Cannibal Holocaust

Cannibal Holocaust
Movie poster for Cannibal Holocaust
Directed by	Ruggero Deodato
Written by	Gianfranco Clerici Giorgio Stegani
Produced by	Franco Di Nunzio Franco Palaggi
Starring	Robert Kerman Francesca Ciardi Perry Pirkanen
Cinematography	Sergio D'Offizi
Edited by	Vincenzo Tomassi
Music by	Riz Ortolani
Distributed by	Transcontinental (USA)
Release dates	February 7, 1980
Running time	95 min.
Languages	English Spanish
Budget	$100,000 (estimated)

For the Brutal Juice song, see Cannibal Holocaust (single).

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is a controversial exploitation film which was banned in Australia (where the ban has since been lifted), the United Kingdom and Italy, due to its depiction of graphic rape, torture, and the killings of real animals. It was conceived by Gianfranco Clerici and Giorgio Stegani, and made under the direction of Ruggero Deodato with a budget of around 100,000 USD. It is probably the best-known and most financially successful of the exploitation subgenre of Italian cannibal films.

Taglines:

• The one that goes all the way!
• You won't believe that what you're seeing could have happened!
• The most controversial movie ever made

The film contains two timelines; the "real" timeline shows Harold Monroe's trip into the jungle to determine the fate of the young American explorers, and his later subsequent reviewing of the recovered films. Much of the film is the depiction of the "recovered" film's contents, which grow increasingly disturbing as they are revealed. The films depict female and male nudity, rape, and human and animal killing.

Controversy

The biggest controversy upon its release was the belief that this was an actual snuff film, which is a testament to the realism and brutality of the film. Director Ruggero Deodato and one of the film's producers were arrested and the film seized a week after the premiere. The courts in Milan believed Deodato actually had the actors in the film murdered for the camera, and they also believed that the iconic "impalement scene" was indeed genuine. To make matters worse for Deodato, it was in the stars' contracts that they must not be in any film or media for a year after the release. Eventually, he got the actors together and proved that it was indeed all fake special effects (the realism of the gore can be attributed to that all organs in the film were real pig organs). Claims of this being a snuff film have cropped up as recently as 1993 in a Birmingham comic fair, where the authorities seized the film, believing that the blonde actor Perry Pirkanen was drugged and the natives were allowed to mutilate him as necessary.

Other than the graphic violence and extreme gore, much of the film's original controversy surrounded the gratuitous killing of animals for the sake of portraying that killing on film. These scenes include:

• The killing and flaying of a large, screaming coatimundi (often mistaken as a muskrat) by an actor.
• A large turtle (1.5m long) is captured in the water and dragged to shore, where it is then decapitated and its limbs and shell removed. The actors proceed to cook and eat the turtle.
• A large spider is killed with a machete.
• The killing of a snake with a machete.
• A small monkey is captured by a native actor portraying a tribesman, who cuts the monkey's face off with a machete while it is struggling and then eats the brains.
• A pig is kicked and then killed with a rifle when shot in the head by an actor.

Many condemn this as animal cruelty for the purpose of mere sensationalism, and it has even been called "animal torture." In Italy, a law which prohibited cruelty to guinea pigs resulted in the outright banning of the film there until 1984. The film was made during a time when it was growing unpopular for filmmakers to stage such animal death scenes, and the use of such scenes were intended to attract controversy. All the animals killed in the movie (except the snake and spider) were later eaten by either the crew or the natives.

The sexual violence in the film is also extremely high. There are three extremely brutal rape scenes, and one shorter scene by a riverbank. These mysogynistic displays include a woman raped with a sharp stone and a spiked filled mudball (as an adultery punishment), the gang rape of a native girl by the males in the film crew (the same girl they later impaled), and the brutal gang rape of the female film maker by the natives in vengeance for the rape and murder of the young girl.

Cannibal Holocaust was originally banned in the UK as a video nasty, and remained banned until 2001, when the BBFC passed the film with an 18 rating certificate after being heavily cut. The cuts include the removal of all animal violence present (except the spider and the snake), the significant reduction of the adultery punishment and rape of the native girl, and the complete removal of the rape of the female member of the film crew and the short rape by the riverbank. The death of the female film maker is also missing any nudity. It is still banned uncut in the UK, and unverified claims are often made that it is banned in dozens of other countries as well.

Alternate Versions

With such extensive controversy, there are many different versions of Cannibal Holocaust in circulation, ranging from being uncut, slightly cut, and heavily cut. Most "uncut" releases are actually missing around five to ten seconds of film material from the "Last Road to Hell" segment of the film, which includes real documentary execution footage. These few seconds are missing as a result of the original film negatives being damaged during the film to DVD transfer.

