Movies - Cannibal Holocaust

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	Movies - Cannibal Holocaust

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is a controversial exploitation film that was banned in a number of countries due to its gory content. 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.

:Tagline: Those who filmed it were devoured alive by cannibals!

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.

While the story moves steadily toward an inevitable battle between "good Whites" and "evil Cannibals," it develops into a social commentary, about the nature of human cruelty. The plot purposely interlays different kinds of footage depicting animal slaughter, genuine mass execution documentary, and staged cinematic gore, as a means of blurring notions of "good" and "evil".

Like Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the story can be interpreted as a cautionary tale about the lengths that one will go to for promised fame and fortune, or as a much larger commentary on the violence and barbarism inflicted by technologically-advanced societies on less technologically-advanced ones.

Controversy

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 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 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 large spider is killed with a machete.
The killing of a snake with a machete.
A pig is 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, an obscure law which prohibited cruelty to guinea pigs resulted in the outright banning of the film there until 1983. The film was made during a time when it was growing unpopular and illegal for filmmakers to stage such animal death scenes, and the use of such scenes were intended to attract controversy.

Cast

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

Plot

When a group of young American adventurers 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, Faye Daniels, and two cameramen, Jack Anders and Mark Tomasso.

After a difficult journey with the help of two knowledgeable South American guidesmen, Harold expectedly finds that certain cannibals have killed and eaten the adventurers. Monroe and his guides show respect with the dangerous tribes and bargain successfully for the film canisters. He returns to New York with their footage, and reviews them, and later he debates with officials if they want to show the film to the public.

The "recovered films" depict the events of the explorers into the Amazon Jungle, to make contact with and film the warring tribes, which are identified in the film as the Yacumo, the Yanomamo, and the Shamatari, the latter two being cannibalistic. Upon reviewing the reels, Harold finds that the foursome inflicted systematic malicious terror on the forest, including rounding up natives into a hut and then setting it ablaze (which may be a commentary on the burning of villages in Vietnam.)

After their guide is killed by a poisonous snake, the adventurers grow more cruel, and after harassing a tribe of natives with their guns they proclaim that they represent the power of "the strong over the weak." The men later rape a native virgin girl, whom the natives then kill and impale, because she was now "unpure". 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 the camera falling to the ground with Alan's head landing in front to the camera. Both of them are presumably killed at this point.

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