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Review (Contains Spoilers)

In 1979 Italian horror and exploitation filmmaker Ruggero Deodato together with his cast and crew journeyed into the Colombian jungle in order to shoot a horror film dealing with the subject of savagery and cannibalism. The resulting film Cannibal Holocaust was released a year later in 1980 and has since become not only a cult classic but also one of the most infamous horror films ever made. In the world of exploitation cinema perhaps only Meir Zarchi’s notorious rape and retribution shocker I Spit On Your Grave is more widely reviled. While jungle set Italian cannibal films were nothing new at the time of the films release the documentary style in which Deodato presented the viewer with unflinching scenes of slaughter, mutilation, dismemberment, rape and ultimately cannibalism caused widespread shock and soon rumours began flying around that Cannibal Holocaust was a genuine snuff film. While these rumours have long ago been laid to rest Cannibal Holocaust remains a truly notorious film. On one hand Deodato’s film has amassed a large and avid cult following principally amongst hardcore horror aficionado’s who champion the film as convincing, challenging and brilliantly made. However, Cannibal Holocaust also remains widely despised by many who slam the film based on its genuine, unsimulated scenes of animal abuse and what they often perceive as moral hypocrisy on Deodato’s part.

A tangled web on condemnation and controversy has surrounded Deodato’s film virtually since the day it was first released. In its native Italy Cannibal Holocaust was first premiered in the city of Milan in February 1980. In the days following its release Cannibal Holocaust proved to be sensation at the Italian box office, however the countries censorship board not to mention the Italian courts were appalled by the films content and also by fanciful reports that Deodato’s film was in actual fact a snuff film with all the onscreen slaughter being completely genuine. Unfortunately calmer heads did not prevail in this instance and within literally days of its release Cannibal Holocaust was banned from exhibition and all prints were seized by the Italian courts. Ruggero Deodato himself was soon arrested and forced to prove in court that his cast were very much alive and had not been killed during the films production. While these preposterous charges were dropped the Italian courts still convicted Deodato on the charged of obscenity (resulting in a four month suspended prison sentence) and Cannibal Holocaust would remain banned in Italy for several years.

Internationally Cannibal Holocaust has also encountered widespread opposition with its explicit and excruciatingly raw scenes of mutilation, cannibalism, rape and perhaps worst of all genuine animal abuse leading to the film being either heavily censored or banned outright all over the globe. Predictably one territory in which Cannibal Holocaust faired particularly badly was here in Britain. During the early eighties Britain was in the midst of a moral panic orchestrated by the tabloid press concerning so called “Video Nasties” – a term coined to describe a wave of horror and exploitation films (some more deserving of the tag than others) which were flooding the then unregulated British video market. Despite the fact that GO Video – the British video distributor of Cannibal Holocaust – played it safe by only releasing a heavily cut version of the film Cannibal Holocaust soon became one of the most infamous Nasties and was promptly adjudged to be obscene and banned outright. Cannibal Holocaust would unwittingly become a source of British tabloid controversy again in 1993 when Trading Standards officers raiding a comic fair in Birmingham seized what was reported in various disreputable British newspapers as being a genuine snuff film. Of course said “snuff film” was in actuality nothing more than an uncut copy of Cannibal Holocaust. Even today in a more relaxed censorship climate Cannibal Holocaust is only legally available here in Britain in a version subjected to heavy cuts totalling several minutes by the British Board of Film Classification. Internationally many countries censor boards have since lifted their ban on the film and Cannibal Holocaust is now widely available in its original uncut form, however it still retains its legendary reputation as one of the most brutal and extreme horror films ever made. Over the years Cannibal Holocaust has also had considerable influence over the work of other filmmakers, perhaps most notably upon the makers of Indie horror sensation The Blair Witch Project (1999) which is similarly based around the piecing together of “found footage” shot by filmmakers who went into the woods and never came back.

The plot of Cannibal Holocaust begins with New York Universities resident Professor of Anthropology Harold Monroe (played by porn legend Robert Kerman) consenting to journey into the perilous Amazon rainforests of South America in order to investigate the disappearance of four American documentary filmmakers. This documentary team comprised of celebrated director Alan Yates (Yorke), his girlfriend Faye Daniels (Ciardi) and their two cameramen Jack Anders (Pirkanen) and Mark Tomaso (Barbareschi) had journeyed into Amazonia in order to film a high profile documentary about the regions native cannibal tribe but have not been heard from in some time leading some to fear that they have met with a sticky end.

