Cannibal Holocaust
What do you get when you mix cannibalism, found footage, and animal deaths? You get Cannibal Holocaust. As Professor Monroe said at the end of the movie: “I wonder who the real cannibals are.” This movie pushed the boundaries of what you can film and what you should be allowed to film. It’s a movie I feel like I should take a shower after watching. Despite all of this, it is a movie I own and probably will watch again.
Photo Credit: F.D. Cinematografica
Released: Jun 21, 1985
Runtime: 95 mins
Director: Ruggero Deodato
Writer: Gianfranco Clerici, Giorgio Stegani
Actors: Robert Kerman, Francesca Ciardi, Perry Pirkanen
PLOT
During a rescue mission into the Amazon rain forest, a professor stumbles across lost film shot by a missing documentary crew.
MY THOUGHTS
I attempted to count the kills in the movie, and I gave up. There are so many people. Mostly tribesmen/women, and several people on film from other countries. Of our main crew and the missing camera crew…then we have 5 deaths and 7 animal kills. I can’t pick a favorite death…in this movie all are just horrible deaths (meaning they all died in horrible ways). It feels wrong liking a death even though four of the people were horrible people. I guess the most uncomfortable for myself would be Faye’s rape and death. But for the men reading this I would say Mark's castration is very uncomfortable. The animal deaths were unnecessary. The only good that can be said of it, is that the tribes that were used for filming got the animals for food.
Whoa, on to the acting. It’s an early 80’s movie. Just not Oscar worthy. Robert Kerman plays Professor Monroe, who seems to be the most humane out of everyone. The voice of reason. He goes to the Amazon and is believable in his discomfort with the journey. The irony is that he was a porn star before this movie. He wanted to go legit, but him doing Cannibal Holocaust caused him to not get anymore roles and so he returned to porn.
Perry Pirkanen, who plays Jack Anders, has only one credited role and it’s this movie. He pops up in City of the Living Dead and Cannibal Ferox, but they are uncredited. He has a look, maybe it’s the blonde hair, but you easily recognize him.
The basic plot of Cannibal Holocaust is a professor is hired to go into the Amazon jungle to find out what happened to four documentarians who disappeared. At least half of the movie is him looking for the missing people and his interactions with various Amazonian tribes. Eventually he finds the body of the missing people, but the tribe won’t let them take the bodies. But he does notice the film canisters were still in good working shape. He finally has a breakthrough with the tribe and they give him the film.
The rest of the movie is how a network is making a tribute video about the dead documentarians. The professor is doing interviews and looking over the film that was found. And that’s when he discovers the atrocities that were inflicted on the tribe's people by the team, but also their own gruesome deaths. The network wants to go all out with the tribute video, but they haven’t watched the film. Finally, the professor tells them he won’t have anything to do with it, and the network finally watches it. We basically see the team staging events with the tribe. To include rounding a bunch of the people into a hut and setting it on fire. Another incident is when the guys grab a young tribe gir and raping her. Later they see the same girl has been impaled on a stake (like the image on the cover of the movie) as a form of punishment from the tribe. It’s so messed up.
The tribe gets tired of the treatment and finally punished the team. One by one they are killed off. But these jack asses continue to film each other getting killed! The network changes their mind and calls off the tribute.
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Overall this movie is brutal, gory, and cruel. Obviously the way the tribes are portrayed in the movie is not true. They are portrayed more brutally just for the movie. And the animal deaths are graphic and unnecessary. Having said that, Cannibal Holocaust is ground breaking in how it pushes the boundaries in film making. For me, it’s the first “Found Footage” film made. I know it’s not completely found footage, but enough is in it to count for me.
Add in all the controversy after the movie was released is fascinating. People actually thought this was a snuff film! I think it was smart having a nondisclosure for up to a year after the movie was great publicity. Was it real? Is it fake? This worked with the Blair Witch movie. Add in the publicity that this movie was put on the Video Nasties banned list, and it has become more popular.
In the end, this movie is not for the squeamish, and a lot of people won’t watch because of the animal deaths. But if you do like watching boundary pushing movies, or even just gory movies, then you should watch. I will probably watch this again. I even bought this movie a while ago.
And now for your Forever Final Girl Exclusive…Did you know?:
Ten days after its premiere in Milan, the film was seized by the Italian courts, and director Ruggero Deodato was arrested and charged with obscenity. He was later charged with murdering several actors on camera, and faced life in prison. The cast had signed contracts requiring them to disappear for a year after shooting, to maintain the illusion that they'd died. Deodato contacted Luca Barbareschi and told him to contact the three other actors who played the missing film team. When the actors appeared in court, alive and well, the murder charges were dropped.
The iconic poster image for the film shows a cannibal girl impaled on a stick. In court, Ruggero Deodato explained that the girl sat on a bicycle seat attached to the pole's base, while holding a small pointed piece of balsa wood in her mouth. Fake blood was added afterward. He commented that the girl was unusually calm, and remained very still during filming.
Ruggero Deodato has said he now regrets everything he did, especially the animal deaths. He said once that he was stupid for including animals in the film in the way he did.
Ruggero Deodato intended for the natives to eat fake brains from a fake monkey head. The natives talked him out of it because monkey brains were a delicacy to them.
The animal deaths in the movie were real. The list of dead animals includes a coatimundi, a yellow-spotted river turtle, a snake, a tarantula, a young pig, and 2 squirrel monkeys. The monkey-killing scene was shot twice, so two monkeys were killed for that scene. The dead animals were given to the tribes for food.
Second of Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Trilogy".
The Yanomamo and Shamatari are real-life South American native tribes. Neither is accurately portrayed in the film.
Filmmakers Oliver Stone and Eli Roth are fans of this movie.
This is the only movie that Chelsea Rebecca from the Dead Meat Podcast (2018) has not been able to finish. James A. Janisse also hates this film.
The film has 6 unofficial sequels.
Check out my other reviews here: Forever Final Girl
Let’s get into the rankings:
Kills/Blood/Gore: 5/5
Sex/Nudity: 4/5
Scare factor: 4/5
Enjoyment factor: 3/5
My Rank: 4/5
IMDB: 5.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes: critics: 6.5/10 audience: 6.1/10
Letterboxd: 2.9/5