The movie Roger Ebert walked out of after 25 minutes: “Among the most idiotic films ever made”
If anyone could reasonably be deemed the least likely to walk out of a movie before it’s finished, then it would be a movie critic, seeing as they get paid to stick around until the bitter end. However, some films just aren’t worth finishing, and Roger Ebert had seen enough of one horror flick after 25 minutes.
It wasn’t an especially long movie, though, so he technically made it almost a third of the way through. By that point, he knew he hated it and knew in his heart that whatever was set to unfold over the next hour or so wouldn’t be enough to change his mind and convince him that he was watching anything other than a rancid piece of cinematic shit.
Those familiar with Ebert’s preferences might have an inkling of what kind of picture would make him feel that way, and for those of you who suspect it may be a particularly graphic horror flick, you’re bang on the money. Critics aren’t supposed to play favourites, but throughout his career, it became increasingly clear that if there was one subgenre he despised above all others, it was the most gruesome kind.
Not just any gruesome horror, though, but one of the famed ‘Video Nasties’ that was deemed so unacceptable and ill-suited for public consumption that it was banned in the United Kingdom. For some, ‘From the director of Cannibal Holocaust‘ is a selling point, but for others, it most definitely is not.
However, since Ruggero Deodato had yet to helm his most famous feature, he was merely a schlock merchant. He wasn’t even that, to be fair, since 1977’s Ultimo mondo cannibale, known variously as Last Cannibal World, Cannibal, Jungle Holocaust, and The Last Survivor, was his sixth effort from behind the camera, and his first foray into the world of flesh-eating despair.
“Have you ever, friends sometimes ask me, just walked out on a movie?” Ebert began his zero-star review. “Yes, I say, I have… but not very often, because I’m being paid to sit there to the bitter end. In that case, they say, how do you know when to walk out? I didn’t have a really satisfactory answer to that one until last Sunday night, when I walked out on The Last Survivor. Now I have an almost 100% accurate definition of when to walk out: When the cannibals start eating the human flesh.”
Since that makes up a substantial portion of the narrative, he didn’t stand a chance. “That happened, oh, maybe 25 minutes into the movie, which had already distinguished itself as among the most idiotic films ever made,” he continued. “Survivors of a plane crash had penetrated into the rain forest and pushed aside the vines, and then the screen was filled with big subtitles which announced: Actual scenes of cannibals eating human flesh.”
For Ebert, that was the point of no return. Watching the characters as they “ripped flesh from bone and snatched morsels out of each other’s fingers,” he felt like he had no choice: “I got up and walked toward the door.” Even though the version he saw was called The Last Survivor, he had absolutely no interest in finding out who that last survivor was, how they became the last survivor, or what they did to reach that point.
25 minutes was all it took, and needless to say, he didn’t regret his decision in the slightest.
