Dr. Chris Carpenter aims to assemble a team of grad students to search for lost idol artifacts from one of the last, and deadliest, known South American native tribes who were thought to be exterminated by a military force. Despite her severe objections, her ex-husband and anthropologist, Dr. Josh Carpenter, is hired by the university department head to lead the expedition to the infamous Palace Hotel, a proclaimed millionaire’s playground overtook by the jungle after the natives beheaded guests and staffed. Unequipped and ill-prepared, the team journey to the most remote parts of South America, winging the entire trip with their haphazard ambitions, and seek means of transportation any way possible even if that means flying in a cramped plane with an alcoholic pilot. Upon their arrival at the Palace Hotel, hotel manager Madam Trudea and her odd bellhop Obie welcome them to the incredulously pristine resort grounds where one-by-one the team ends up dead with their heads chopped clean off and shrunken to fulfill an vengeful oath of retribution.

twenty-seven years. twenty-seven long years since director James Bryan’s film “Jungle Trap” saw the light of viewership day. “The Executioner, Part II” and “Don’t Go Into the Woods” director interlaced his cult filmography with also notable adult features that starred recognizable talent with Ron Jeremy, Peter North, Kitten Natividad, and Kristara Barrington helmed under a pair of monikers Emil Hightower and Morris Deal that Bryan used to separate his classes of work. Unfortunately, Bryan’s colorful career came to a complete and sudden halt right before the decade turn into the 1990’s until Bleeding Skull! Video unearthed haunted hotel in the deep jungle film “Jungle Trap.” Filmed in 1990, Bryan and his co-writer/female lead, Renee Harmon, use the latest and greatest technology of the time, tape. “Jungle Trap’s” shot-on-video, aka VHS, appeal is an exuberance of maddening creativity only bested by the “Troll 2” style bad acting.

Co-writer Renee Harmon stars as Dr. Chris Carpenter, marking the sixth collaboration between Harmon and Bryan along with “Run Coyote Run,” “Hell Riders,” “The Executioner, Part II,” “Lady Street Fighter, and “Boogievision.” Harmon’s relationship to her character, Chris Carpenter, mimics that of Eva Gabor if she had somehow wound up in the thick Jungle instead of that farm on Green Acres. “Night of Terror’s” Frank Neuhaus had more appropriately succumb to the distressed anthropological victim accustomed with this horror and Neuhaus opposite of Harmon, performance wise, is night and day making their former relationship hard to fathom. If there’s one character that was genuinely creepy in “Jungle Trap,” Jan Vanderberg’s bell hopping Obie wins the prize. THe elderly Vanderberg has spry movements, wide-wild eyes, and a sinister smile that mingles around in the grey area of friend or foe. The remaining cast, including Heidi Ahn, Tim de Haas, Valerie Smith, Rhonda Collier, Glen Serebian, Bill Luce, and Bette Bena, share the same remarkably and overly dramatic bad performances that make “Jungle Trap” hard to skip.

I’m sure the picture is starting to materialize. “Jungle Trap” is nowhere near a good movie. However, vast improvements to render the “Jungle Trap” enjoyable, as well as to scrape by finishing the Bryan project, was courteously contributed by Bleeding Skull! Video’s kickstarter initiative. The company has a history of gathering unreleased film’s loose ends, tying them together, and creating a fetching film; in this case, “Jungle Trap” didn’t have a score, wasn’t edited, and was shelved for decades. Now, “Jungle Trap” isn’t a mystery in the public eye, has a semicoherent storyline with an edited in arbitrary opening, and, thanks to the synth-heavy Euro-trashy sounds of Taken by Savages, a gloriously catchy soundtrack has been laid down. The entire package puts more girth and more value into Bryan’s shamefully quaint horror.

Bleeding Skull! Video presents “Jungle Trap” on DVD, VHS, and VOD for the first time! Since provided with a streaming copy, critiquing the audio and video won’t be solid, but the shot-on-video image keeps the obsolete VHS quality attributes with tracking lines galore, blurry-soft quality, and a slew of inconsistent coloring that works under the maestros of Joey Ziemba and Annie Choi, high ranking members of Bleeding Skull! Video, synthesizing a score under the Taken by Savages moniker! There were no extras with the streaming screener, but the 72 minutes feature includes with the VHS and DVD a fold-out poster, making-of documentary, and Bleeding Skull! Video trailers. “Jungle Trap” is a mondo masterpiece, a terrific terrible, with a heart of gold (skull) and a kickass soundtrack from a colorfully careered director who now has this blast from a past as his legacy film.