A boatload of tourists go to a deserted island and run afoul of a vicious deranged cannibal (a genuinely creepy performance by the hulking George Eastman). Director/co-writer Joe D'Amato makes inspired use of the remote lush tropical setting, expertly creates and sustains a strong mood of pure flesh-crawling dread, and handles the extremely disgusting gore set pieces with lip-smacking nasty brio. Wile the opening third is laboriously slow and drawn out, the story fortunately picks up steam and really starts cooking when the boat passengers reach the island: The island location projects a profoundly unsettling feeling of isolation and vulnerability, the cannibal's filthy corpse-strewn underground lair is a truly scary place, and, of course, the moments of intense hardcore splatter deliver the disgusting goods (stomach-churning highlights include a meat cleaver to the face, a severed head in a bucket, a couple of torn out jugular veins gushing blood, the infamous fetus eating scene, and the gloriously gruesome climax with the cannibal munching on his own intestines). The cast do a decent job with their roles, with acceptable turns by Tisa Farrow as the appealing Julie, Severio Vallone as nice guy Andy, Serena Grandi as the pregnant Maggie, Margaret Mazzantini as the blind Henriette, Mark Bodin as the amorous Daniel, and Zora Kerova as the jealous and superstitious carol. With his brawny build, hideously malformed face, greasy, stringy hair, heavy breathing, and snaggle teeth, Eastman registers well as a very menacing and frightening bogeyman figure. Enrico Biribicchi's pretty and picturesque cinematography gives the picture an attractive sunny look and makes nifty occasional use of a hand-held camera. Marcello Giombini's wonky synthesizer score does the spine-tingling trick. But it's the movie's fiercely pronounced and unapologetic element of deep-seated sickness which gives the proceedings an extra rough and scuzzy edge; the mean and morbid atmosphere is so powerfully rendered that it's sure to make you squirm. A worthwhile Italian horror splatter item.