ON THE LIST: Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Quite possibly the most infamous title on the list, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust took filmmaking, exploitation and suspension of disbelief to a whole other level. I sought out a DVD copy at the age of fifteen (what a rebel!) having heard of it on a Top Scary Movies list, and apparently being on some hardcore teenage horror-high at the time, was glad I'd watched the movie, but didn't see it as anything insanely upsetting. In the seven years that have since passed, I have continued to study film, and gone on to write about it a whole bunch. And the launch of my Video Nasty page was the perfect excuse to revisit Cannibal Holocaust. This time around, it affected me in an entirely different way.

Not only was I veritably disturbed by its content, I also found myself pondering its ideas and motives and themes. There's no doubt that Deodato has always been something of a sensationalist in his work, and so I'm sure at least a fraction of his reason for making Cannibal Holocaust was essentially to be gross. But, it addresses other matters, and at least he does gross with utter conviction, and never stops short. He also managed to find himself a cast who evidently had few inhibitions and were suitable for manifesting the material. As a now serious observer of film, I saw this movie in a new light - one which I'm sure echoes, in part, what audiences in 1980 saw too.

Cannibal Holocaust is staged in two acts: Act 1 introduces us to Dr Harold Monroe, a New York anthropologist who leads a rescue mission into the Amazonian rainforest in hopes of finding a young film crew, missing in action. The crew went to film a documentary about an indigenous tribe of cannibals, and never returned. Although their expedition involves gruelling on-screen animal killing for food, Monroe's motives are ultimately peaceful, and when they reach the tribe's camp, he makes peace with the people. He then finds an altar made of human corpses and decorated with film reels. Bingo.

The reels are brought back to NY, where a guy from a broadcasting company wants to make the footage into a documentary. However, Monroe has already examined the films himself, and knows what horrors they contain. He insists on showing the reels, to prove just how unwatchable they are. The footage of the young film crew is Act 2, and is disgusting, reviling and quite brilliant. An absolute shining example of cinematic realism. The oldies are usually the goodies, but I don't think even Blair Witch captured such mind-bending horror from a handheld camera perspective. The continuous use of only two separate perspectives at any given time is a tough trick to keep up realistically, and Deodato pulls it off with utter fluency, to the point where it surely cannot be just a film.

Upon this second viewing, it became utterly apparent to me just why Deodato was formally charged with the murder of his cast members. Act 2 is a parallel universe to Act 1 in terms of behaviour. In his trip, Monroe makes a sign of peace by stripping naked and bathing in the river, which attracts the friendly attention of a group of naked native ladies. He integrates himself into their society, even reluctantly accepting their offering of human meat. He quickly succeeds in his mission by doing so and gets home to New York alive. The filmmaking gang are director Alan Yates, his girlfriend Faye and cameramen Jack and Mark. They all quickly succeed in proving themselves utterly depraved assholes with out of control sadistic tendencies. They start off by herding a tribe into a straw hut and setting it on fire, they then take turns in raping a local woman while Faye stands by and yells about wasting film.

The crew's treatment of the tribes is senseless and utterly cruel, and so one really wonders what they imagined would occur as a result of their behaviour. This is perhaps where the theme of media cruelty hits home the hardest: the crew film all of their shenanigans, with the aim of editing it all to look like warfare between two opposing tribes. One need only glance at any Daily Mail Online article to see not only atrociously below-standard spelling and grammar, but also ridiculous sensationalism created out of deliberate distortion of source material. An actress exits a restaurant with a suitably full belly, and suddenly she's 'fuelling pregnancy rumours'. A musician is  photoed looking 'worryingly thin' despite the warped coffee table and wine glass courtesy of Photoshop. The media is increasingly deceptive in its depictions of everything, and often unethical in its methods. This is clearly a theme constant throughout Cannibal Holocaust.

Act 2, or rather, the film crew it follows, goes wild in its depravity. Firstly, their guide Felipe is bitten by a snake, and in an almost seamless sequence, his leg is hurriedly amputated and cauterised against his will by the crew, and the snake hacked up. The intense mixture of fiction and reality worked into the production of each scene is what makes the lines eerily blur. The amputation, even by today's standards, is entirely convincing effects-wise, and so quickly followed by the obviously real footage of a snake being cut up, there's little in our subconscious to convince us that any of it is faked. The documentary-style shooting only heightens this.