Professor Monroe with the assistance of grizzled jungle expert Chaco (Basile) sets out into the jungle in a perilous attempt to locate the missing filmmakers. Monroe soon makes his way to the dwellings of the cannibalistic Yanomamo tribe who initially greet Monroe and his companions with hostility. Soon after Monroe’s worst fears are confirmed when he discovers a grotesque shrine formed from the remains of Alan Yates and the other missing filmmakers. However, after eventually gaining the trust of the essentially peaceable Yanomamo tribespeople Monroe is able to take possession of the dead documentary teams cans of film which he hopes will shed some light on their fate.

Back in New York City money hungry television executives soon enlist the reluctant Professor Monroe to oversee the editing of the footage shot by Alan Yates and his crew which they plan to air as a prime time television special. Upon inspecting the footage Monroe is disgusted to discover a horrifying chronicle of calculating aggression on the behalf of the filmmakers followed by brutal tribal revenge.

Alan Yates and his cohorts turn out be nothing more than ruthless opportunists as their unexpurgated footage reveals them meting out unnecessarily brutal and callous treatment towards the native tribespeople. The filmmakers had intentionally killed wildlife and committed violent acts of atrocity against the natives in a cynical bid to artificially create sensational footage for their “documentary” film. However, as the footage reveals their shocking behaviour comes at a terrible price as it eventually causes the native tribes to revert to savagery and brutally kill and devour the filmmakers, their gut-wrenching demises captured in unflinching detail by their own cameras.

Whereas many supposedly controversial films generally fail to live up to their infamy, Cannibal Holocaust~ is a rare exception in that it often manages to match or even surpass whatever grisly expectations the first time viewer may have. Indeed, even 27 years after its original release Cannibal Holocaust remains one of the most explicitly brutal, sickening and raw films ever released under the banner of exploitation. Unfortunately Deodato’s decision to take Cannibal Holocaust so far beyond the bounds of acceptability has caused most critics to react with appalled repulsion to the film and reject any argument of cinematic merit.

This is something of a shame as in addition to being one of the most vomit inducing films ever made, Cannibal Holocaust also happens to be an excellent and in many ways highly inventive piece of cinema. The relatively simplistic narrative divides the film quite neatly into two acts. The first half sees Professor Monroe trek off into the jungle on a perilous quest to locate the party of lost filmmakers only to discover that they have met a grisly end. Eventually after gaining the trust of the mysteriously hostile native people Monroe is allowed to take possession to the dead filmmakers’ cans of footage and returns to New York. The second act of Cannibal Holocaust sees said footage pieced together revealing the filmmakers inhuman and manipulative actions towards the native people and their gut-wrenching fate when the natives eventually retaliate.

In Deodato’s hands the simplistic narrative is realised in a genuinely compelling manner. Despite the somewhat guerrilla fashion in which Deodato and his crew shot the film on location in the rainforests of Colombia, Cannibal Holocaust boasts excellent productions values. The authentic jungle shooting locations are used to masterful effect as Deodato memorably conveys the sense of the jungle being a land of peril where a moment’s indiscretion or a step in the wrong direction leads to death, thus lending the film a welcome sense of intensity. Cannibal Holocaust also excels on a technical level with Sergio D’Offizi – whose other credits include The Eroticist and the classic Don’t Torture A Duckling (both made in 1972) for the late, great Lucio Fulci - contributing panoramic and often beautiful cinematography. Regular exploitation composer Riz Ortolani is also on hand to provide a sweeping and gentle score which rates amongst his best cinematic compositions. The juxtaposition between the almost relaxing beauty of Ortolani’s score and D’Offizi’s photography makes for a jarring and highly effective juxtaposition with the unabashed ugliness of the events they provide a backdrop to.

