Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death
| Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death | |
|---|---|
| File:Cannibal women jungle.jpg DVD cover for the film | |
| Directed by | J.F. Lawton |
| Written by | J.F. Lawton |
| Produced by | Gary W. Goldstein |
| Starring | Shannon Tweed, Bill Maher, Karen Mistal, Adrienne Barbeau |
| Cinematography | Robert Knouse |
| Music by | Carl Dante |
Release date | 1989 |
Running time | 90 mins |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death is a 1989 film starring Shannon Tweed and Bill Maher. The film is a campy send-up of pop culture motifs and societal trends, including feminism (and feminist movements' fragmentation around various issues), B-movies (particularly Cannibal Holocaust), and California. It was written (under the pseudonym J. D. Athens) by J. F. Lawton, who also authored Pretty Woman, the Under Siege series of movies and the television show V.I.P.
Plot
The U.S. government grows worried for the nation's avocado supply after some confrontations with the "Piranha" tribe of cannibal women, who live in the mysterious "Avocado Jungle" (westernmost outpost: San Bernardino) and ritually sacrifice and eat men. The government recruits Margo Hunt (Tweed), a professor of feminist studies at a local university, to travel into the Avocado Jungle and make contact with the women to attempt to convince them to move to a reservation/condo in Malibu. Along the way, she and her travelling companions -- male chauvinist guide Jim (Maher) and ditzy undergraduate Bunny (Karen Mistal) -- meet a tribe of subservient men called the "Donohue" (a reference to talk-show host Phil Donahue) and face dangers in their path.
Eventually, the group meets the Piranha women, including Dr. Kurtz (played by talk-show psychologist-celebrity Adrienne Barbeau), Dr. Hunt's former colleague in feminist studies and now her nemesis, who has joined the tribe of Piranha women with her own exploitative agenda. The two argue about the morality of sacrificing men and the exploitation of the Piranha women, and Bunny decides to join the tribe, her first sacrifice being Jim. Bunny cannot go through with the kill, however, and Dr. Hunt makes her escape, aided by the handsome, intelligent, and sensitive Jean-Pierre (Brett Stimely), who also was to be sacrificed. Dr. Hunt finds in the jungle a rival tribe of cannibal women who are at war with the Piranha women due to differences over which condiment (guacamole or clam dip) most appropriately accompanies a meal of sacrificed man. Hunt returns to the Piranha stronghold with this other tribe, rescues Bunny and Jim as well as Jean-Pierre, with Dr Kurtz perishing as she falls into a pit filled with water and piranha fish. Having discovered the government plot to domesticate the Piranha women through aerobics classes and frequent exposure to Cosmopolitan magazine, Hunt refuses to bring the Piranha women with her, and instead persuades the warring cannibal tribes to reunite, maintaining the peace by means of consciousness-raising groups.
The film ends happily for the trio of main characters: Bunny and Jim are to be married, and Jean-Pierre has enrolled at Dr Hunt's university as a feminist studies major, becoming in the process the ideal companion for Hunt.
Allusions
The film's plot parallels very loosely that of the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad as well as Apocalypse Now, the latter of which was based on Heart of Darkness. Both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now feature a character named Kurtz who has gone deep into the jungle to become the deranged leader of a group of "savages" engaging in barbaric rites as an alternative to the rigid and restrictive values of the outside world.
Cannibal Women alludes to and/or satirizes a broad array of literary and pop-culture phenomena, including:
- the Indiana Jones and Star Wars films
- Disneyland and its Jungle Cruise ride
- Gulliver's Travels (the warring feminist tribes paralleling the conflict between the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians, and in the sacrifice scene the iconic image of Maher's character tied down like Gulliver)
- Cosmopolitan magazine
- Phil Donohue
- Alan Alda
- Consciousness-raising
- Feminism
- the film 10 and its use of Maurice Ravel's composition Boléro
- Playboy magazine (Shannon Tweed is a former Playboy model, and the character Bunny's name alludes to the phenomenon of the Playboy Bunny)
- the film 2001: A Space Odyssey and its use of the Richard Strauss composition Also sprach Zarathustra
In other film
A brief clip of the film appears in Maher's documentary Religulous. Maher states on the DVD commentary that the movie was a fun way to spend two months in the summer.