(AKA Cannibal Massaker, Holocausto Cannibal, Nackt und Zerfeischt.)
Tag Line : The mother of all cannibal films.
Please Note! You will NOT find the uncut version of this film at your local video shop if you live in the UK (like me).
Having
given Cannibal Ferox such a hearty slagging off in my earlier
review, I decided it only appropriate to do the same with this
equally bad stomache churner. However, after I started to watch
this movie I found myself actually enjoying it to a large extent.
The film starts off with a report, that a documentry film team has dissapeared in the Columbian jungle whilst filming a feature entitled "The Green Inferno" about the last surviving tribes that still practice cannibalism.
Proffessor Monroe, a respected anthropologist from New York university (played by cannibal movie veteran Robert Kerman), is sent to go and find them and so with the help of some of the local Army guys, he manages to put together a search and rescue team.
After venturing deep into the jungle and witnessing first hand the brutal savagery these natives are capable of, they eventually discover the crews last known whereabouts, but only find their dead bodies. They do however, manage to recover their film cans and camera from a nearby tribal village.
Having flown back to New York, he delivers the film to the TV station, who wish to use their documentry footage in a special program showing how they died for their career and ask proffesor Monroe to present the program and conduct the interviews.
Initially he agree's, but after viewing the filmed footage, refuses and demands that the TV cheifs see for themselves what the crew had filmed and how they died. We then find that they brought about their own demise by pissing off the natives, as we are treated to pictures of them shooting, harrasing and raping the otherwise peaceful tribal people, before burning down their village which they would say was done during an attack by a rival tribe.
The cannibals subsequently gang up on them and despite shooting many of them during the attack, they are eventually overrun and 2 of the 4 man team are captured. But rather than trying to rescue them, or seizing the oportunity to escape, they decide instead to follow them back and film their partners being beaten and hacked up. A foolish thing to do, as they then get captured and killed themselves, just as the camera cuts out.
The TV cheifs then decide not go ahead with the documentry and order the footage burned. The whole film plays as a sort of pseudo documentry and even has captions at the begining and end of the movie (and in the promotional trailers) suggesting that the footage recovered in the jungle during the movie was actually genuine (it isn't).
Cannibal Holocaust has been hailed as the greatest of all canibal films. Whilst I did find it rather enjoyable, there is far to much GENUINE animal killing for my liking. This includes a live muskrat being split open, a monkey having its head whacked off, and a turtle being beheaded and butchered in close up to name just a few scene's.
| Overall Marks : | 5/10 for the UK version. (Good points, no animal killing,. Bad points, cuts out some of the violence). |
| 2/10 for the uncut version (I would give this film a much higher mark, but the animal killing is just not on). |
Other information. Alternate tag lines, "Eaten alive, the ultimate terror movie". "The most grueling film ever made". "In 1979, four documentry film makers dissapeared in the jungles of South America whilst shooting a film about cannibalism. Months later, their footage was found". "The most grueling film ever made". The film is actually in the top 10 of highest grossing films of all time in Japan. The convincing scene that shows a native woman impaled on a long pole was acheived by having a short pole with a bicycle saddle on it that she sat on, whist holding a seperate short balsa wood pole in her mouth. Thereby giving the effect that the pole was running through her. The film has suffered repeated outragous claims of being a snuff movie (which it isn't, unless you count the animal killings) even as recently as a 1993 when a copy was seized from a stand at a Birmingham comic fair. The authorities beleived that the scene where the blond haired guy gets hacked up was genuine and that he had been drugged and the natives paid to do the buisness on him. However, if they had bothered to check, they would have found he was actually very much alive and well and had even gone onto star in Cannibal Ferox. One scene that was genuine is a sequence that shows us the last documentry the crew had supposedly shot entitled "The Road to Hell", about a coup in one of the African states. In actuality, this was authentic news footage and features disturbing scenes of public execution, military firing squads and dead bodies lying around the place. The inclusion of this does call into question wether or not the film showing the crews demise was also real (which it wasn't). Film Maker Ruggero Deodato apparently had to appear in court over the films content to prove that certain scenes were just special effects and not genuine. He was aquitted, but due to the scene's showing the animal killings, the film was banned in its native Italy for several years, although it was eventually re-released. Deodato's first cannibal movie was entitled "Ultimo Mondo Cannibal" (AKA "Cannibal") and used the same cast of Umberto Lenzi's earlier picture Deep River Savages. There has been much speculation over the years about the existence of a supposedly filmed missing sequence known as the "piranha bait scene", showing a native being strapped to a log then lowered into a piranha invested river. Whilst a rather blurry production photo of the crew attempting to set the scene up does exist, attempts to film the sequence were apparently abandoned after the director couldn't get the effects to work properly. Even today though, debate STILL rages over the scene's existence and fans continually hear rumours about the scene turning up in obscure foreign copies, even though in actuality the scene was NEVER completed. Lets face it, if it did exist wouldn't someone have found a copy with it in by now? Cannibal Holocaust was released on video in the UK prior to the Video Recordings Act on the "Go Video" label. This version apparently had about seven minutes of the more graphic footage cut out by the distributer, but the film still found its way onto the Department of Public Prosecutions "Video Nasties List" and the distributers were succesfully prosecuted for obscenity. The uncut version was submitted to the BBFC for a UK release in 2001 and was passed with over 5 minutes of cuts, this removed all the animal violence, and "three scenes of sexual violence" (which scenes these are is not yet known). The uncut version is available on Japanese laserdisc, which is described as uncut but optically censored. Also available fully uncut in Europe, in Denmark by "Vipco", and in Holland on the "Cult Epics" label. Also available uncut throughtout Europe on by video by "Cosa Nostra", and on DVD by E.C. Entertainment. A US video and DVD release is also forthcoming on the Grindhouse label. I couldn't help but notice certain similarities in plot points between this movie and the surprise horror hit of 1999 "Blair Witch Project", in that a small crew of film makers go missing in the wilderness and subsequent search parties find no survivors, but recover their film footage which tells the tale of how they dissapeared. Coincidence do you think? |
Extra Info. | |
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A sticky end (so to speak). | |
| Video Clips. Requires RealPlayer. Theatrical trailer. Uncut version. (1.7MB) German theatrical trailer. Uncut version. (1.27MB) |
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The Cannibals enoy a "hearty" meal. | |
| Buy Online.
Buy the video at Blackstar. Buy the DVD at Blackstar.
Buy the book about the making of Cannibal Holocaust at Amazon.co.uk. Notes on affilated sites. |
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Other Cannibal films.
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This Cannibal Holocaust midi was created by Mark Zinn.
