to urinate on their faces! The act itself coupled with the expressions of relief on the perpetrators faces had me in absolute hysterics……but it gets even better for when the main hero turns up to clear up the misunderstanding one of his men complains lethargically and I quote 'They peed all over us.' whilst another comes out with the classic line, 'You know it really smelt like champagne.'(!!!) For a similar, but more enjoyable gory war flick try also Jungle Heat.

After the hype that I had heard about CANNIBAL MERCENARY - I have to honestly say that it was a pretty big let-down. I went into this film hoping it would be some sort of PREMUTOS-style gore-fest mixed with some CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST-ish elements. Well - it wasn't...An ex-soldier is recruited for one last mission. Reluctantly our hero agrees as his daughter suffers from a rare and extreme case of polio, and needs the big pay-day that he's been guaranteed to pay for her treatment. The group of soldiers descend into the jungle on an assignment to contact some lady named Jumpa (I think...) who has further information on their target. Along the way, the group encounters booby-traps, spies, hostile villagers and the Viet Cong...oh yeah...and cannibals.There ARE some decent gore scenes in CANNIBAL MERCENARY, but most of them are quick and don't happen until the end of the film. In fact - not much of anything happens until close to an hour in. Of note are a few throat-slashings, a decapitation, some stabbings, and a whole slew of gun-play and hand-to-hand combat action - none of which are really that notable. The only scenes that are worth any real mention are a (non-graphic) castration, another scene where a guy is buried neck-deep then a spike is driven into his skull and his brains are eaten, and one particularly nasty scene where the soldiers come across a maggot-riddled corpse and one of the team scrapes a handful of the rotted flesh and maggots and eats it - yum. Unfortunately, the cannibal elements are sadly under-rated, as they don't even come into the film until the last few minutes. Honestly, I found this one to be a bore overall, and caught myself nodding off several times. Not the worst thing out there, and a few decent scenes make it "better than average" - but I can really only recommend this one to rabid cannibal film fans or exploit completists...6/10