However, the real reason that the uninitiated viewer is going to seek out Cannibal Holocaust is not due to its first class score or cinematography. The real reason is of course the notoriety the film enjoys based on its high quotient of gore and brutality. Without meaning to descend into writing hyperbole it must be said that Cannibal Holocaust is easily one of the most raw, brutal and regularly sickening films ever made and is liable to prove something of an endurance test even for those with a more hardy constitution. The first act in which Professor Monroe journeys into the jungle eases the viewer in gently (for want of a better term) and even these early portions of the film make for uneasy viewing as Deodato offers us protracted footage of a brutal tribal adultery rite in which a native tribesman bloodily violates his adulterous wife with a stone dildo before caving her skull in and leaving her for dead. However, it is when the focus switches to the film within a film piecing together the fate of the deceased Alan Yates and his unfortunate documentary team that Cannibal Holocaust really begins its ferocious assault. Deodato assails the viewer with one graphic atrocity after another as Yates and his cronies are revealed to be a thoroughly unscrupulous bunch willing to do whatever it takes in order to return home with the most sensational footage possible. Unflinching brutality soon ensues as the team’s luckless guide Felipe is bitten on the leg by a poisonous snake. The team’s response is to pin poor Felipe down and gorily hack off his bitten leg with a machete resulting in his death. Another disturbing scene follows shortly after as Yates and company finally make their way to the Yacumo village. The team set about terrorising the peaceable Yacumo’s, penning them inside their straw roofed dwelling huts which they then set ablaze. While hapless Yacumo native’s burn to death Yates and his pals callously stand filming the carnage planning to dishonestly pass it off as the aftermath of an attack by a rival tribe. The team’s catalogue of misdeeds then continues with a truly gross scene in which they force a group of natives to perform a primitive abortion ritual. A heavily pregnant woman is bound and helpless as her unborn foetus is torn from her body then buried in the mud. The surrounding natives then proceed to bloodily club the poor woman to death with rocks.

So far so sickening, but the worst is yet to come as Deodato subjects to a final fifteen minutes which makes the gruesome highlights we have already endured up to this point look like mere Childs play. With their sadism seemingly knowing no bounds Yates and his team (with the exception of Faye) jump a young native girl and subject her to a protracted gang rape. A short time later their victim is seen dead and impaled on a wooden spike, the tip of which exits through her mouth. This grotesque sight has over the years become the films enduring iconic image adorning promotional posters and video covers all over the world. Finally the so far pacifistic natives snap and take a swift, fatal revenge upon their white aggressors and it is at this point that the real nastiness begins as the ill-fated filmmakers are summarily killed, dismembered and devoured while their cameras continue rolling. The first victim of the cannibal’s retribution is blonde cameraman Jack who having been struck by a poison dart is dragged off semi-conscious by the tribe who proceed to castrate him then hack his body to an unrecognisable pulp before greedily feasting on his remains. Faye is then captured and in a cruel irony stripped, held down and raped by the vengeful tribespeople who then decapitate her and parade the severed head around as a trophy of their brutal revenge. Finally Alan and his sole surviving colleague Mark having lingered too long are set upon and killed, their fallen camera capturing Alan’s final expression of terror and bewilderment as life ebbs away from him. With this chilling final image the team’s film runs out.

Few who have seen Cannibal Holocaust would dispute that the concluding sequences in which the ruthless filmmakers finally meet with their comeuppance rank amongst the most stomach churning and graphic scenes of butchery ever committed to celluloid. However, it is really not so much the explicitness but more so the manner in which these sequences are filmed which makes them so excruciating to watch. Deodato uses the motif of a film within a film comprised of “found” footage to masterful effect, crafting the scenes of the filmmaker’s antagonism and the native’s brutal revenge so that these sequences genuinely resemble authentic footage from a documentary gone horrifically awry. In his painstaking bid for authenticity Deodato has these scenes shot via a 16mm camera in deliberately unsteady fashion riddled with sudden picture drop outs, unexpected zooms and scratches, damage and imperfections added to the print in post production in order to foster the illusion of authenticity. Over the years other filmmakers have tried to emulate this approach, but none have managed to utilize these techniques to the same potent effect seen here in Cannibal Holocaust. The convincing pseudo-snuff, mock documentary manner in which Deodato presents his catalogue of brutality to the viewer ruthlessly and calculatingly does away with the reassuring notion that the viewer is watching nothing more than a gruesome makeup effect in a fictional horror film and instead offers the viewer a lingering view of something far more raw, brutal and disturbing.

