by Shannon L. Grisso
Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust is one of those rare films that manages to live up to its reputation. What is surprising, though, is that it not only lives up to its good reputation as a grueling, intense horror film, but also down to its reputation as an indefensible and misanthropic movie.
The Italian cannibal cycle began in 1972 with Umberto Lenzi’s Man from Deep River and only lasted until the end of the decade, when titles such as Lenzi’s Eaten Alive, Mondo Canibale, and The Devil Hunter glutted the market in 1980.
The one cannibal film which still manages to generate the most controversy and debate, even among the hardcore blood and guts crowd, is Ruggero Deodato’s amazing Cannibal Holocaust. Much like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Pink Flamingos, or even Caligula, it’s one of those films you just have to see, if only to figure out what all the fuss is about.
The story is very simple: an anthropology professor (played by porn regular Robert Kerman) undertakes an expedition to the Amazon jungle in search of a missing film crew. That film crew had ventured into the jungle to produce a documentary on two warring cannibal tribes and, after meeting with one of the tribes, the professor discovers a bunch of exposed film in film cans adorning the skeletons of the missing film crew. Once back in the States, the professor is shown the film that was shot by the crew and learns of their awful (if fully deserved) fate.
The first half of the film is a little slow, and may even lull the first-time viewer into thinking that maybe this movie doesn’t deserve its controversy. Once we get to the “found footage,” though, we are presented with some truly astounding, disturbing, grisly and stunning imagery. What makes this footage even more shocking, however, are two tricks employed by the director that manage to plant the idea in the back of the viewer’s mind that what he is seeing might be “real.”
First, at about the midway point (but before we are shown any of the “found footage”), we are shown a clip from a previous film made by the documentary crew. Titled The Long Road to Hell, it is little more than footage of men, women, and children being shot and killed. This footage, culled from numerous Mondo films, is absolutely authentic and disturbing.
Then we have the most controversial aspect of Cannibal Holocaust — its animal violence. We see a muskrat get the top of its head sliced off, a turtle gutted and hacked to pieces, a snake chopped up, and a tethered pig kicked and shotgunned. In light of today’s politically correct environment, these images seem so far removed from anything we can relate to that they go beyond shocking and almost immediately numb the viewer. When taken together with the use of real death footage in the Long Road segment, that thought is placed snugly in the back of your mind: “if all of this is real, I wonder if anything else is…?”
Real or not, the violence in the second half of Cannibal Holocaust achieves astounding levels, culminating in a brutal rape and concurrent murder that surely cannot have been intended for entertainment purposes. In fact, that is the key to this film: instead of being a fun, carnival ride kind of horror film with escalating gross-out set pieces, this is not “fun” — it’s intended only to sledgehammer and brutalize the viewer. The repeated, blunt, “real” (or faked, but seemingly real) violent moments combine to produce a film that will linger in the memory long after it has been viewed.
Is it a metaphor for and condemnation of the media’s exploitation of violence for violence’s sake, or is it merely an example of violence for violence’s sake? In reality, it is both and successful in each.
This is also one of those films with so many rumors and legends around it that it is nearly impossible to know which are true and which are mere folklore. While there are many sensationalistic claims that the film was banned in over fifty different countries, it is true that it was seized and banned in the country of its origin (Italy) barely a week after it was released. The film remained banned there for nearly three years and Deodato faced charges of violating a law prohibiting the killing of animals for purposes of entertainment. Supposedly, Deodato had the actors playing the documentary crew agree to drop out of sight for a full year, so they could more fully suggest that their deaths were genuine; this tactic backfired when the same Italian courts demanded he produce them to ensure they were not actually killed on screen. Interestingly, one of the actors comments on the film’s IMDB page that when he showed up in the jungle he was a bit uncertain as to whether or not he’d wandered into the making of an actual snuff movie.
Perhaps the best way to prove that Cannibal Holocaust is one of those lightning rod, controversial films is to point out my own personal dealings with it. Since seeing it nearly fifteen years ago, on a bootlegged VHS from a Japanese laserdisc, I have been fascinated with the film, both for its own merits and for the effect it has on myself and others. The soundtrack (reissued in a beautiful digi-pak from Season of Mist) is beautiful and tragic, and is in fact on my iPod right now (I like to fall asleep to it).
It’s also one of the most viewed films in my collection. Whenever I invite someone over to watch a couple of movies, I let them go through my DVD collection and choose whatever they would like to watch, and — no lie — the single most requested title in my personal library is Cannibal Holocaust (the second, oddly enough, is Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park).
This really bothers my wife, a confirmed animal lover who absolutely detests the fact that I own the movie in the first place. It’s also one of a very select few movies that I have to watch either when she is in another room, asleep, or out of the house altogether (and heaven forbid if she enters the room and I do not promptly turn it off until she leaves again).
Two more amusing anecdotes come from my experiences in my job at a video store (yes, there are a few of those left out there). I knew of the Grindhouse Releasing DVD months in advance, and had a copy on special order. It arrived on a day when I was not at work and a customer, spotting it on the shelf, offered the video manager a little extra money if he would sell him my copy out from under me. Thankfully, he refused. Years later I overheard a bunch of teenagers discussing the horror movies we offered for rent. One of the group noticed Cannibal Holocaust, and another kid excitedly gushed about what a horrible and offensive film it was. He described the animal violence in detail, told the others to never watch it, then said he might rent it himself just so he could scratch it up and prevent anyone else from ever renting it again. At that point I advised him it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for him to do that, and we had a friendly debate about the film. (By the way, he did not in fact ruin the movie — we still have it at my store for rental.)
But probably my favorite anecdote concerns when I showed it to my brother. Although interested in extreme cinema, he is not nearly as jaded a filmgoer as I. One night, after a few drinks, he decided he’d heard enough about Cannibal Holocaust and decided he’d take a chance on it. He was pretty disturbed by it all, and we discussed it for a little while before calling it a night. The next day while I was at work, he decided to watch it again to see if it really was as disturbing as he’d thought, or if it was just the combination of the movie and the alcohol. This time around, watching it stone cold sober, he was unable to make it all the way to the end.
And that pretty much says it all. Cannibal Holocaust is hard to describe, difficult to recommend, and impossible to defend. Love it or hate it, it’s just one of those legendary movies you simply have to see for yourself.
You have been warned…