WhenRuggero Deodatodecided to become a filmmaker, the last thing he would have expected was to be charged with murder. Similarly, the last thing the film industry expected wasCannibal Holocaust. At first, just one of many Italian exploitation movies that were cheap, violent, and sexual, the movie very quickly drew attention in the vein ofAndy Warhol: don’t worry about what they print, just measure it in inches. Unfortunately for him, however,Deodato shortly found himself hauled up in front of an Italian court, accompanied by the actors he was accused of murderingin his film. But, in the way only the underground horror scene can, these same controversies would propel him to cult infamy and attract the kind of serious attention that Deodato was seeking all along. Following thedirector’s death in December 2022, his films continue to find new audiences and remain pillars of the found-footage and horror genres.
Cannibal Holocaust
During a rescue mission into the Amazon rainforest, a professor stumbles across lost film shot by a missing documentary crew.
‘Cannibal Holocaust’ Was Not Ruggero Deodato’s First Cannibal Film
Deodato had been making films since the 1960s, and he always had a trademark style: flashy, grimy pictures with a hardened edge and plenty of sex and violence. He wasone of many Italian directors who facilitated the cannibal boom of the late ‘70sand had already made one such film,The Last Cannibal World, before he got around toCannibalHolocaust. Although released afterward, his othercult classic,House On The Edge of the Park, was made beforeCannibalHolocaustand this movie too explored social complexities, supplemented with lots of gore and nudity. Despite his sensationalist style, he had already proven himself not only a very competent director, but one with depth and ideas worthy of cinematic examination. In themaking-of documentary,In The Jungle: The Making of Cannibal Holocaust, Deodato says the idea for the film came about during a discussion with his son, about how the media depicted the terrorist acts of The Red Brigades. When distributors asked for another “cannibals in the Rainforest” movie, he had a clear direction in mind: he was going to challenge the way people’s views of the world around them are shaped, or even distorted, by the media.
What Is ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ About?
Cannibal Holocaustis the story of a professor journeying to the Amazon to discover what happened to a film crew of missing “brave young Americans,” only to realize that this characterization couldn’t have been further from the truth. From the offset, the movie looks at how the mass media portrays its fellow Americans, the marginalization of those outside the land of the free, and what it means to be civilized. Theyoung filmmakers are immediately positioned by the media as victims of native savagery, and when anthropologist Dr. Monroe is sent to find them, it is only through his embracing of the tribespeople that he comes across the lost film reels that will piece the puzzle together.
Broadcasting executives back in New York are foaming at the mouth at the prospect of a new documentary even more sensational than the crew’s previous works. They know the crew and give a basic introduction: team leader Alan (Gabriel Yorke) is a provocateur with a reputation for misrepresenting and manipulating situations for the sake of a good watch, his girlfriend Faye (Francesca Ciardi) can somehow bear his presence, and his two associates Jack (Perry Pirkanen) and Mark (Luca Giorgio Barbareschi) equal him, in that they are all raging assholes. Thefilmmakers are so focused on sensation and viewing figures, that the sizzle reel they show Monroe includes such antics as the gang forcibly amputating the leg of their guide literal seconds after he suffers a snake bite —they don’t even think twice before dismembering a fellow human. This move sets the tone for what turns out to be the truth about these “brave young Americans."
‘Cannibal Holocaust’ Is One of the First Found-Footage Films
The second half of the movie focuses on the recovered film, and in doing so, innovates a new form of visual narrative that would go on to become a staple of the horror genre:found-footage. The mysterious footage is shown from the perspective of the execs watching it in a screening room, with sporadic narration from Dr. Monroe as if he is presenting it directly to the audience. This is one among many intricacies that help to blur the lines between fiction and reality that had rarely been explored on film before. Thecontroversial real animal deathspush the viewer into an odd gray area of suspended disbelief, heightened by sometruly impressive gore effects. According toIn The Jungle, there was a clever idea to prevent the actors from working for a year following the movie’s release, toencourage the idea that the events of the film were real, and they met some terrible fate.
As a lot of lesser found-footage flicks prove, simply shooting a movie from a first-person perspective does not inherently make for an engrossing or believable watch. Without carefully considered direction, it can turn into a blurry mess that isliterally sickening to viewers. This is where the competence of Deodato and cinematographerSergio D’Offizicomes into play: conventionally-shot scenes are given a subtly voyeuristic look, while the found-footage portion is handled with enough control to maintain clarity and narrative structure, yet still read as spontaneous action. For all the trouble found-footage gets for being a lazy form of filmmaking, in its truest form, it is the cinematic equivalent of that wonderfulDolly Partonquote: “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” Even when working with a small budget, a lot of thought and craft goes into creating something so casual-looking.
What Happens to the Film Crew in ‘Cannibal Holocaust’?
So, what of the filmmakers’ fate inCannibal Holocaust? What unspeakable reality is contained in those reels of celluloid? Well, if they came across as unlikeable in their earlier footage, they are soon proven to be truly awful, and perhaps even evil. In keeping with his reputation for fabrication, Alan has a narrative in mind: he willinflict violence upon a village of tribespeople and frame it as an attack by a neighboring tribe. The crew herd the natives into a grass hut and set it ablaze. They rape the women and kill the animals, and Faye’s only objection is that documenting their violence is a waste of precious film. Supposedly capturing most of this for their own satisfaction, all this unedited footage begins to show the extent of the crew’s sadism, which extends way beyond the desire to make big bucks from sensationalist documentaries. Even when the tables turn, and they are on the receiving end of violence, their only concern is getting the shot.
