Thursday, April 28, 2011

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Director: Ruggero Deodato. Cast: Robert Kerman, Francesca Ciardi, Perry Pirkanen. 95 min. Unrated. Italy. Horror.

One of the most famous Grindhouse gorefest classics of all time. Before The Blair Witch Project, an American professor went deep into the Amazon jungle to find traces of four youngsters who vanished there two months prior ... and instead finds the films they took before getting devoured by cannibals. By today's standards, the (real) animal brutality depicted here is much more repulsive than the (clearly staged) human brutality - especially the turtle killing scene. The "I wonder who the real cannibals are" message would be considered quite cliche nowadays, even if it was implied here first.

(PS: Death-Face, if you haven't seen this already, you may get a kick out of it - although it's categorized as one of UK's banned "Video Nasties".)

Mo says:

7 comments:

  1. Deathface is now a friendlier Toast-boy =D

    I have managed to avoid this film because of the real animal cruelty which sickens me. I like my gore to be fake! The "banned" list only gave these movies cult status and a thriving industry of video pirates thrived. Now of course they are all available to steal for free via bit-torrents.

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  2. Hello friendlier Toast-boy!

    If that's the case, then stay away. The animal cruelty shown is sick and sadistic.

    In the meantime, check out the story behind the movie, and the interesting legal problems it ran into:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibal_Holocaust

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  3. I read it and I am astounded that it now has a UK certificate with only 1 cut! I am generally against censorship and the banning of movies but in this case I will make an exception!

    I know a few guys who think it was, "Quite a good film...". I don't even want to see the cut version. Give me good old fake blood and rubbery effects any day!

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  4. You can say that again. I usually find the fake gore quite funny! I don't know if you've seen the fake trailers in Tarantino's "Grindhouse", but they were absolutely hilarious.

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  5. I did see those fake trailers and agree they were brilliant. More movies like that should be made, by people who know what they are doing of course. Having said that there is always room for another Edward Wood!

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  6. That's exactly what I love about Tarantino: he finds old stuff, and gives them a very nice post-modern look. Almost all his movies are revivals of old concepts.

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  7. I don't love everything of his that I've seen but generally Tarantino makes great movies!

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