Cut and Run (1985) - Blu-ray Review

Details: By Loron Hays; 02 January 2018

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Blood and whipped cream. That's the party you can expect when Jungle Jimmy comes home.

Mighty human meatballs! If the first few moments of Cut and Run don’t churn your stomach than you, my friend, are dead already. It’s a ferociously bloody and brutal opening that sears its way into our skull through impalements and the chomping of human flesh. And it’s all sorts of disgusting as a tribe of cannibals, led by The Hills Have Eyes’ Michael Berryman, launches a surprise attack against an unsuspecting group of people in the Amazon.

Director Ruggero Deodato’s style of filmmaking is to make you blink, retch, and look away. He dares you – with his use of explicit gore throughout blood-soaked films like Cannibal Holocaust and Jungle Holocaust – to stay focused on the bloody (and often toothy) flesh-gnawing events of his horror films. He knows what he is doing, though, and with 1985’s Cut and Run, which ironically rounds out the Amazonia Trilogy, dares combine a tale of B-movie serial-like adventures with his typical cannibalistic urges.

Honestly, the results could have been better. One would think - with the highs established of the opening - that we would maintain a strong delivery but that does not happen.

What we have though – because all the ingredients dictate an awfully bloody and cheesy time – is pretty wild and painfully uneven. We get thrills and spills as Deodato gives us an adventure through the Amazon that is more in the spirit of a dull version of The Jewel of the Nile than anything else. Hey, it was the season for such things at the box office in 1985 and Deodato, doing what he does best, tries to capitalize on a genre by combining it with his cannibal fetishes.

It doesn’t always work here but, thanks to New Horizons investment, it’s pretty sure-footed in its production and its exploitation. The sex is pretty extreme when present and the gore, always a staple of cannibalism flicks, is right in your face. And its villains – with Berryman and Richard Lynch as an insane survivor of Jim Jones' cult – make for a destructive dynamic duo.

The story is presented on two fronts. The first involves the journalist that Lisa Brount portrays as she goes in search of nasty little stories with her boring cameraman in tow. Unfortunately, she has little to do and her coverage in the big city leads her straight into the Amazon as she goes to investigate the wars between competing drug cartels. She never expects to find anything or anyone like Berryman’s thuggish cult of cannibals.

The other hero, Willie Aames as Tommy Allo, is a bit of a weenie. He is always crying. He’s the son of one of the bad guys, spies on people, and only wears a Mickey Mouse shirt. He’s also not prepared to be faced with the amount of heads that are going to be lobbed off. And that’s even before all the whining.

The bodies, as documented by the television crew, are piling up. And it’s a brutal mess as they run into other survivors of the cult of cannibals tearing through the jungle. With engaging synthesizers and a premise that merges together several different streams, Cut and Run – even if it isn’t afraid to show a man get ripped in two – comes across as a crazy mess of ideas that is a bit unsure of itself. It doesn’t really know what it wants to be and the combination is often times too bizarro for its own good.

Cut and Run is damn kooky at times. The cult of cannibals makes for decent threats to the camera crew lost in the jungle (and so do all the snakes hanging from tree branches), but the whole narrative is off its rocker. It looks good – especially here in this brand new 2K scan of the original U.S. Interpositive – and will endlessly please genre fans who are dying to see the original unedited version of this cult classic – but it fails to go much of anywhere with its sprawling narrative that fans itself out with its multiple threads.

Code Red presents Cut and Run on blu-ray for the very first time. The annoying characters might taste better than they act, though. Sharpen those knives. Eat up!

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MPAA Rating: Not rated.
Runtime: 90 mins
Director: Ruggero Deodato
Writer: Cesare Frugoni, Dardano Sacchetti
Cast: Lisa Blount, Leonard Mann, Willie Aames
Genre: Horror
Tagline: Assignment : Survival
Memorable Movie Quote: "There are no answers... ...only actions."
Theatrical Distributor: New World Pictures
Official Site:
Release Date: May 2, 1986
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: December 11, 2017
Synopsis: Relentless action and unflintching horror await in the Amazon in this cult classic from filmmaker Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust). An ambitious television reporter and her cameraman investigate a series of grisly murders as well as the disappearance of their bosses’ son. But when they trace both stories to the depths of the jungle, they discover he is the prisoner of a drug cartel led by renegade Colonel and his army of sadistic natives. Now their big scoop has become a nightmare of sudden violence where the ultimate assignment is to survive..

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Cut and Run (1985) - Blu-ray Review

Blu-ray Details:

Ronin Flix Exclusive

Home Video Distributor: Code Red
Available on Blu-ray - December 11, 2017
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: None
Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; single disc
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A

The brand new 2K scan of the original U.S. Interpositive looks great. Framed in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio and featuring a crisp DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 audio track, Cut and Run has never looked better. The 1080p transfer is all sorts of saturated and pristine as the jungle comes to life for its television viewers. The leafy greens are impeccable; the film looks and sounds pretty solid. It is filled with fine grain textures as a few pops appear here and there. Overall, this is as satisfying brand new HD widescreen master from Code Red.

Supplements:

Commentary:

None

Special Features:

Fans get both the rated and the unrated versions of the movie. There are also new on-camera interviews with Willie Aames, Leonard Mann, John Steiner and Ruggero Deodato. A theatrical trailer is included. This release also includes a limited edition slipcover.