"It's not fear that tears you apart," it's Joe D'Amato's ANTHROPOPHAGUS, on Blu-ray special edition from Severin Films.

Medical student Andy (Saverio Vallone, THE DARK SIDE OF LOVE), his sister Carol (Zora Kerowa, NEW YORK RIPPER), friend Danny (Mark Bodin, ALIEN 2: ON EARTH), pregnant Maggie (Serena Grandi, DELIRIUM), and her husband Arnold (Bob Larson, ANGELFIST) decide to make a tour of the Greek islands. After missing her boat, American student Julie (Tisa Farrow, ZOMBIE) begs passage to one of the islands where she is the yearly summer companion to the blind daughter of a vacationing family. Carol's Tarot cards bode ill for the journey, but that may just be because she is jealous of the attention Danny shows Julie; that is, until they land on the island and discover the village deserted but for a mutilated corpse and an elusive woman who warns them to "go away." Their means of escape is lost when the boat is carried away by the current of the coming storm, apparently with ailing Maggie aboard. They find the cottage of Julie's friends similarly deserted apart from the couple's daughter Rita (future novelist Margaret Mazzantini) who tells them about a series of murders on the island and her ability to sense the killer by the smell of blood. As the storm rages on, the group falls victim to a hulking throwback (George Eastman, BABA YAGA) that was once the son of the island's wealthiest family.

Seemingly more an outgrowth of a cannibal-tinged Italian body count horror and giallo subgenre than a slasher cash-in – especially in contrast to the film's sequel ABSURD – ANTHROPOPHAGUS marked a turn in the production scheme of cinematographer-turned-producer/director Aristide Massaccesi AKA Joe D'Amato away from softcore and hardcore exotic erotica like the BLACK EMANUELLE films and the Santo Domingo cycle of films to the type of low-budget horror that would form the cornerstone of his Filmirage company established later in the decade. Scripted by actor Eastman (aka Luigi Montefiori), a character actor of spaghetti westerns who turned towards screenwriting in the mid-seventies while also diversifying his output as an actor in collaboration with D'Amato, the film is actually rather draggy and dull despite its reputation as an ultra-gory film based largely on descriptions of the few set-pieces in reference books when the film was hard to track down uncut. D'Amato's photography – with Massaccesi taking operator credit while his usual operator Enrico Biribicchi (SHOOT FIRST, DIE LATER) gets the cinematographer credit – ekes out atmosphere from dark corridors and stormy forests but, apart from some early footage in Athens, the Greek island setting is rather unconvincing and the synthesizer score of Marcello Giombini (KNIFE OF ICE) is so grating on the ears as to drive viewers to throw dishes at the screen. The climax is reasonably suspenseful – and a bit set in a cramped attic would be reused by D'Amato in the later KILLING BIRDS – but the film is incapable of living up to its Video Nasty reputation.

American theater goers got ANTHROPOPAGUS in an R-rated edit titled THE GRIM REAPER or THE ZOMBIE'S RAGE – which wiped Giombini's score in favor of library tracks from KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS – while gorier variations of the full-strength edit popped up theatrically and on home video around the world, being most popular as an uncut pre-cert in the U.K. as ANTHROPOPHAGUS THE BEAST and cut in Germany as MAN-EATER. THE GRIM REAPER edit showed up on VHS from Monterey Home Video while the uncut version could be found on the gray market as a boots of the Venezuelan cassette or Midnight Video's reconstruction using multiple video sources. Germany's Astro Film attempted the first DVD reconstruction utilizing the GRIM REAPER edit and poorer video sources, but the result was often too murky to appreciate the additional gore, and the English and German soundtracks still did not feature the original score. An anamorphic reconstruction from better materials followed in a two-disc set with the GRIM REAPER cut in full on the second disc; however, the English track on the European version cut back and forth between the American soundtrack and the Italian source with the original score anywhere from a few frames to a few seconds. A two-disc set finally popped up in Italy with the Italian track and the English export track with the original score (as well as English subtitles), the transfer of which Shriek Show ported over for their own two-disc edition which also carried over an interview with Eastman and Kerowa while adding the sixty-seven minute JOE D'AMATO: TOTALLY UNCUT 2 documentary and alternate credits sequences.

88 Films produced the first Blu-ray release as part of a Kickstarter batch of Italian horror films that launched their Italian collection along with the feature-length documentary 42ND STREET MEMORIES only to reissue the film a year later with a nicer remastered transfer minus the documentary. A German two-disc set followed with separate Italian and German theatrical versions and Super 8 abridgements; however, the pressing had issues that were apparently not rectified. Severin Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen transfer from a 2K scan of the original 16mm camera negative is fully uncut, restoring a two-second long opening shot often missing from other transfers which start with the shot of the archway and the presentation credit. The previous DVD transfers of this 16mm-lensed film looked softish with pale skintones and undetailed skies while the Blu-ray transfer is sharper and more colorful in spite of the larger grain. The coloring of the day-for-night exteriors is better judged here – and it seems here more than before as if the lightning flashes were achieved by quickly opening up and closing the iris while filming – and the night-for-night shots also have more depth than before. The DTS-HD Master Audio English and Italian mono audio tracks are clearer than before, calling attention to the more interesting instrumentation of the suspenseful passages of Giombini's score as well as the German dialogue of the two tourists in the opening sequence. Optional English SDH subtitles translate only the English dialogue while the English subtitles for the Italian track translate the aforementioned German exchanges as well. While the Shriek Show DVD had Italian credits, the Severin Blu-ray had the English export credits with the title THE SAVAGE ISLAND.

Extras start off with "Don't Fear the Man-Easter" (13:03), an interview with writer/star Montefiori who recalls first meeting D'Amato as a cinematographer on the Michele Lupo western AMIGO, STAY AWAY and then later being asked by him to fix the script for RED COAT when the original was rejected by star Fabio Testi (ENIGMA ROSSO). He speaks well of D'Amato, Farrow, and Mazzantini – and does not go off on Grandi as he has in other interviews – while also admitting that the finished film is "shit." "The Man Who Killed the Anthropophagus" (13:50) is an interview with actor Vallone who worked as a grip under Pasqualino de Santis (DEATH IN VENICE) before being put in front of the camera for a small role and liking the pampering he received from the crew. Of ANTHROPOPHAGUS, he recalls enjoying his first lead role, points out all of the Italian locations that doubled for Greece – including the Pontine island Ponza – and friendships with the cast members (including Bodin who appeared in the second LA CAGE AUX FOLLES film while Vallone would appear in the third). In "Cannibal Frenzy" (5:58), effects artist Pietro Tenoglio (SATYRICON) recalls D'Amato's quick working schedules with Tenoglio usually hired every four weeks for another of his productions and how the producer/director preferred to work with family and friends – his wife Donatella Donati (BLACK COBRA) was often assistant director, his brother Fernando (OPERA) – who briefly dated Farrow – was the grip, and his son Daniele later worked as operator and then cinematographer. Of the effects, he recalls using pig skin and real animal intestines – the fetus was a skinned rabbit – and notes that he employed similar techniques on the bigger budget Liliana Cavani film LA PELLE for a gory sequence in which a man is run over by a tank.