It is worth noting that in reply to Cannibal Holocaust, Deodato’s countryman and rival in the Italian cannibal shocker stakes Umberto Lenzi promptly unleashed Cannibal Ferox (aka – Make Them Die Slowly) (1981) which boasted even more outrageous scenes of mutilation and gore including most memorably the choice spectacle of a young woman being bloodily hung by her breasts via sharpened metal hooks. However, Cannibal Ferox totally lacks the documentary like verisimilitude of Deodato’s film, so while undoubtedly a classic stomach churner in its own right Lenzi’s film totally lacks the gritty impact of Cannibal Holocaust. Of course it goes without saying that the unrepentant and regularly nauseating explicitness of Cannibal Holocaust may prove to be – perhaps understandably – repellent to some sensibilities, however it would be a poor excuse for a critic that would attempt to deny the filmmaking brilliance that lies behind the raw, gritty manner in which the grisly highlights are presented.

However, by far the most repellent and eminently objectionable aspect of Cannibal Holocaust is the deplorable mistreatment and slaughter of helpless live animals. Throughout its running length cannibal Holocaust features numerous scenes of various species being killed. It would seem that Deodato lacking either the budget or the inclination to simulate these moments effectively, as the scenes of animal mutilation, suffering and death are all completely genuine. In an early scene a rodent like creature known as a coatimundi (often misidentified in other reviews of the film as a muskrat) is bloodily slit open with a switchblade, the poor creature shrieking in agony as it is sliced open from the neck downwards. Later in the film a monkey has the top of its skull hacked off with a machete and a small tethered pig is shot at point blank range with a rifle. Other scenes which are not dwelt upon in the same detail involve fleeting footage of a snake and a large spider being hacked to pieces. However, the nadir of this needless cruelty comes in the form of a truly sickening sequence in which Yates and his film crew drag a gigantic turtle out of a river. With the huge beast stranded on land the viewer is treated to the revolting sight of the turtle being decapitated. With the poor creatures limbs still writing around the scene continues on for what feels like an agonising age as the turtle is dismembered, its shell torn away from its body revealing its pulsating mass of innards.

Needless to say these scenes are beyond vile and have – perhaps understandably – contributed to the censorship and legal troubles Cannibal Holocaust has encountered both domestically and internationally with many accusing Deodato of cynically slaughtering live animals in the name of exploitation. The films star Robert Kerman has vocally expressed his disgust for this aspect of the film and even Deodato himself now expresses regret for his decision to involve animals in the film in this way although his sincerity in doing so is dubious at best. Far be it for me to begin defending the blatantly indefensible but it is worth pointing out that Deodato’s film is not the only to feature such scenes of animal abuse. Scenes of animals being artificially goaded into fighting and scenes of animals being killed and dismembered are as any exploitation buff will tell you a regrettable staple of the Italian cannibal subgenre dating back to Umberto Lenzi’s seminal jungle survival yarn Deep River Savages (aka - The Man From Deep River (1972) and are seen in practically every example of this type although not with the same excruciation factor seen in Cannibal Holocaust. As repulsive and deplorable as this aspect of Cannibal Holocaust may be it must be conceded that these scenes do add considerably to the films driving sense of gruelling realism not to mention its infamous reputation as a frequently unwatchable test of viewer endurance. .

Over the years the one aspect of Cannibal Holocaust that seems to provoke the most heated dispute between fans and detractors of the film is the issue of its alleged underlying social commentary. Certainly Deodato does seem to make the moral argument that the real savagery seen in Cannibal Holocaust is that committed by the supposedly articulate and civilised white documentary team led by Alan Yates who brutalise, antagonise and commit atrocities in the name of sensationalism and personal gain. Whereas by contrast the cannibals of the title only revert to what we westerners would regard as savagery in a final act of retaliation against the aggression they have endured almost passively for most of the film. This stance is embodied throughout the film by the character of Professor Monroe played by Robert Kerman who constantly voices his vehement opposition to plans to televise the footage shot by Yates and his cohorts citing its deceased personnel’s methods as journalistically improper, offensive and above all inhuman. The film eventually concludes with Monroe having succeeded in persuading executives to have all of the Yates party footage destroyed walking out into the busy New York City street and musing to himself “I wonder who the real cannibals are?” This final line of dialog in the eyes of some fans of the film adds weight to their claims that Cannibal Holocaust is not an exploitation picture but actually a powerful piece of social commentary. By contrast however, Deodato’s concluding “who are the real cannibals” lament seems to if anything solidify the hatred directed towards the film by its detractors who cite Deodato’s moralising as a hypocritical, mealy mouthed way of feigning condemnation of the kind of material that Cannibal Holocaust readily and knowingly exploits.