Food For Thought: 11 of the Best Movies About Cannibalism
Sink your teeth into this.
The final sequence ofCannibal Holocaustis wonderfully directed. It’s the only time in the movie that the camera is truly frantic, darting wherever it can to capture the blur of violence in front of it. This frenetic energy is heightened to an almost maddening point by an increasingly loud, shrill shriek that serves as the only musical accompaniment. Intermittent shots of the execs in the viewing room gauge their slowly disintegrating stoicism in the face of an uncomfortable truth, asthe crew members are brutally tortured and killedby the tribe in retaliation. Almost to the bitter end, their faces say it all: they will justify this in any way they can because of the dollar signs in their eyes. But by the end of it, even the execs relent and order the footage burned. However, in one last show of corporate cynicism, we find out that the projectionist stole and sold the footage instead. The horror show over, Dr. Monroe steps back out into the concrete jungle of New York, pondering who the real cannibals are.
Shooting ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ Was Almost As Gruesome as the Movie Itself
It is to the crew’s credit that such an infamously awful shooting process —whichIn The Junglechronicles on theCannibal Holocaust’s DVD release— turned out such a well-crafted movie. Shooting began in Leticia, Colombia in the summer of 1979 with a rough budget of $100,000, and it was a nightmare from the start. Conditions were damp, humid, and unpredictable, which in the days of celluloid not only meant physical discomfort for the crew but also potential degradation of the sound and footage itself. The actors battled the elements, rolled around in mud, waded through lakes, trekked through forests, and simulated sexual assault and murder, and a good portion of this was done in various stages of undress. They aggressively clashed with the director, whose demands escalated to real animal violence.Language barriers, frayed tempers, and contentious relationships made it a pretty unpleasant experiencefor everyone involved. As a foreign director in the middle of the Colombian rainforest, Deodato dodged many of the formalities that would usually go into filmmaking, allowing the more extreme and questionable sequences to be filmed without legal challenge. That would arrive once he got home.
‘Cannibal Holocaust’ Director Ruggero Deodato Was Accused of Making a Snuff Film
Italian cinema —and European cinema in general— has always been far ahead of British and American media in terms of pushing boundaries and exploring taboos. This is not to say, however, thatCannibal Holocaustsailed past the Italian public as any other mainstream release would. As is the case with many old-school exploitation flicks, first the reels were seized on the grounds of obscenity. But then something crazy happened: those same reels became evidence in criminal proceedings. This wasn’t just a plain old too-devious-for-public-consumption theatrical release; this was asnuff film, and the weirdos who made it were apparently so brazen in their criminality as to throw an official premiere for it!Deodato was brought up on murder charges, and he was forced to bring his actors in for interviewsto prove they were still alive. He then demonstrated how they performed some of the special effects in the film. Eventually, themurder charges were dismissed. Perhaps slightly more in keeping with Italy’s progressive artistic reputation, the courts eventually overturned the movie’s ban several years later. But by this point, Deodato and several of his associates had suffered considerable legal troubles, and countries around the world were banning it, or at the very least censoring it heavily.
However, all of this controversy was happening at the opportune moment, when home video was booming. Video distributors were too quick for governing bodies to keep up with, and soon viewers everywhere were watching the movie, only spurred on by bans and declarations of obscenity. It featured prominently onthe infamous Video Nasties listand ignited moral panic surrounding the underregulated video market and the effects of violence on audiences.Cannibal Holocausthad been given lots of free press, and now audiences had ways in which to check it out for themselves. Over the years, it earned not only a huge cult following, but reevaluation by scholars, critics, and even censors. It also influenced other filmmakers.
‘Cannibal Holocaust’ Influenced Films like ‘Cannibal Ferox’
Cannibal Feroxcame out in 1981, told almost the exact same story, and even borrowed actors fromCannibalHolocaust. This production did not, however, take any inspiration fromCannibalHolocaust’s most notable aspect: the found-footage format. This style would take a while to catch on, but when it did, it exploded.The Blair Witch Project,in 1999, was the first movie of this kind to truly impact mainstream cinema, and it was divisive from the start. Some viewers found the style to be lazy, boring, and not at all scary, while others were too engrossed to look away. Either way, filmmakers had found a new way to produce movies with limited resources, and over the next twenty years,found-footage would cement itself in the annals of horror cinema, with the likes ofEli Roth,Jaume Balagueró, andPaco PlazacitingCannibal Holocaustas inspiration for their work.
Many acontroversial moviehas justified its existence over the years by making a point:Cannibal Holocaustexposes media manipulation,Salòuses disturbing imagery to explore political corruption, andPretty Babysheds light on the realities of early-20th century sex work. Although such films may stumble into the sensational or blatantly off-putting, there is often a message lying just beneath the surface that they want audiences to ponder. For some viewers, the storytelling methods, or the messages themselves, are simply not what they look for in a movie. However, there’s no doubting that it takes a wildly bold filmmaker to dare create such a stir through their work and keep people thinking for decades to come.Cannibal Holocausthas plenty to say about humanity if viewers are open to hearing it —and able to stomach it.
Cannibal Holocaustis available to buy or rent on Prime Video in the U.S.
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