Natura Contro

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Natura Contro
Natura Contro DVD cover
Directed by	Antonio Climati
Written by	Antonio Climati Marco Merlo Franco Prosperi Federico Moccia Lorenzo Castellano
Starring	Mario Merlo Fabrizio Merlo May Deseligny Pio Maria Federici Bruno Corazzari
Music by	Maurizio Dami
Cinematography	Antonio Climati
Editing by	Eugenio Alabiso
Distributed by	VIPCO (UK)
Release date(s)	1988
Running time	90 min.
Language	Italian Spanish
Budget	Unknown
IMDb profile

Natura Contro (1988) is a jungle adventure film directed by Mondo film director Antonio Climati. It is also known by its English title, The Green Inferno, but is even better known as Cannibal Holocaust II. Climati had no intentions of this being a sequel to Cannibal Holocaust, and the title was created by distributors of the film to cash in on the success and notoriety of the latter film.

Until recent years, the film was rather obscure. It is best known by genre fans to be the film that finished the cannibal genre, which, by then, had virtually gone extinct. In 2002, UK based distributor VIPCO (Video Instant Picture Company) released Natura Contro on VHS and DVD as Cannibal Holocaust II, and is now the film's most common release.

This was the last film directed by Climati, who had gained notoriety as being a major player to the Mondo documentary film genre. Though fictional, this film deals with many similar aspects of Mondo films, including exotic customs and locales and cruel violence. Strangely, however, the film appears to show compassion towards animals, while the main staple to Mondo films is often real violence towards animals.

[edit] Plot

The plot centers around a group of four friends, Jemma, Mark, Fred, and Pete, who head into the Amazon jungle to locate a lost professor. The professor was before believed dead, until Jemma recovered a lighter that belonged to the professor. She rounds up the three men to head into the jungle and meet with her to find the legendary Imas tribe, who possesses an equally legendary treasure. The Imas is the tribe the professor was believed to be with.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

After Jemma discovers the lighter, she immediately phones Pete, who agrees with her plan and hires Fred and Mark to steal a sea plane. They do, and the three fly down to the Amazon to meet Jemma, and then they head to a town, Fort Angel, to hire a guide named Juan 'The Scorpion' Garcia. When Garcia refuses to help them, they decide to head out by themselves, but first, they need more gasoline. They locate a man named Don Pedro, who runs a business that transports monkeys from the wild to zoos. After Pete resuscitates a monkey for him, he agrees that he'll give them gas if they catch monkeys for him. The group heads into the jungle by canoe (with guides supplied by Don Pedro), where Pete obtains a trumpet (he makes a habit of playing his trumpet to greet strangers on the river). A guide will have a small torpedo fish swim up his back end before they all reach their destination and make camp. There they face another unpleasantry, a bat attack, before moving on to hunt monkeys.

A guide instructs the group how to use a blow dart, and the hunting begins. They bag several monkeys by blow darts, and even more by using nets. The local natives, however, who use the monkeys as food, become disgruntled, and capture the hunters. Jemma is forced to act like a monkey, Mark is covered in and bitten by red ants, and Pete gets hung tightly to a tree before he negotiates their release by giving the natives their tape recorder (a reference to Cannibal Holocaust). Now free, they return to give the monkeys to Don Pedro and continue on their way. Jemma tells her friends of a contact she knows in a local tribe who knows where to locate the Imas tribe. When they arrive at the tribe's village, however, they find that the contact and most of the men of the tribe have been slaughtered by gold hunters, who are also looking for the Imas and their treasure. Our four heroes decide that they must stop these gold hunters before they reach the Imas. A young tribal girl, Kuwala, also knows where to find the Imas, and agrees to take them there if they help rescue her sister, who was kidnapped by the gold hunters. Also while at the village, they rescue a leopard from a tiger trap.

When they set back out, the group encounters a river snake fisherman. He gives them shelter for the night if they help him catch anacondas. Jemma must also fight off unwanted advances the fisherman makes. The next morning, they fly off again and finally locate the gold hunters' base. They sneak into the camp and over power the men of one cabin to rescue Kuwala's sister, but are captured shortly after. All five are taken to the camp's leader, who turns out to be Juan Garcia. Garcia threatens to have the men's penises bitten off by a snake if Kuwala doesn't tell him where the Imas are located. Kuwala agrees, and tells him that the Imas are on an "island in the shape of a ring where three rivers meet. It's called 'The Island of the Imas.'" At that moment, the other four fight back against their captors and escape with Kuwala and her sister. They steal a barrel of gas and two canoes, tie the canoes to the plane, and the plane drags the excess of people down river.

While setting up their next camp site, Kuwala's sister is taken by the river current and begins to drown. Mark flies the plane down the river while Fred bare-foot waterskis behind it to save her, only for Fred and the others to be caught by child smugglers, excpet for Mark, who escapes in the plane. The smugglers drug the children they kidnap from local tribes and ship them to various buyers of the children (who want them for their organs). Mark returns to set fire to some bushes outside the smugglers' hideout, smoking them out. The others rescue the children and escape back into the jungle. During the escape, however, Jemma is bitten by a deadly snake. Kuwala guides them to another local tribe, where they use their tribal medicine to bring Jemma back to health. After partaking in a tribal ritual, they get back on their way.

Finally, the group locates the Island of the Imas, only to find that the gold hunters have beat them there. Fred, Mark, and Pete head onto the island, while the others stay behind. There they find several mutilated bodies, tortured to death by the hunters. They encounter two hunters on their way but defeat them and take their weapons. After which, they become enbrawled in a fight between the tribe and the intruders. Ultimately, the hunters are outnumbered and slaughtered. After the battle, the find Professor Korenz, who has been incorporated into the tribe. Jemma and the others make their way to the reunion, where Professor Korenz reveals that the tribe is not the Imas, nor do they exist. Jemma, however, after taking several pictures of the tribe, tells the professor that they should leave and claim that the tribe is indeed the Imas tribe for fame and further funding once they arrive back home. The two betray Pete, Mark, and Fred, by stealing the plane and flying back without them so there would be no one who could refute their claims of the tribe being the Imas. Years later, however, the two return to bring back the three men they left behind. Pete then narrates the eventual fates of the rest of the group: the professor is back in the Amazon, Jemma is a successful journalist, Mark is with the airlines, Fred opened a water skiing school, and Pete is a band leader in the Mediterrenean.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Mario Merlo	Fred
Fabrizio Merlo	Mark
May Deseligny	Jemma
Pio Maria Federici	Pete
Bruno Corazzari	Child Smuggler
Roberto Ricci	Professor Korenz
Jessica Quintero	Kuwala
David Maunsell	River Fisherman
Sasha D'Arc	Kuwala's sister
Roberto Alessandri	Head Hunter
Salvatore Borgese	Juan Garcia