In the present day, it is estimated that there are only four legitimate uncut releases of Cannibal Holocaust, including the missing footage of the "Last Road to Hell" sequence as a supplement. These releases are:

• The 25th Anniversary Collector's edition (Limited Edition out of 11,111 copies. US release by Grindhouse Releasing).
• The Grindhouse Releasing Deluxe edition (Non-limited US release by Grindhouse Releasing)
• The Deluxe Collector's edition (Australian release by Siren Visual Entertainment)
• The Ultrabit version (Dutch release by EC Entertainment)

It's also worth noting that the Australian release is an identical copy of the US release, but is instead called the "Deluxe Collector's Edition".

Another common release is the 25th Anniversary Edition released in the UK by VIPCO (Video Instant Picture Company), which is heavily cut (by almost six minutes, for sexual violence and animal cruelty) and runs at a PAL format running time of 86 minutes.

Cast

• Robert Kerman as Professor Harold Monroe
• Francesca Ciardi as Faye Daniels
• Perry Pirkanen as Jack Anders
• Luca Barbareschi as Mark Tommaso
• Salvatore Basile as Chaco Losojos
• Ricardo Fuentes as Felipe Ocanya
• Carl Gabriel Yorke as Alan Yates
• Paolo Paoloni as Executive

Plot

When a group of young American documentary film makers fails to return on time from a particularly gruesome area of the Amazon Rainforest called the "Green Inferno", a world-renowned anthropologist Harold Monroe is sent in search of them. The explorers are Alan Yates, the director, his girlfriend and script girl, Faye Daniels, and two cameramen, Jack Anders and Mark Tomasso.

Monroe begins the rescue expedition with the help of two knowledgeable South American guidesmen, and is shocked and disgusted by the savagery and cruelty shown by the natives. The first tribe they encounter, the Yacumo, are extremely wary of the group, because the last whites to visit them (the film makers) seemed to have caused much unrest amongst the tribe. Monroe bargains for the natives' trust, and the Yacumo lead them to the edge of their territory, farther into the jungle, where the documentarians were headed. There they encounter the two warring tribes, the Shamitari and the Yanomamos, who are also the two vicious cannibal tribes both groups were searching for. Monroe and his group gain the acceptance of the Yanomamo after saving a group of them from the Shamitari. It is during their stay with the Yanomamos that Monroe learns that the documentary group had been slaughtered and eaten by the tribe. Frustrated by the tribe's violence, Monroe finally confronts them, and is able to trade the group's film footage possessed by the Yanomamo for a tape recorder.

Back in New York, the Pan American broadcast station plans to show the recovered documentary. The "recovered films" depict the events of the explorers into the Amazon Jungle, in which they make contact with and film the three tribes, the Yacumo, the Yanomamo, and the Shamatari. Upon reviewing the reels, Monroe is shocked to find that the real savages in the Amazon was the group of film makers. The foursome inflicted systematic malicious terror on the forest, including the rounding up of natives into a hut and then setting it ablaze (which may be a commentary on the burning of villages in Vietnam). The television station still insists on airing the footage, infuriating Monroe that they would try to pass the footage as a documentary. Finally, he decides to show the executives the raw, unedited footage, in hopes of bringing them to their senses and not show the material.

The film reels proceed thus: after their guide is killed by a poisonous snake, the adventurers grow more cruel, and when they encounter the Yacumo, they immediately try to murder the entire tribe by forcing them to stay in a burning hut and then film it, not only to show the power of "the strong over the weak," but also to set up the scene as the Yacumo being massacred by another tribe, the Yanomamos. They also film unstaged barbarity, including a pregnant woman being tied up and the fetus forcibly removed. They then move on to find the other tribes, and when the men find a young Yanomamo girl, they proceed to viciously gang rape her. After which, they discover her impaled on a wooden pole, perhaps a rejection and punishment by her tribe after the humiliation of the rape at the hands of filmmakers.

The adventurers are then attacked and soon each is killed in turn. Two of their deaths are captured on film: Jack is impaled with a javelin, hacked apart with axes and cooked. Faye is then carried off and gang raped by native males, who are interrupted by native females who kill and behead her. The last images from the footage show the two remaining men, Mark and Alan, being discovered in their hiding place and mutilated and castrated in view of the camera. The last images of the footage show the camera falling to the ground with Alan's head landing in front of the lens, his horrified face staring blankly.

The film ends with the executives ordering the footage to be burned, with a successful Monroe leaving the station. Template:Endspoiler

Interpretations

The most common interpretation is to display the barbarity of modern civilization, and what hate and discrimination can cause us, the "civilized" people, to do; that we as humans can be as barbarous as who or what we may consider "savage" (from savages we came, so savages we are). It also symbolizes that people in civilized society often sustain themselves at the expense of our fellow man (represented as cannibalism in the movie). This is all summarized at the end of the film with Harold Monroe's narrative commentary, "I wonder who the real cannibals are." On a similar note, it displays what vicious and shocking acts we can find as entertaining (the crew's intent was to make the most shocking documentary imaginable, and that would also make it more successful). The irony is the fan base this shocking and graphic film has amassed.

