One day, while high on cocaine, Mike brutally tortured and killed their native guide in full view of the tribe.

The prisoners are forced to watch Mike as he is tortured, beaten, including having his penis sliced off with a large machete-like knife and then eaten by a native villager.

The search plane lands, but the natives tell the rescuers that the outsiders' canoes capsized in the river and crocodiles ate them.

As the search team leaves, Pat is bound, stripped to the waist, and the natives run hooks through her breasts to be hung by them.

Meanwhile, Mike's head is locked in a crude contraption, and the top of his skull is cut off so that the natives can eat his exposed brain.

She publishes a book titled, Cannibalism: End of a Myth, which lies to support her theory and covers up the events of her ordeal.

[5] Terry Levene's Aquarius Releasing opened the film in New York in September 1983, under the title 'Make Them Die Slowly'.

Aquarius' marketing strategy was minimal: a sensational, gratuitously violent trailer (narrated, in a break from tradition, by a woman, in order to provide a jarring counterpoint to the grotesque imagery), no print ads, and the marquee of the Liberty Theatre on 42nd Street completely emblazoned with huge, garish banners and colour stills announcing the film.

Cannibal Ferox was released uncut on video in the United Kingdom circa 1982 by Replay, but the film's transgressive imagery and scenes of real animal torture and slaughter resulted in the film promptly being banned under the Obscene Publications Act, finding itself languishing for years on the video nasties list.

(In 1983, Replay issued a cut version, based on informal suggestions from the BBFC, bearing an 'advisory', and consequently without legal standing, '18' certificate.

Early DVD versions, available in the UK were missing around six minutes of footage (chiefly of graphic violence and animal cruelty), which was cut before being given to the BBFC for a rating.

[9] AllMovie called the film "revolting," but "nauseatingly effective," though noting that it is "primarily a showcase for the gory special-effects artistry of Giannetto De Rossi.