Porno holocaust (1981)

Director:

Joe D'Amato

Writer:

George Eastman (writer)

Release Date:

9 February 1981 (Italy)

Genre:

Adult | Horror

Plot:

A group of castaways wash ashore on a deserted island in this Italian sex/gore movie. They are unaware...

Plot Keywords:

Island | Monster | Castaway | Sperm | Rape

Cast

George Eastman	...	Dr. Lemoir
Dirce Funari	...	Simone
Annj Goren	...	Contessa
Mark Shannon	...	Captain O'Day (as Mark Shanon)

Also Known As:

Porno Holocaust (USA)

Runtime:

113 min | Germany:75 min (heavily cut)

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Germany:16 (heavily cut) | Germany:Not Rated (uncut) | Italy:VM18

Filming Locations:

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Company:

Kristal Film

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: At the very end of the film the surviving couple is waving to a passing steamship from their rowboat (who supposedly "made it to the shipping lanes" even though you can see the waves lapping up on the beach at far camera right). Just as the scene cuts to a long-distance shot of the rescuing ship, you can see the head of a crew person who has been holding the rowboat steady pop up from behind the far side of their boat.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Joe D'Amato Totally Uncut (1999)

No more offensive, and slightly less boring, than your typical porno

This is exactly what I'd expect from trying to cross a hardcore sex movie and a horror film--a crappy horror film but a better-than-average sex flick. The plot, as it were, is heavily borrowed from D'Amato's own notorious cannibal film "Anthrophagus". A group of idiotic European tourists land on an idyllic island and are stalked a shambling monster. But D'Amato breaks up the tedium here with a lot of hardcore sex scenes. And when THAT gets tedious (which it quickly does) the monster shows up and kills off most of the cast. But, of course, a D'Amato film simply CANNOT be tedium-free so he makes the whole thing a frickin' ridiculous 110 minutes long!

Some people objected to the fact that the ridiculously well-endowed "monster" is dark-skinned, but then so is half the cast. Others were offended that the giant monster dispatches most of the women with his, uh, giant monster, but frankly these scenes are pretty hard to take seriously and I doubt the biggest perverts in the world will be turned on by them. The female cast is only marginally more attractive than the monster, but I found it interesting that the prettiest girl (relatively speaking) didn't participate in any of the hardcore scenes but was willing to do the most controversial scene where she is choked to death during fellatio by the monster's obviously fake appendage (Laura Gemser did a similar thing in the companion piece to this "Erotic Nights of the Living Dead" although she was the aggressor there ). This raises the interesting question of what is more "degrading"--dark but obviously simulated fantasies like this or the exploitation of real-life private sex acts? Well, you can't stop men (or women) from fantasizing whether you ban movies or not, and fantasies, however warped, don't give real-life people real-life AIDS.

I also liked that this movie was shot on film on and on island location, which regardless of its incompetence, makes it preferable to today's hardcore "product" shot on video in some producer's condo in the Valley. And as homely as some of the cast are, there's not a silicone breast in sight. In short, this movie is no more offensive, and slightly less boring, than any hardcore porno movie.