Talking to a family friend about UK DVD company Shameless,he mentioned to me a title from the company that he has been after for a good while.Searching round on Ebay UK,I was pleased to find a seller selling it at a very cheap price,which led to me getting ready to meet the Love Goddess.The plot:Learning that old friend Vincent is working on the construction of a nuclear reactor in the Caribbean,journalist Sara decides to pay him a visit.Meeting up for the first time in ages,Vincent tells Sara that despite some "issues" with the residents,that most of them are happy with the building of a nuclear reactor on their island.Getting hot under the collar for each other,Vincent and Sara head back to Vincent's apartment for a night of passion.Arriving at the apartment,Sara discovers to her horror how much the locals hate the work that Vincent is doing,thanks to a half-eaten dead body being left on his doorstep.View on the film:Before I get to the title,I have to mention that Shameless has given the movie a great presentation,with Shameless offering the Italian & English dubs,along with a clear picture that captures the Caribbean sun.Filmed on location,director Joe D'Amato takes advantage of the unique location with wide,hand-held tracking shots,which gaze at every dusty street corner of the city.Jumping on the Cannibal craze,D'Amato takes a surprisingly limited interest in the subject,with the sole dead body and the dissecting of pigs appearing like a desperate effort to loosely connect to the genre. Whilst he is not instead in flesh being eaten,D'Amato shows a clear welcomed interest in the exposure of flesh of both the men and the women,with D'Amato using super slo-mo to focus on the most lustful features of his cast.Eating the film up with a bonkers twist ending,the screenplay by Roberto Gandus & Renzo Maietto give the movie a light, breezy mood,with the warm location being matched by the flirting from Sara and Vincent.Bringing the sun out,the very sexy Sirpa Lane (who sadly died of AIDS at 47) gives a sweet,relaxed performance as Sara,who soon meets the cannibal love goddess.

Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals (1978) ** (out of 4)Director D'Amato takes his sleaze to the Caribbean for the first time but this in turn would lead to a long line of films shot there including the infamous Porno Holocaust and Erotic Nights of the Living Dead. Unlike those two films this one here remains softcore throughout but, as with many of the director's films, the subject matter bounces all around. A reporter and a nuclear power scientist are on the island having some fun when they meet the strange but beautiful Papaya (Melissa Chimenti). What the two don't know is that Papaya might be a voodoo goddess ready to use her sexuality to have things do her own way and lets just say she doesn't want any nuclear power plant on her island. Whether or not you're going to like a film like this solely depends on what you feel about the genre at hand. D'Amato not only mixes the voodoo and horror genres with the sex and nudity but he also throws in some action, drama and even a silly ritual dance. Those expecting to see a cannibal film are going to be disappointed because that title was pretty much thrown on with the exception of one guy who takes a bite out of a human heart. The only other way this is connected to other cannibal movies is the fact that many animals here are slaughtered on camera. Two dead pigs are gutted and a chicken dies during a cockfight so animals lovers might want to stay away. As is also usual, the director throws in all sorts of sex and nudity but none of it is overly erotic and after a while it gets rather tiresome. The director also lets scenes roll on and on for way too long and this includes one where our couple is walking around with nothing happening for at least ten minutes. With that said, the women are attractive here and the story is mildly entertaining if you know what to expect. The opening sex scene/murder is ultra violent with a big splash of gore so these reasons might make people want to see the movie.

