Bond girl Ursula Andress is undressed by cannibals in Sergio Martino's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, on Region B Blu-ray from Shameless Screen Entertainment.

After her anthropologist husband Edward Stevenson goes missing during an unauthorized expedition in New Guinea, Susan (Andress) comes to Port Moresby to demand that the British Consulate do more to find him after the captain of the police department declares that they cannot expend any more resources after three months. The ambassador recommends that Susan and her brother Arthur Weisser (Antonio Marsina, KEOMA) consult fellow ethnologist Edward Foster (Stacey Keach, ROAD GAMES) who suspects that the course of Edward's expedition was different from what he told Arthur, and that he actually attempted to reach the cursed mountain of the Ra-ra-min where Foster himself had once been held captive by the members of a supposedly extinct cannibal tribe known as the Puka. Susan convinces Edward to accompany her and Arthur in search of her husband, and they set off on an expedition that will take at least a week just to reach the coast. Along the way, they encounter the usual terrors like poisonous insects and giant snakes, Foster's assistant Zura (Akushula Selayah, TARZAN THE APE MAN) vanishes, and the number of native guides are thinned out by mantraps and a lurking masked native. Susan is saved from an attack by the masked native by adventurer Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli, WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO OUR DAUGHTERS?) who brings them to the missionary village of Father Moses (stuntman Franco Fantasia, MURDER MANSION) and an attack on the village supposedly by the Puka in which Foster is wounded is blamed on Arthur's adulterous dalliance with a native girl. Susan convinces Manolo to accompany them to the mountain where they discover what happened to Edward and meet the Cannibal God himself.

Shot back-to-back with THE GREAT ALLIGATOR - the mechanical prop of which makes an appearance to devour one of the guides - and ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN (both of which also starred Cassinelli), THE MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD predates the eighties apex of Italian cannibal films inspired by the notoriety and success of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, being more like JUNGLE HOLOCAUST and THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER more of a man versus nature adventure, and more so like a gory and sexed-up take on the forties Hollywood jungle pictures with Andress sadly doing little more tripping into corpses and tarantulas, getting tangled with a python (like Laura Gemser in EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS) before being stripped down and rubbed down to become the goddess of the cannibal tribe. Indeed, Martino seems more interested in the film as action adventure, ticking off the requisite decapitations, castrations, and eviscerations not to mention the scenes of animal violence. He seems particularly disinterested in the "cannibal orgy" sequence including scenes of masturbation and simulated bestiality which had only been recovered during the DVD era (and it turns out this bit was present in the negative but was used by Martino to distract the censors from other bits). As usual, the Techniscope photography of Giancarlo Ferrando (TORSO) is gorgeous, rich in tropical greens and browns, with contrasting wide vistas and compositions that emphasize depth as the camera follows the characters through the jungle wary of traps and leaping natives. The score of Guido and Maurizio de Angelis (A BLADE IN THE DARK) carries the film nicely with orchestral rhythms spiked by throbbing electronics anticipating danger.

Released theatrically in the United States by New Line Cinema in an eighty-two minute R-rated version as SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, the domestic cut was shortened from the film's ninety-eight minute export version titled MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD which became available on laserdisc and DVD in Holland for EC Entertainment in a non-anamorphic letterboxed transfer that found its way stateside from Diamond Entertainment only to be easily bested by Anchor Bay's 2003 DVD – later reissued by Blue Underground – which featured an anamorphic transfer of the export version that further incorporated some additional cannibal orgy footage that Martino had shot and included to distract Italian censors from some of the other violent and sexual material (the long cut ran nearly 103 minutes). The film's export cut suffered different cuts in the United Kingdom theatrically and then on video from Vipco. Shameless' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen transfer easily blows the earlier SD renditions out of the water with more naturalistic skin tones, more vivid jungle greenery and muddy browns, and enhanced textures in skin, prosthetic gore, and the rocky settings of the climax. It is not a new master, presumably it is the HD master that NoShame struck for their 2007 DVD with its windowboxed edges to prevent cropping from overscan. A newer transfer would probably present more depth and a more tactile sense to the photographic detail. Code Red has announced a stateside edition, but we have yet to hear whether it will be a new transfer. The sole audio option is an LPCM 2.0 mono English dub track in which the dialogue seems mixed lower than the music and effects. While amplification of the audio during dialogue scenes is required, it does provide a jolt when the richer passages of the score come in.

The film is preceded by a newly-recorded introduction by Sergio Martino and some prefatory text in which Shameless state that they elected in collaboration with Martino to soften the film's scenes of animal violence, with the feature presentation running 100:29 after 2 minutes of compulsory cuts ordered by the BBFC. Since these scenes defined as animal cruelty could never be included in a UK edition by law, it seems a bit disingenuous of Shameless to claim their removal – cuts with some rarely apparent slow motion to cover jumps – as a moral stance that they would have taken even if not required to do so. Even if the scenes of animal violence - which this viewer does not particularly care for – were "out of context" as they claim, they were not only part of the original assemblage but also the practice of inserting and including this footage was part of this particular filmmaking trend. What remains is pretty repellent, so the cutting seems like more of a compromise rather than a "softening" so Shameless was better off stating that its removal was required but that they had the director's approval for the cutting as well.