The crew continue to slaughter animals (again, for real) and people for seemingly no other reason than to have fun and assert their dominance. They come strutting into the village with guns over their shoulders like rockstars walking onstage, so full of their own perfection. When a neighbouring tribe launch attack on the crew, they are soon made to look very foolish. It is admittedly good to see comeuppance for these degenerates. Cameraman Jack is impaled with a spear, and ringleader Alan barely hesitates to shoot him dead, so that they can film the tribe ripping him apart. There's team spirit for ya! This is one of those really exceptional sequences that I cannot figure out no matter how much I think. The tribe grab Jack's body, face still partially visible, and cut off his penis. I think I remember reading somewhere a theory that the body of a recently-killed cyclist was used. It doesn't really seem beyond any of them, all things considered. But looking closely at the still (the shot is continuous), that does not look like a prosthetic, especially by 1980 standards:

The now hysterical Faye is captured, gang raped and decapitated, while her loving caring boyfriend Alan looks on, filming the whole thing from behind the trees. The entire cast must have had it rough out in the jungle, but all the dragging around and struggling entirely naked through mud and forest must have been an absolute nightmare on many levels. I bet a long hot bath was in order when they each got back home. Having had their way with Faye, the cannibals see the fellas, advance, and we are given our first ever, in the history of cinema, 'camera lands in front of fallen cameraman' shot...

Back in the reality of NY, the thoroughly disturbed broadcaster people concede and Monroe orders the footage burned. End of movie.

This is definitely, alongside Last House On The Left, the most provocative and well made picture to grace the Video Nasty list. It is probably the nastiest too. In many of the other titles, my pre-imagined versions of infamous scenarios I'd heard of turned out to be far scarier than anything I eventually saw in the actual movies. Cannibal Holocaust is just as grizzly as it promises to be. It is totally there, in your face, inescapably real and brutal. The movie also caused a probably record-breaking plethora of controversy, firstly over the frequent animal cruelty, and secondly over the apparent torture and murder of an entire cast. People were convinced it was a snuff film, and Deodato was facing life imprisonment for the actors' deaths, and was forced to produce them all, alive and well, in court, as well as to reproduce several special effects, such as the infamous Impalement, to prove it had been faked.

The movie remains banned or heavily censored in some countries, and the wide outrage and trauma the movie caused is definitely testament to its effectiveness. And thankfully, the population of intellectuals out there recognised the film's social commentary. Monroe concludes, 'Who are the real cannibals?' All of the cruelty the crew filmed in order to edit into alternative narratives, incriminate them all as sadistic numbskulls with absolute lack of human emotion or empathy. Ironically, they went to the Amazon to document a supposedly cruel tribe of cannibals, who were backwards enough to kill and eat their own kind. But what does it say about three grown men from a civilised country, who laugh and holler while taking turns raping a girl, all whilst rolling around in the mud like animals? The very act plays out animalistically.

Monroe's initial visit to the forest demonstrated that peace is rewarded with peace. The crew's nihilistic cruelty was met with nihilistic cruelty. Cannibal Holocaust really examines the cycle of cruelty as human nature dictates it. Are the tribespeople the real enemies, or the real barbarians? It could be argued that the scariest thing about the movie is what the Everyman is capable of inflicting upon the innocent, and it is a bold move to cast the typical native antagonist in an anti-hero light.

Can I condone the animal cruelty? No, I just cannot. I spent all my teenage years as a strict vegetarian who once threw up after accidentally ingesting a gelatine-containing product, and I abhor animal cruelty in any form. That said, I do not spend my days and nights planning the hijacking of animal testing labs either. I have to say that every scene of animal killing in Cannibal Holocaust turned my stomach and unsettled me greatly. What especially struck me was how long the animals took to die. I don't know if this was recognised and used as some kind of metaphor, but it upset me greatly. Far more so than any scenario played out on humans. Probably because of the element of innocence in an animal, and perhaps that is another point to linger on. What we are to recognise is the senseless suffering of an innocent at the hands of a barbarian, and how (whether with animals or humans) once violence is initiated, it becomes a brutal cycle.

Cannibal Holocaust is a brilliant, pioneering and overwhelmingly effective film. Deodato cemented himself as a horror maker with real balls, and launched a horror subgenre that is now a well and truly flogged dead horse. His will always be the reigning supreme.