46 Years Later, An Infamously Controversial Thriller Is Getting A Huge Upgrade
It would be the understatement of the century to say that Cannibal Holocaust is notorious. The 1980 horror film from Italian director Ruggero Deodato is synonymous with cinematic infamy. Check out any list of the most disturbing movies ever made, and you'll find it, and for good reason.
The mockumentary shows the fallout from an American film crew's journey into the unexplored depths of the Amazon jungle and their search for a lost cannibal tribe. Unsatisfied with what they find, they decide to stage more dramatic events for the camera, which ends poorly for all involved. It's meant to shock, but it was also intended as a satire of a highly specific trend in Italian cinema. In the end, Cannibal Holocaust's own controversies overshadowed its target.
How Was Cannibal Holocaust Received Upon Release?
With a title that graphic, it’s no wonder that the film itself is unflinching in its brutalities. The physical violence is detailed, including one stomach-churning amputation scene involving a machete, as is the sexual violence. It also contains real animal slaughter, which brought the actors to tears. All of this was par for the course for the exploitation cinema of the era. Known in Italy as Mondo film, this subgenre of schlock was defined by fake documentary framings and sensationalist topics. Movies like Mondo Cane and Faces of Death purported to feature real footage of disturbing and controversial topics, usually sex and death-related. They would frequently include narrators or “experts” who showed a cavalcade of gore and exploitation and claim it was educational or academic.
Mondo Cane, which helped to kickstart the entire genre, pretended to be a travelogue mostly as an excuse to show fake versions of "exotic" cultures. The goal was shock value, and an easy way to elicit that from white Eurocentric audiences was through racist bastardisations of indigenous tribes and their customs. This largely involved nudity, fake violence, a lot of animal abuse, and an obsession with cannibalism. Indeed, Italian horror cinema of the '70s and '80s was weirdly dominated by cannibal movies, with lurid titles such as Eaten Alive!, We're Going to Eat You, and Papaya, Love Goddess of the Cannibals.
Ruggero Deodato was a pioneer in this genre, directing Ultimo mondo cannibale in 1977. Inspired by his gore contemporaries and the politics of the era, he decided to lampoon the mondo trend of presenting fake as real. With $100,000 and a small crew, he flew out to the Amazon and made his parody: Cannibal Holocaust.
The film opens with Harold Monroe, an anthropologist at NYU, agreeing to lead a rescue mission for the missing filmmakers. They discover the mess the crew left behind, and the recovered footage reveals the fallout from their fakery. They deliberately antagonized locals and burned down huts to stage a massacre, sexually assaulted a young girl (who was then executed), and killed a child's pet pig. In retaliation, one of the cannibal tribes decimated them. In the end, Harold and his team decide to destroy the footage, left repulsed by the American crew's actions.
To this day, Cannibal Holocaust is one of the most banned and censored films on the planet. Mere days after its Italian premiere, the film was confiscated by authorities and Deodato had to bring several cast members to court with him to prove he hadn't murdered anyone on-camera. It's a nauseating film about cinematic hypocrisy that ends up giving into the worst excesses of the genre it claims to be critiquing. There comes a point where commentary on the fetishistic violence of cinema just becomes a proud example of it, and Cannibal Holocaust is proof of that.
Is Cannibal Holocaust Worth Watching Now?
Cannibal Holocaust is clear in its disdain for the Americans and their callous exploitation of an indigenous community in the name of ratings. It’s calling out the ways in which this genre indulged in fakery of the most ghoulish manner possible and then told the audience it was all real, allowing them a pseudo-intellectual pass for their shameless gawking. Offering ignorant viewers validation of their racist fears makes for great ratings... and controversial horror cinema.
But the problem with making an exploitation film about the hypocrisies and bigotries of the genre is that you often just end up replicating the negative qualities you’re calling out. Cannibal Holocaust is still very sexist, racist, and manipulative, with its repeated use of sexual violence being needlessly graphic. The animal deaths are truly unforgivable, with at least seven, including a turtle, pig, and boa constrictor, killed specifically for the film. Moreover, the treatment of the indigenous Amazon tribes is just as offensive and inaccurate as those of the films it’s meant to be critiquing. The Ya̧nomamö and the Shamatari tribes do have a history of ritual endocannibalism, meaning they consume the bones of their deceased friends and family as a mortuary practice. They aren’t the savage, amoral monsters the film shows them to be, even if the joke is meant to be on the white people meddling with their lives.
What New Features Does The Cannibal Holocaust UHD Release Include?
A six-disc special edition of Cannibal Holocaust will be released by Grindhouse Releasing. Its special features include:
- Super-deluxe 6-disc ultimate edition – 1 UHD, 4 Blu-rays + CD
- A new 4k restoration from the original 35mm and 16mm camera negatives, plus three different versions of the movie: the original uncensored theatrical edition, a new special edition, and a never-before-released "PG-rated" cut.
- 2 feature-length commentary tracks--one with director Ruggero Deodato and star Robert Kerman, and another with stars Carl Yorke and Francesca Ciardi.
- "Searching for Cannibal Holocaust", a new feature-length documentary from Calum Waddell.
- "In the Jungle: The Making of Cannibal Holocaust", directed by Michele De Angelis.
- In-depth interviews with director Ruggero Deodato, director of photography Sergio D’Offizi, production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng, camera operator Roberto Forges Davanzati, composer Riz Ortolani, assistant director/co-star Salvatore Basile, stars Robert Kerman, Carl Yorke, Francesca Ciardi and Luca Barbareschi.
- 100-page book by Eurohorror experts Martin Beine and Jesper Mørch.
- A soundtrack album by Riz Ortolani, remastered and expanded with ten additional tracks, including three never-before-released cues.