With this in mind, it is also commonly believed that director Ruggero Deodato's intent was to also, in a way, insult the directors and creators of the notorious Mondo cinema, which were documentaries similar to what the crew in the movie was making. These documentaries mainly featured grostesque animal killings, shocking rituals, and human mutilation. Deodato used this in his film, and also made the makers of the documentaries seem evil and malicious (i.e., the documentary crew in the movie was direct symbolism for Mondo documentary makers in real life). Deodato's supposed tactic to expose the Mondo cinema is often held in contempt, as he had to repeat the actions he was criticizing in order to defame the genre.

The film was made shortly after the Vietnam war and the Cambodian genocide, and might be a social commentary on those events. While the cruelty and brutality of real life warfare is usually kept unseen, the film shows inhuman cruelty in disturbing and shocking detail. Though it initially appears to portray a simple struggle of good versus evil between "Whites" and evil "cannibals," it sufficiently blurs the line between which is in fact good and which is evil.

Supposedly, the documentary crew had previously filmed a similar movie in either Vietnam and/or Cambodia (The continuity is unclear). As the professor is watching the documentary footage of the film crew setting fire to the hut full of tribespeople, a member of the crew at one point exclaims "Just like Cambodia!" This could be referring to the way that the crew was known to manipulate footage, or it could be a reference to the Khmer Rouge genocide, or possibly both.

More specifically, director Ruggero Deodato came up with the idea for the film after witnessing his son watching news programs concerning the terrorism of the Red Brigades. Deodato noticed that the media would focus on depicting the violent acts with disregard to journalistic integrity, so he attempted to expose this by setting the example used in the film. This form of exploitatious journalism cannot only still be seen today, but also in reality television as well. Utilizing the "cinema verite" he learnt from his mentor, Roberto Rossellini, Deodato created Cannibal Holocaust incorporating a hyperrealistic filming method.

Film connections

• The footage in the film which comprises the Last Road to Hell segment which the filmmakers are said to have made before embarking on The Green Inferno is actually genuine footage of executions performed in a Third World country in the 1960s, and has been featured in several mondo documentaries.
• Cannibal Holocaust is believed to have been one of the main inspirations for The Blair Witch Project, because of the similarity in their stories - a group of filmmakers set out to document the strange goings-on in a wood and are never seen again, save for the footage from the camera which they refused to turn off.
• Several unofficial sequels have also been released:

-Cannibal Holocaust II, or The Green Inferno as it is alternatively known, was made in 1988 and was directed by infamous mondo film director Antonio Climati. The film contained no animal cruelty.

-Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story, made in 1985, is also known as Cannibal Holocaust 2: The Catherine Miles Story.

-Two films by director Bruno Mattei are Cannibal Holocaust sequels in Japan. Made in 2003, Mondo Cannibale is released in Japan as Cannibal Holocaust 2: The Beginning.

-Mattei's other film, Land of Death (also from 2003), is released in Japan as Cannibal Holocaust 3: Cannibal vs. Commando.

Trivia

• Entertainment Weekly voted this the 20th most controversial film of all-time. [1]
• One of the top ten highest grossing films of all time in Japan, acquiring approximately ¥7,000,000,000 in the first year of its release.[2]
• Cost only around 100,000 USD to make, but is believed to have a box-office gross of over 200,000,000 USD worldwide since its original release.[3]
• Filmed in the actual Amazon Rainforest.
• Deodato wanted a scene in which the natives fed an enemy tribesman to piranhas but he did not have a working underwater camera. Only still shots of that scene exist. Many claims of the scene being found in obscure releases have surfaced over the years, but the truth is the scene was never completely shot and finished.[4]
• According to a 2005 interview with Gabriel Yorke (Alan Yates), Yorke said that when rehearsing for the sex scene with Francesca Ciardi (Faye Daniels), she suggested that the two go out in the middle of the jungle and "actually do it". Yorke declined, stating that he was with somebody back in New York. As a result, Ciardi was very upset with him during the entire shoot.
• When Gabriel Yorke (Alan Yates) arrived in the Amazon for shooting, he was not given a script or an idea of what the movie was about. As soon as he arrived, director Ruggero Deodato shouted "That's my star! Get him into makeup!" Almost immediately, the first scene they shot was the amputation of one of the character's legs. Yorke later in the interview said while staying there in the jungle, he did not know whether this film was a Hollywood production or simply a snuff film.
• Immediately after a pig was shot and killed in the movie, Carl Gabriel Yorke botched a long monologue Deodato very much wanted to be included in the movie. After rehearsing the line several times and doing fine, Yorke says he screwed up during filming because he heard the pig squeal and die. Retakes were not possible because they had no access to any more pigs, which they would only use to shoot and kill.
• Originally, Deodato had a fake monkey head with fake brains in it to have the natives eat instead of actually killing and eating a monkey. The natives talked him out of it, however, as monkey brains were a delicacy to them.
• The pistol used by Robert Kerman in the movie was a Smith and Wesson .32.

External links

• Cannibal Holocaust at IMDb
• Official site (Warning: Contains nudity & violence)
• Lloyd Kaufman's review of Cannibal Holocaust