Directed at an attractively leisurely pace (with lots of time out for beautiful photographic vistas of rocky islets and coves along Mexico's South Pacific coast, while the soundtrack band plays appropriately atmospheric melodies), this unhurried Chanoc adventure owes more to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe than to the celebrated Mora-Fernandez comic strip. Indeed, robbed of all its fascinating subsidiary characters, the inventively adventuresome strip is reduced to a rather empty charade in which all attention is now focused on a rather morosely resigned, suffering-in-silence hero and his obnoxiously boastful, relentlessly self-centered, but thoroughly incompetent sidekick. Only Chucho Chucho, the Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired chimpanzee, and some of the other animals like the wounded leopard and the little monkey forced to swim for her life from a ravaging crocodile, still register with both emotion and credibility.
Although I found more than adequate compensation for both script and performance shortcomings in the lush location scenery (superbly photography by Alfredo Uribe, one of Mexico's finest color cameramen), I'm afraid genre fans are going to be somewhat disappointed. True, there are a couple of fine action sequences when Chanoc does finally battle with the cannibals, but in this entry there are certainly none of the horror or supernatural elements that often figure in the comic strip (despite the hint of same in the movie's actual title).
Although I found more than adequate compensation for both script and performance shortcomings in the lush location scenery (superbly photography by Alfredo Uribe, one of Mexico's finest color cameramen), I'm afraid genre fans are going to be somewhat disappointed. True, there are a couple of fine action sequences when Chanoc does finally battle with the cannibals, but in this entry there are certainly none of the horror or supernatural elements that often figure in the comic strip (despite the hint of same in the movie's actual title).