Personally I feel it is either elitist posturing or the act of burying ones head in the sand not to concede that Deodato’s motivations for making a film like Cannibal Holocaust are not at least partially exploitative. The animal abuse aspect of the films production alone is really enough in itself to make Cannibal Holocaust as odious from a purely moral standpoint as it is often compelling in a visual, narrative and thematic sense. However, for the viewer capable of accepting the film at face value the overtones of social commentary do add an extra layer of interest. In actual fact the rather tacked on and heavy handed “I wonder who the real cannibals are?” musing that concludes Cannibal Holocaust in addition to leaving Deodato and his film open to the charge of hypocrisy is also quite unnecessary as the same message has already been conveyed quite cleverly and effectively throughout the film. The actions of Alan Yates and his documentary team are genuinely shocking as they brutalise, exploit, maim, rape and kill the seemingly peaceful natives in a cynical bid to make their “documentary” footage as sensational and saleable as possible. They are a thoroughly irredeemable bunch who the viewer is openly invited to detest whereas the cannibalistic natives – sickeningly horrific as their revenge may be – only truly resort to savagery following extreme and protracted provocation. It is also telling that even when their friends and colleagues are being killed, dismembered and eaten the surviving members of the documentary team decline to make any attempt to save them and instead retreat to a hiding place and cynically proceed to film the slaughter. Deodato’s attempt at social commentary whilst diosramingly thought provoking is unfortunately undermined somewhat it must be said by the fact that the performances whilst acceptable are never anything more than functional as is often the case in the world of Italian horror and exploitation cinema. The film also suffers from dialog which is often rather stilted in both its scripting and delivery although this can probably be explained by the fact that Cannibal Holocaust, unusually for an Italian genre film, was shot in English.

One increasingly popular theory concerning Cannibal Holocaust is the widely held assumption that Deodato made the film as a reaction against the practices of Italian Mondo filmmakers. The term Mondo refers to a hefty number of largely dubious cinematic documentary features which came out of Italy during the sixties and seventies. Exploitation was the name of the game as most Mondo films tended to dwell upon footage – sometimes genuine but sometimes actually staged yet presented as genuine – of “primitive” cultures, obscure tribal rites, war atrocity, bizarre sexual practices and most controversially of all death. While the roots of the Mondo subgenre can arguably be traced back to the early talkie era, it was the infamous and much reviled Italian filmmaking duo of Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi who set the ball rolling with their seminal travelogue shockumentary Mondo Cane which proved a unexpected international box office success and paved the way for scores of imitations. The Mondo genre reached a new nadir when Jacopetti and Prosperi returned with their highly controversial Africa Addio (1966), a disingenuously exploitative documentary supposedly intended to document the end of Colonial rule in Africa during the early to mid sixties. With its countless genuine often unwatchable scenes of mass animal slaughter, the aftermath of war atrocities and firing squad execution Africa Addio invoked widespread outrage and the accusation was made that Jacopetti and Prosperi has deliberately organised it for executions to be staged in front of their cameras although these claims were later dismissed in court. Following this Mondo cinema quickly fell into something of a commercial lull only to be reinvigorated in the mid seventies when a number of Italian filmmakers most notably the competing duos of Antonio Climati and Mario Morra and the brothers Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni. By this point the Mondo genre had become more blatantly exploitative than ever as latter day Italian Mondo films became increasingly structured around the ghoulish appeal of seeing grisly footage of atrocity, suffering and death.

Deodato was said to have been outraged by both the shady activities of his Mondo filmmaking countrymen and also by what he viewed as a similar lack of journalistic integrity in sections of the Italian media during the same time period. It is therefore widely hypothesised that Deodato structured Cannibal Holocaust around the premise of a ruthless team of documentary team abusing and mistreating peaceable native Amazonian tribes for the sake of monetary gain as a swipe at both those in the Italian media and the likes of Jacopetti and Prosperi whom he perceived as being guilty of the same behaviour. However, some have contradicted this analysis over the years and claimed that Deodato was actually an admirer of Jacopetti and Prosperi’s work, so there is room for argument as to whether this particular interpretation of Cannibal Holocaust is valid. It certainly seems sound enough on paper but over the years Deodato himself has shed some uncertainty on the matter. For many years Deodato tended to swiftly and angrily dismiss the idea that Cannibal Holocaust was in any way politically motivated stating definitively that his only intention was to make a horror film about cannibalism. However, in more recent years Deodato has seemingly begun to discuss his motivations more freely and now openly states that the film was intended, at least in part, as a swipe at the Italian media. According to Deodato he was greatly angered at the time of by reports on Italian news broadcasts concerning Red Brigade terrorist activity. Deodato felt that these reports lacked journalistic integrity and were deliberately manipulated and structured to focus sensationalistically on the violent detail of the incidents. Later when making Cannibal Holocaust Deodato states that it was this journalistic attitude that he set out to portray. However, if we accept this argument and assume for a minute that Cannibal Holocaust was intended as an attack upon Mondo style filmmaking practises then the fact that Deodato himself intentionally killed and inflicted suffering upon defenceless live animals during production makes his attack at best seriously confused and at worst highly hypocritical.

