Cannibal Holocaust [3 Discs] [Blu-ray/CD]

Director: Ruggero Deodato

Overview

While Umberto Lenzi began the Italian-made cycle of brutal Amazonian cannibal horrors with Il Paese del Sesso Selvaggio and effectively ended it with the nauseating Cannibal Ferox, it was Ruggero Deodato who directed the subgenre's most enduring film. This popular bloodbath features a fetus ripped from a woman's body, people impaled on spikes, a genuine tortoise-flaying, and numerous other indignities, both real and simulated. The plot concerns the efforts of a group of American explorers to discover the fate of a missing documentary film crew. They receive a scratchy film-reel containing the bloody truth from a tribe of tree-dwelling natives, and the reel's contents make up the bulk of the film. Advertisements claimed that "the crew who filmed it were actually devoured alive by cannibals," yet most of them were spotted alive in future unsavory gore films. While the film is undoubtedly gruesome enough to satisfy fans, its mixture of nauseating mondo animal slaughter, repulsive sexual violence, and pie-faced attempts at socially conscious moralizing make it rather distasteful morally as well. The fact that the film's sole spokesperson for the anti-exploitation perspective is played by porno star Richard Bolla should give an indication of where its sympathies lie.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/01/2014
UPC:	0797679001123
Original Release:	1979
Rating:	NR
Language:	English
Time:	1:36:00
Sales rank:	12,750

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Robert Kerman	Harold Monroe
Francesca Ciardi	Faye Daniels
Perry Pirkanen	Jack Anders
Luca Barbareschi	Mark Tomaso
Salvatore Basile	Chaco Losojos
Paolo Paoloni	Chief NY Executive
Riz Ortolani	Composer

Technical Credits

Gianfranco Clerici

Franco di Nunzio	Producer
Franco Palaggi	Producer
Gianfranco Clerici	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Everything you've heard about Ruggero Deodato's nauseating Grindhouse classic is true; and while it's hard to defend the director for some of the truly repugnant visuals with which he has chosen to convey his message, there is indeed an underlying point to the film, if one is able to look beyond the sometimes unwatchable images that assault the viewer. At one point in the film, a character makes a comment about Western media junkies living to have their senses raped, and in an age where television viewers bear witness on a weekly basis to such acts as game show contestants eating horses' eyeballs to win cash, this sentiment couldn't ring more true. It seems that some of these images shouldn't be as effective as they are over 20 years after the film's initial release, though the animal cruelty, combined with the other unspeakable atrocities that the protagonists commit, ultimately results in a film that does indeed rape the senses of the viewer in a nearly (some might argue entirely) unwatchable manner. While livestock farming and mass consumption has successfully taken the dirty work out of life as a carnivore for most people, many never see the faces of the animals they so readily consume without a second thought. The idea of death and mutilation is so far removed that it's easy to eat meat for one's entire life and never have to witness firsthand the slaughter of the animals one consumes. The actual onscreen killing of animals in this film is almost unforgivable upon initial reaction, though they were (with a few exceptions) consumed in true hunter-gatherer tradition. However, the treatment of the natives by the so-called "documentarians" who set out to expose their "primitive" lifestyles is unforgivable (even though conveyed by use of special effects); it is truly the most horrifying aspect of this film when one stops to consider the results of colonialism and the manner in which many modern societies have arrived at their current states. By the end of the film, the violent (literally and aesthetically) images leave viewers with an unshakable sickness that they won't soon forget. Composer Riz Ortolani's score effectively moves from a familiar, somewhat pensive melody into harsh tones that make viewers actually feel the violence they bear witness to onscreen. This is not a film that is watched, it is a film that is endured, and audiences that have any doubts about their ability to do so are best advised to follow their instincts.