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Let me say up front, this is a documentary.
The film documents Edward A.Salisbury's expedition throught he South
Seas to look for - and document the life of - still existing native tribes
of cannibals and headhunters.
The first stops are the Marquesas and Samoa, where there are no
cannibals and the off-screen-narrator (William Peck) seems to be contempt
on commenting on the beautiful girls ant the ritual dances.
Then it's off to the Fijis, where there allegedly have been cannibals
until 70 years ago, but now the natives are more interested in bananas. On
the Fijis, only the women work while the men all are warriors, even though
there hasn't been a war for decades ...
On the Andaman Island, there are Pygmies, however, the narrator does
not know much more to say about them than that they are smaller than we
are.
The Papua New Guineans are erstwhile cannibals, but they were
well-educated by the missionaries.
The natives of the New Hebrides, according to the narrator, have the
mentality of 3- to 4-year-olds, and they actually are active cannibals.
Furthermore, they let their women live with pigs. One of the film's
highlights is supposed to be an actual cannibal ceremony, but it's cut
short before you can actually see anything, allegedly on behest of the
censor.
On the Malacula Islands, the narrator tells us, the cannibals look
fierce and treacherous, and they hve guns, obviously stolen from white men
they have killed.
The cannibals of the Solomon Islands look cleaner and more intelligent,
but, as our omniscient narrator informs us, they are just as treacherous
(our narrator however doesn't even try to prove that claim.
Now it's off to headhunter country. Headhunters, the narrator informs
us, don't eat their enemies, they just behead them and take home their
skulls, to put them on display in their skull houses. They are also more
intelligent than cannibals, (allegedly) having the mentality of 10-year
olds.
On the island Bilwa, our expedition meets Gow, most famous of the
headhunters, inasmuch as he succeeded in uniting the different tribes and
bring peace to the region.
For the cameras, Gow and his subjects re-enact Gow's big battle, when
slavers stole his brothers, and he, at the time nothing but a chieftain of
a small tribe, managed to win over other tribes for the battle against the
slavers, to the collective good of all the trbes.
Gow the Killer is noteworthy inasmuch as it is the first sound
film dealing with cannibalism, thought he ads promised more than the film
actually delivers - much like the Italian Mondo movies from
some 30 years later - as it doesn't actually show any atrocities but
merely suggests them, blaming the lack of footage on the censors and on
the dangers of filming these scenes alike.
As a documentary as such, the film is terribly biased, and at least
from today's point of view, many of the narrator's remarks are nothing
short of racist. That said, some of the footage involved is actually quite
interesting inasmuch as it shows natvie tribes yet unspoiled by
civilisation (something these tribes might not be anymore today, 75 years
later) - it's just a pity that the film spends less time exploring their
lives and more time looking for the sensationalist and the gruesome -
something else the film shares with the Italian Mondo movies
from some 30 years later.
In all it's not a good film, some of the footage is utterly
uninteresting, much of the narration is questionable at best, and the
re-enacted battle at the climax of the movie just lacks excitement ... but
that's not saying the film is not also interesting as a document of a
bygone era.
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find Gow the Killer at adultvideouniverse.com