However, it does appear that Deodato whether he admits it or not was at least influenced stylistically by the shady world of Italian Mondo films, in particular by Antonio Climati and Mario Morra’s infamous Savage Man… Savage Beast (1975). That particular film contains two highly disturbing sequences (both staged but presented an genuine) depicting firstly the death of a European tourist who is messily devoured by a pride of lions in an Angolan national park and secondly the horrifying castration, torture and murder of a native South American Indio tribesman by a gang of leering armed mercenaries. Whilst nothing more than cunning fakes both of these sequences are filmed in an extremely clever manner so that to the unenlightened viewer they resemble shaky, raggedly shot pieces of convincing low quality home video footage. This of course bears great similarity – perhaps too much so to be coincidental – to the same cinematic techniques used by Deodato in his similarly convincing film within a film footage seen in Cannibal Holocaust. Other genre buffs have noted that other scenes in Cannibal Holocaust bare resemblance to scenes from Climati and Morra’s later Mondo film This Violent World (1976).

So in conclusion is Cannibal Holocaust as its many advocates and apologists would claim a gritty, hard-hitting and visceral condemnation of modern society and its values? Or is it merely the sickening, cynical and morally destitute nadir of Italian exploitation cinema that its many detractors are often keen to see it dismissed as? To recycle an old cliché, the truth in the case of Cannibal Holocaust probably really does lie somewhere in-between these two extremes of critical reaction and the heated debate between those who praise and those who choose to condemn Deodato’s film will no doubt rage on indefinitely. Certainly with its brutal and unflinching scenes of genuine animal slaughter which serve as merely an appetiser for almost snuff reel like scenes of rape, dismemberment, torture and ultimately cannibalism, it is a certainty that even some more hardened viewers may not possess a strong enough constitution to sit through Cannibal Holocaust.

However, while Cannibal Holocaust is most assuredly not a film for all tastes I think it fair to say that few who have seen it would question the practically unrivalled queasy realism of Deodato’s film or the fact that it is brilliantly made. Other horror films possess something of a safety screen to them in the sense that no matter how gruesome their scenes of bloodletting and mutilation may be the viewer always has the reassurance in the back of their minds that it is never anything more than an elaborate makeup effect in a fictional film. However, with his masterfully done film within a film footage Deodato succeeds in taking that safety screen away in order to assail the viewer with scenes of unflinching and horrifically convincing butchery and cannibalism. While the tone is unremittingly black and nihilistic it has to said that provided the viewer can stomach the abhorrent treatment of live animals then there is undoubtedly a grim entertainment value to be had as Deodato’s powerful, stomach churning odyssey of brutal atrocity and cannibalistic comeuppance unfolds. Even Deodato’s concluding “who are the real cannibals” moralising whilst rather crudely tacked on and arguably rather hypocritical and pretentious does rather neatly underline the message that Deodato has – intentionally or otherwise – communicated throughout a film in which the horrendous actions of morally bankrupt white filmmakers ultimately outrage the viewer far more than those of the supposedly primitive natives who only resort to savagery following extreme provocation. In the world of exploitation cinema there are other films (albeit not many) which match or perhaps even surpass Cannibal Holocaust purely in terms of gore content, but few if any can rival it in terms of its gruelling, savage intensity or its ability to horrify, shock and appal even after repeated viewings. For the adventurous viewer who wishes to sample the furthest extremes that cinema has to offer Cannibal Holocaust remains truly essential viewing.

Also Try… Jungle Holocaust / Cannibal Ferox / Deep River Savages / Mountain Of The Cannibal God / Eaten Alive! (1980, Umberto Lenzi) / The Naked Prey / The Blair Witch Project / Savage Man… Savage Beast / This Violent World.

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Piczo