User Reviews

Sometimes known as 'Cannibal Mercenary', sometimes known as 'The Jaguar Project' and at other times known as 'Jungle Killers', this Thai horror movie is certainly not the 'Cannibal Holocaust' or 'Cannibal Ferox' clone that one might expect from its most common title. The first forty minutes are devoid of horror and have more in common with 'Casualties of War' as a group of soldiers accept a mission as mercenaries during the Vietnam War and contend with a local woman who tags along. The middle section of the movie is more gruesome as the mercenaries encounter vicious traps as they approach the drug lord's territory, but it is only in the final twenty minutes that we see any cannibal action as the drug lord's minions torture the captured mercenaries, eating them upon death. As one can probably guess from such a description, this film by any title is a real a mixed bag, but there are enough memorable images throughout to keep things chugging along, including a wrestle with a large snake, multiple scenes in which the mercenaries are made to swallow urine, plus detailed, grisly cannibalistic action near the end. The editing design (which includes a lot of rapid fire cuts) is sometimes distracting, but there are some neat graphic match rapid fire cuts in the mix, and the unusual editing ensures that the film seldom bores for all its weaknesses.

Having previously served in a difficult tour of duty in Vietnam, a former Thai soldier by the name of "Sergeant Namchoke Prompit" (Lek Songphon) is offered an opportunity to make a considerable amount of money involving another mission deep inside that same country. At first, Sergeant Prompit refuses without hesitation, however, upon realizing that this mission offers enough money to help pay for his daughter's medical bills, he reluctantly accepts. It's then that he is reunited with several other soldiers he used to work with and together they begin their trek through the jungles of Vietnam with orders to proceed to a specific location upon which they will be given their final instructions. What they don't realize is just how dangerous their mission will soon become. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this is one of those films that had a certain amount of potential but failed miserably due to a number of factors to include poor direction, extremely bad dubbing and some rather weak acting. Likewise, it should also be noted that major portions of this film were reused in a similar movie produced about 5 years later and as a result some viewers might be mistaking one for another. In any case, although this film might appeal to viewers who enjoy lots of action and pyrotechnics, due to the obvious flaws just mentioned, I have great difficulty rating it any higher than I have.

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.

After reading so many reviews that said this was a really gory flick, I was ready for action. I knew it wouldn't be a phenomenal movie, but sometimes a good gore flick is what's on tap. Needless to say, I was disappointed. There is very little real gore in this. Definitively some bloody scenes, but if you're here only for the gore, don't waste your time.

I won't go in to more details, but wanted to ensure my two cents was offered, as so many reviews mentioned the gore...which was why I turned it on.

Greetings And Salutations, and welcome to my review of Cannibal Mercenary; here's the breakdown of my ratings:

Story: 0.25 Direction: 0.25 Pace: 0.25 Acting: 0.75 Enjoyment: 0.50

TOTAL: 2.00 out of 10.00

Yet again, here comes another undercooked story whose synopsis held magnificent potential. A war-weary soldier is forced into more deadly conflict to raise the money his daughter requires for life-changing surgery. However, this mission turns out to be more devilish as the tyrant's army is cannibals.

The shame is the writer, George Lam, misses every opportunity to build a simple tale into a masterpiece. For example, the merc's daughter is poorly, and the doctors are dicks, trying to guilt-trip him to cough up the cash. How the writer depicts the scene and its mood leads the audience to see the mercenary verging on a breakdown. This disintegration is excellent as it allows Lam to develop a realistic and credible character. Lamentably, Lam does little follow-up on the man's mental state. Had there been more depth to his meltdown, it would have strengthened the movie's drama element. So what we get is a week-arsed Rambo knock-off - A mercenary and his men sent into a jungle full of cannibalistic killers on a mission so secret they don't fully know the complete manifest. Once again, this little snippet encaptures a plethora of possibilities - all of them missed.

The direction doesn't get much better. Hong Lu Wong is horrendous at filming the martial arts action sequences, and all of them are as dull as an English Summers Day (it's thirty degrees as I write this, and we have yet to see a blue sky today). He does try to envigorate the movie by adding a few curiously angled shots. Sadly, for the most part, they're powerless. And he endeavours to build tension, but once again, they're inadequate to get you moving your bum-cheeks to the edge of the seat. If anything, he tries to imitate the American jungle warfare flicks. Many of those movies are filmed poorly, and Wong's is worse because it's dull and uninteresting. Decent storyboarding could have alleviated the amateur feel of the film. Do it right, and you can envision a scene beforehand because Cannibal Mercenary feels shot on-the-fly. But that may not have been the case - maybe the budget didn't stretch to Thailand's Spielberg clone.

