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The 1970’s were full of larger-than-life human mon­sters: Charles Manson, Jim Jones, the Zodiac Killer, etc. Their exploits seemed too sleazy to be true and tan­ta­lized pub­lic curios­ity, thus inspir­ing exploita­tion film moguls to pump out grotty lit­tle exposes based on their evil deeds (Manson alone inspired an entire sub­genre). Idi Amin Dada was one of the very worst – espe­cially when you con­sider the geno­ci­dal reach of his crimes– and, though it was late in the game, he finally received his own exploita­tion mini-epic in 1982 with Amin: The Rise And Fall.

The film plays like a Cliff’s Notes ver­sion of Ugandan his­tory, as if rewrit­ten as an atrocity-minded mondo movie. Amin (Joseph Olita) takes over Uganda in a mil­i­tary coup and imme­di­ately begins indulging every demented whim he can dream up. He has dis­si­dents and sus­pected trai­tors mur­dered by fir­ing squad, tries to strong-arm other coun­tries into sup­ply­ing him with weapons or money and even bans all Asian peo­ples from the coun­try. Since Amin: The Rise And Fall is an exploita­tion flick, we also get tabloid-worthy moments like Amin eat­ing pieces of his ene­mies, Amin bring­ing schoolkids into a morgue to see a dis­mem­bered corpse, a freezer filled with sev­ered heads and Amin seduc­ing (some­times forcibly) every woman in arm’s reach.

If you want to find fault with Amin: The Rise And Fall in terms of “respectable” film­mak­ing, it’s easy to do: Wade Huie’s script is merely a string of vignettes of Amin com­mit­ting the same basic crimes again and again. The focus on Amin’s reign of ter­ror is so intense that it bar­rels right over niceties like char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and sub­plots.  Director Sharad Patel lacks the visual flair or dark sense of humor film­mak­ers like Jacopetti and Prosperi might have brought to this sort of film. There’s also an abrupt non-ending, although this is sadly as much a reflec­tion of his­tory as it is the script’s problems.

That said, the mak­ers of Amin: The Rise And Fall was exactly gun­ning for an Oscar — and the fin­ished prod­uct offers plenty of trashy fun for patient sleaze­hounds. Amin: The Rise And Fall is never at a loss for mor­bid spec­ta­cle — in fact, there’s a killing or beat­ing lit­er­ally every five min­utes. The act­ing is amus­ingly awful across the board — this is a bless­ing in dis­guise because the movie’s cat­a­log of hor­rors would be tough to endure if the act­ing was con­vinc­ing. As Amin, Joseph Olita is inca­pable of deliv­er­ing a decent line read­ing but is so bom­bas­ti­cally into his role that his bad­ness has a per­verse charm to it (“Nobody mess with me! Big daddy!”).  Also, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Olita disco-dancing with some of his concubines.

It helps that the film has a nice level of tech­ni­cal pol­ish for a quickie.  Though Sharad Patel’s direc­tion never rises above per­func­tory qual­ity, he main­tains a break­neck pace and crams in an aston­ish­ing amount of pro­duc­tion value (parades, huge war scenes, plenty of sol­dier extras) for this kind of exploita­tion flick.  The pho­tog­ra­phy was done by Harvey Harrison, who also shot the slasher favorite The Burning, and his work gives the film a slick, pro­fes­sional sheen that you wouldn’t expect.  Bonus points for the amus­ingly overem­phatic score by Christopher Gunning – the orches­tral bom­bast fits in nicely with the film’s “beat you over the head” aesthetic.

In short, Amin: The Rise And Fall is a grindhouse-styled his­tory epic that deserves its noto­ri­ety.  If you want the real ver­sion of the story, check out Barbet Schroeder’s mem­o­rable doc­u­men­tary General Idi Amin Dada but for shock value and jaw-droppingly crass exploita­tion of one of history’s most shame­ful moments, this film is hard to beat.  If you really want to over­dose on tabloid trash, pair it with Guyana: Cult Of The Damned for an unfor­get­table sleaze-history dou­ble feature.