Crew
Directors – Vincent Green [Enzo Doria] & John Wilder [Luigi Russo], Screenplay – E. Benito, J. Comas Gil, E. Passadore, D. Rafele, L. Ravera & L. Russo, Story – G. Longo & L. Russo, Producer – Enzo Doria, Photography – Fernando Espiga, Music – Guido De Angelis & Maurizio De Angelis, Special Effects – Production Film 82, Production Design – Xavier Fernandez. Production Company – The Alex Film International/Arco Film.
Cast
Mark Gregory (Adam), Andrea Goldman (Eve)
Plot
Adam lives in the Garden of Eden. He creates the sculpture of a woman in the sand and the rain brings this to life. He and Eve live in paradise. However, the serpent then tempts Eve and suggests she eat the apple. Adam warns that it is forbidden but Eve does so and then persuades Adam to eat the apple too. As a result, they are banished from paradise. Out in the wilderness, they must learn to survive and deal with hostile dinosaurs, pre-human creatures, primitive tribes and wild animals.
Adam and Eve is one of the foundational texts of Judaeo-Christian religion. Their story is the first to appear in the Bible and is told in the first chapter of Genesis. According to the Biblical account, God creates the Garden of Eden, a perfect paradise, and a man Adam to inhabit it. God then creates Eve out of Adam’s rib as a companion for him. They are given all freedom but bidden not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The Serpent tempts Eve and she eats the fruit, leading to their banishment from the Garden and the notion of First Sin. The fruit is never identified but is commonly portrayed as an apple. The Serpent is never specifically identified as such but is almost always associated as being The Devil.
There have been a handful of films dedicated to the Adam and Eve story from the comedy Fig Leaves (1934), the early nudie Adam and Eve (1956), the Dino de Laurentiis spectacular The Bible … In the Beginning (1966) and the nudie The Sin of Adam and Eve (1969). In the bizarreness stakes, there was The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960) where modern people have a dream about the Garden of Eden featuring Mickey Rooney as The Devil!, and Second Time Lucky (1984), an excruciating comedy where God and The Devil decide to replay everything and reincarnate Adam and Eve throughout history.
Adam and Eve vs the Cannibals differs from the Biblical story in a number of essential ways. There is a Garden paradise (some very beautiful nature photography with Adam and Eve frolicking among tamed wild animals), a Serpent and a Tree of Knowledge, the fruit of which is an apple. However, there is no God present in the story. Adam just has innate knowledge that it is forbidden to eat the fruit and we never learn how he obtained that knowledge. Furthermore, differing from the Biblical account, Eve is not created from Adam’s rib but here he creates a sand sculpture of a human figure on the beach and lies on it as the rain comes whereupon the sand washes away and Eve emerges.
The Biblical story takes up about the first twenty minutes of the film. After this point, Adam and Eve vs the Cannibals starts free associating and inventing its own story. This involves Adam and Eve, having been banished from Eden, wandering through the prehistoric wilderness and encountering everything from a pterodactyl, sub-human creatures, a native tribe and a tatty looking wild bear. Much of this also involves them bickering over whether he loves her or not and Eve being abducted by other tribes – there is even a love triangle of sorts where Eve gets tempted to settle down with one of the men from the tribe.
The surprise about the film is that it is not a nudie or an erotic film and everything is quite tastefully done. We get plentiful bare butts but there are no full frontal nudes of either Adam or Eve. Eve has her long hair covering her breasts and once out into the wild fashions herself a bikini out of the pterodactyl’s wing. Even the love scenes are surprisingly tasteful and show nothing.
And then there is the title Adam and Eve vs the Cannibals, which mistakenly gives the impression that this is one of the entries in the notorious Italian cannibal film around this period with films such as Deep River Savages (1972), Cannibal Holocaust (1979) and Cannibal Ferox (1981). It should be noted that any reference to cannibals only comes in various English language releases of the film – the Italian title Adam y Eva, La Prima Historia de Amor translates more innocuously as Adam and Eve, The First Love Story. There is scant justification for any cannibals – there are native tribes and the race of primitive hominids. During the scenes with the tribes fighting, there is some gory action with bodies being torn apart and a couple of scenes where it looks as though flesh is being devoured, but that is the sole justification for any cannibalism in the film.
Trailer here