It must be said that, alongside Jess Franco, Joe D'Amato is one of the undisputed kings of exploitation. His films such as Anthropophagous, Beyond the Darkness, Images in a Convent, Caligula: The Untold Story and his sleaze-filled Black Emanuelle sagas are bona fide classicks of the "genre". Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals is one of his lesser known titles which has now been made available fully uncensored for the first time on DVD by the fine folks at Severin Films.Maurice Poli (Rabid Dogs, Five Dolls for an August Moon) is part of a team of Geologists who, for reasons unexplained, are installing a nuclear reactor on a remote Caribbean island paradise. Before long Maurice unexpectedly bumps into his old reporter friend Sirpa Lane (La Bete) who just happens to be vacationing on the island. (Cue plenty of softcore sex as the old chums get reacquainted). When the couple picks up a hitchhiking native named Papaya, she tells them of an ancient annual ritual happening nearby and they decide to go along and check it out… and end up getting much more than they bargained for.Papaya opens with probably one of the best scenes in the film; island sexpot Papaya seduces a bearded Geologist in his hut by rubbing fruit on his body then castrates him with her teeth. This is the first of two scenes of cannibalism in the film. The rest of it is pretty much held together with an abundance of sex set against a picturesque tropical backdrop and a vague plot which involves the natives protesting against having a nuclear reactor built on their island by having Papaya seduce and kill all the Geologists involved.The title of the film is very misleading and the name on the actual print is Caribbean Papaya which makes much more sense because as mentioned above there are only two very brief scenes of cannibalism, the aforementioned one and another which is during the cannibal ritual and involves the eating of a sacrificial victims heart and some dead pigs being graphically gutted.One thing there is no lack of though is sex & nudity - Nordic sleaze princess Sirpa Lane gets her kit off plenty and so does Melissa Chimenti who plays local temptress Papaya and looks a little like transvestite actor/tress Ajita Wilson which can be either a good or bad thing I guess depending on your orientation. The sex can sometimes be pretty graphic for softcore and there's plenty of variety from interracial couplings to threesomes and even a full-blown "cannibal" orgy underscored with some irresistibly funky disco beats.Ultimately I cant say this is a must-have D'Amato film; it's basically a mediocre softcore fare with some vague cannibalism themes thrown in for added shock value. For Sirpa Lane fan-boys and/or D'Amato completists only.

Even though Italy was never much of colonial power, Italian exploitation filmmakers of the 60's and 70's seemed to really be trying to make up for lost time in exploiting the Third World; from the Mondo films of the 1960's to the gut-churning cannibal films of the early 80's, you just couldn't keep these guys out of the jungle. Since this was also the period of the rise of the sex film, it was almost inevitable that there would be an Italian genre of "black sexploitation" or "Third World sexploitation' films. These films are kind of erotic travelogues where a white European tourist couple "go native", usually after being seduced by a native woman. They engage in ritualistic dancing, they eat raw meat, they have a lot of interracial and bisexual sex (which is apparently what Italian exploitation filmmakers thought people in the Third World did all day). The most famous of these films is "Black Emanuelle" with Laura Gemser, but the most famous filmmaker is Joe D'Amato who eventually took over the "Black Emanuelle" series and added such wonderfully descriptive titles as "Black Orgasm" and "Porno Holocaust".D'Amato had two things going for him. He was an excellent cinematographer, so his films always look far better than just about any other porno "product", softcore or hardcore. He also had an appalling lack of good taste. While there is some metaphoric connection between sex and cannibalism (i.e. "devouring one's lover"), there is literally nothing erotic about cannibalism (unless you're some weird bastard living in Wisconsin or a village in Germany). What D'Amato was trying to do was incorporate two kinds of illicit thrills that don't really go together that well. There are some hot sex scenes here, for instance, but it's hard to enjoy them after the very first one culminates VERY unpleasantly in a scene of cannibalism (well, maybe not technically cannibalism since she DOES spit it out). On the other hand though, people watching this as cannibal film will probably be bored stupid with all this gratuitous sex after the opening scene.The acting is pretty unremarkable. The exotic lead who seduces the European couple is pretty sexy I guess, but looks a lot more Latin than black. The white female is played by a Sirpa Lane who was in the famous Walerian Borzyx cult film "The Beast", and managed to turn in an atrocious performance even though she had no dialogue. She is not even really that attractive until she takes off her clothes (which she fortunately does very regularly). As for the guy, well the guy hardly matters in movies like this, does he? The plot involves the native woman, "Papaya", who as part of some kind of anti-colonial hostility is seducing and murdering every white man she meets. For some reason though when she meets this couple, she decides to take the woman on as a kind of apprentice. The ending is kind of, uh, interesting, but I won't give it away. This is OK I guess if you like this sort of thing.