The cast isn't entirely awful. There are a few, very few, scenes where they nearly reach averageness. It doesn't help that the voice-overs are terrible - they get nowhere near average. The bulk of the cast like to oversell a situation - when they get angry, they're a ball of raging fury - when they are sad, the tears flow by the barrel-load. But even their exaggerated performances don't lift the picture higher in the interest stakes. Yes, they're faulty, but not in a humorous way. By the time they arise, you've succumbed to the movie's monotony and are nearly comatose.

As you can guess, I'm not going to recommend Cannibal Mercenary to any movie-watcher. I couldn't do that to ya'll. Bust out a copy of Cannibal Apocalypse to get your war cannibal fixation, it's superbly better filmed and more entertaining.

Wipe the blood from your mouth and drop that Major's thigh, then come check out my Killer Thriller Chillers and Holding Out For A Hero lists to see where I ranked Cannibal Mercenary - and find something better for your entertainment.

Take Care & Stay Well.

A tough ex-soldier, together with his small band of vicious mercenaries, embarks on a dangerous jungle mission and comes face to face with a nasty drug runner and his cannibalistic cohorts.

If you dig the whole jungle horror/cannibal genre, then Jungle Killers (AKA Cannibal Mercenary AKA Mercenary) should prove entertaining enough to be worth a go. Seemingly inspired by the Italian cannibal flicks of the 70s and early 80s, this little seen and fairly gruesome Thai exploitationer is full of gross-out gore and silly action scenes that need to be seen to be believed.

The first hour of the film is rather uneventful, with only the occasional booby trap and poorly executed battle scene to liven things up; however, the latter half, in which our plucky heroes are captured by the bad guy and submitted to all manner of horrific torture (including a juicy 'chisel/mallet/skull' moment), helps to compensate somewhat. With graphic eye-gouging, limb-chopping and wound-spurting, gore-hounds get what they want in the end.

That is providing that they have the uncut version of the film.

The first copy of this rarity that I laid my hands on, entitled The Jaguar Project, was shorn of not only the gorier moments, but also quite a bit of plot (which explained why the main character accepted the mission in the first place). There was also some inexplicable hokum about three Western guys searching for a valuable Buddha statue; these additional scenes were incredibly poor and totally out of place with the rest of the movie.

Realising that this cut was obviously missing the 'good' bits I had read about, I tracked down a longer version which, whilst not exactly brilliant, at least provided me with the sleaze I had been expecting (and also cut out the dreadful Buddha subplot).

If you like your entertainment a little more on the obscure and bizarre side, then track down Jungle Killers for a bit of a laugh. And don't forget to look out for my favourite moment, when a particularly freaky looking guy gets his kicks from urinating on a captured bloke's face!

6.5/10, generously rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

A special forces Sergeant named Wilson is sent into the Viet Nam jungle to find and hunt down an army of bloodthirsty cannibals headed by a demented war criminal."Cannibal Mercenary" is one hell of a brutal and gory flick.The acting is quite convincing and the film offers plenty of war images including numerous shoot-outs and explosions.The actor who plays a broken anti-hero Wilson is especially good.The camera work is awesome and the gore is absolutely brutal.For example there are decapitations,throat slashings,castrations and lots of ultra-violent torture on display.The scene where one man is buried up to his neck and his unprotected head is cracked open with hammer and chisel has to be seen to be believed.Overall,"Cannibal Mercenary" is a very nasty Thai exploitation flick that should especially satisfy fans of Italian cannibal flicks.If you are not easily offended,give this gruesome shocker a look.8 out of 10.

Was APOCALYPSE NOW or THE DEER HUNTER a big hit in Thailand? Add some really bad English dubbing and lots of kung-fu movie sound effects and you've got this adventure-horror hybrid. It's a horrors-of-war exploitation film that takes the violence inherent in warfare to absurd extremes. Besides the usual bullet hits and sharp-spiked jungle booby traps you get limb chopping, decapitation, penis stabbing, eye gouging and a spike to the head followed by brain eating (hence the title). One hungry guy even eats the maggots off of a decomposing corpse! Blood flows and spurts to such ridiculous lengths that it's hard not to laugh at the cartoonish brutality on view here. The video box says: SO REALISTIC -- THIS FILM MAKES "PLATOON" LOOK LIKE A FAMILY OUTING! I can't argue with hype like that!

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 seen

Honestly 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

If you can put aside the disappointig lack of human consumption that takes place, this movie is kind of a trip. I searched cannibal on Tubi and clicked on it. Never heard of it. Total blind date. I figured it was going to suck. Yet there I was still laughing at and with it to the end.. For me, the makings of a quality Good Bad Movie is if if you can both of those things. This movie does that. Btw, The Sargeant is the worst officer ever commissioned anywhere. He does have great hair. His poor men though.