Master of the World (1983) User Reviews (5)

Gory prehistoric bore

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 26 August 2016]

Here's another addition to the "prehistoric" cycle of the early '80s, cave man films inspired by the success of QUEST FOR FIRE. This obscure Italian movie was made under the direction of one of Italy's weirdest auteurs - Alberto Cavallone, who also gave us the infamous BLUE MOVIE. Although once you've watched it you'll realise why it's a deservedly obscure movie, MASTER OF THE WORLD does have a few things in its favour - if you can get over the limitations of the plot less grunting, that is, and the boredom that sets in early on. It's one of the goriest, nastiest prehistoric movies you'll see, with some really excruciating on-screen decapitations (usually achieved by a blunt weapon just to make it more painful) you'll ever see, graphic scenes of cannibalism and severed heads having the brains torn out and eaten, all staged with realism and relish from the gore-hungry cast. Yes, this contains some of the most gruelling cannibal footage you're likely to see outside of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST!

You may be wondering why a film so nasty is relatively undiscovered amongst fans of "video nasty" style horror. The answer is simple - poor distribution. As far as I know, this was only ever available in a cut form in the US; however it was released back in the '80s in an uncut, letterboxed version in Greece which is becoming increasingly hard to track down these days. The film is a mess and often drags between the action stages, with poor actors wandering around and grunting being no substitute for a real story with dialogue. MASTER OF THE WORLD was actually filmed in the Canary Islands, which means that the scenery is often breathtakingly beautiful and convincingly lush and prehistoric in nature - this isn't one of those films where you see roads in the background - and the backdrop helps to add to the realism of the production.

Cavallone stages the action with relish and never shies away from the brutality and violence of the time, instead showing people being beaten to death with rocks and sticks, even women and children - nobody is safe here. Again this adds to the realism. None of the actors are familiar and I'm sure none went on to much else in their careers, but it's difficult to judge anyone too harshly seeing as they don't speak or act much really - just getting on with it instead. What I did find incredible were the scenes of actors battling dogs and large bears - there are no unconvincing stuntmen here, no protection, the bears are the real deal and not just phoney fakes - the actors just launch themselves on the animals and usually get mauled or beaten around. Dangerous stuff, and unexpected even from those crazy Italians! Cavallone finishes it all off with the triple-whammy of bloodshed. However, aside from a few moments of interest this is an arty and undistinguished bore.

A crude, shocking and repulsive tale...

[ccmiller1492 · 4/10 · 31 May 2002]

This film is similar to "Clan of the Cave Bear", but with much more crude violence and shockingly repulsive content. A young blond Cro-Magnon hunter (Kruger) is nearly killed and left for dead when he encounters another passing barbaric group. Eventually a foraging group of Neanderthals near his vicinity and a very simian young woman (Rispoli) undertakes to heal him with herbs. He joins the group and helps them fight off a tribe of savages who's favorite enterprise is beheading their enemies in order to scoop out their brains and eat them raw for food! The young man finally finds another tribe more like his own people and his disgusting odyssey comes mercifully to a close.

Total waste of time

[Undead_Master · 25 October 2002]

This is an Italian cave man movie built along the lines of `Quest for fire' or `Clan of the cave bear'. There is an attempt to paint a realistic picture of prehistoric man, but this movie fails in every way.

There are only a couple of good things i can think of to say about this movie. It has an amusing (and very out of place) goblin style synth score and the opening narration is pretty funny. If the rest of the movie had been as amusing as the opening, it would have been entertaining, but the movie immediately starts going downhill and continues to get worse with each passing second.

There is a little fake looking gore (not much) and many scenes of cave men sitting around grunting at each other as they fight with sticks and brutalize people with pointed rocks. This is one of those bad movies that's not even funny. It's so incredibly boring and slow that it's almost impossible to keep your attention focused on the story. Imagine a movie that shows two hours of somebody washing dishes, with poor lighting and a bad camera angle. This film is only slightly more exciting than that. A total waste of time.

Pointless and annoying

[miss_toucan · 1/10 · 14 April 2022]

So this is a film about Neanderthals, and perhaps it's an accurate depiction of life for our great ancestors (and perhaps not), but it is annoying to watch. They don't have any language, so communicate using grunts and noises that really got on my nerves.

There's also very little story here, just 1hr 45 mins of showing the struggles of primitive man.

There's a cro magnon man, cannibals, a bear that sounds just like Chewbacca, and I guess I just don't see the point of this movie and it's so boring and pointless, that I really don't know what else to say about it.

Watch Clan of the Cave Bear instead if you are wanting to see a movie about Neanderthals.

Or if you don't care at all about accuracy, One Million Years B. C which at least has dinosaurs which makes it entertaining.

Probably the best Caveman / Primitive mankind film out there

[abansheenamedted · 8/10 · 21 May 2022]

Excellent. Several timeless, universal contrasting themes regarding humanity, connecting primitive man to today. Any viewer with basic film literary skills to recognize themes, symbolism and allegory will surely notice these, including the ending. The writing and characters are very good and represent these elments well. There are complex characters (3 initial tribe outsiders, 2 tribes) to represent the thematics with diverse human moments, along with unique and artistic direction, editing, sound design.

There are good and bad characters, light and dark, brutality and glimmers of good just like in real life, such a likely reflective of thousands of years ago to today. Many WWII films or modern history with them same or far worse brutality and social collectivism (ie. Nazism, socialist and communist genocides or in dictatorships in recent history, as real true examples) pale in context and carnage and brutality what is rationally shown here for obvious story of primitive man at an early stage.

It is pure fantasy to conjure an image of peaceful tribes without war or vying for power as seen here. You even have characters that fall outside these collectivist groups, which is more than any Hollywood movie today could or would show today (politically or otherwise in writing or with the same craft in direction, editing or original artistically superior soundtrack).

Given the subject matter, genre content, time period, context this film is more extreme and realistic than fantasy or fluff.

If you want Hollywood with Dolby sound, generic soundtrack, clean showered properly groomed media celebrity stars and mindless, theme-less safe entertainment movie, maybe Master of the World might not be for you.

If like a film with synth, ambient original soundtrack, creative artistic choices, editing, bold choices to reflect a gritty dark realism, good cinematography, characters, deeper themes, subject matter and even allegory than this might indeed be for you.

Not a mindless movie but a thought-provoking one requiring some semblance of intelligence at least a hair above that of a primitive.