Video nasties were any aspiring horror fan's wet dream in the early 2000s. That's when I first saw this and several other notorious splatter flicks. Like many others from its era, this one is nothing original. It tries to combine the infectious concepts of a zombie movie with the idea of cannibalism, yet it ends up nothing like either one of these subgenres. What we get instead is some kind of crazed Vietnam vet contagion scenario that's made watchable because it has the great John Saxon, as well as Italian horror staple Giovanni Lombardo Radice.

Back in the war, Saxon saved Giovanni and another POW, but not after they had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive. Cut to the present where Saxon is living in a nice neighborhood with a slight case of PTSD, and his old friend Giovanni comes back to visit. However, Giovanni still has that urge to eat human flesh, and it gets him and everyone else into some trouble with the authorities and a shitty biker gang for good measure.

In typical Italian sleaze fashion, there's also a subplot about a teen girl neighbor who seduces John Saxon for some shock value later on in the movie. Then another doctor guy is trying to get with Saxon's wife, trying to act all platonic until he casually blurts out that she should have married him instead of Saxon, to no reaction from the wife at all. I guess these type of suggestive comments are to be thought nothing of in Italy, but I definitely found it stupid.

The cops are inept and nothing works out for anybody in this movie. It's hardly an apocalypse though, but given enough time, some form of higher scale outbreak could occur. Of all the various alternate titles that this movie has, "Cannibals in the City" is the most appropriate, though it isn't nearly as cool as the more misleading Cannibal Apocalypse.