was not expecting this

I expected a lot of bad taste to come out of “Cannibal Holocaust”, which is probably why I waited so long to see it. But what I was not expecting was for the more thoughtful film I got. Yeah, this movie goes far into the realm of exploitation and sensationalism but like the best movies that do, it knows how to be provocative and it’s invigorating in just how far it’s willing to go in order to do so.


Known as the grandfather of the found footage movie, the film courts controversy for what it depicts and over the decades that controversy has only served to bring more people to it. Complete with grotesque, brutal, over the top violence, gratuitous blood and nudity, and rape scenes that would make Gaspar Noe do a spit take, Ruggero Deodato’s film isn’t winning style points but he knows what gets people talking.


The film follows a professor named Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman), who begins an expedition into the Amazon jungle in order to figure out what happened to a documentary film crew of young people whose subject was primitive cannibals. The director Alan Yates (Gabriel Yorke), his script girl Faye Daniels (Francesca Ciardi), and two camera men (Perry Pirkanen, Luca Giorgio Barbareschi) disappeared, and are feared dead.


Using guides, Monroe encounters leeches, intense heat, several of the jungle’s tribes. The Yacumo and Yamamomo, whose cuisine consists of muskrat and who have a harsher view of adultery than a catholic. This is where we see the first of many sexual assaults, a horrifically brutal display all based in ritual, though it appears a way for the man to save face and not be humiliated in front of the other men of his tribe. Sound familiar?


Monroe eventually will recover the film footage from the four filmmakers and bring it back to New York where TV people are eagerly hoping to air it. Scholar that he is, Monroe wants to review the footage first and here is where the film changes focus, and seemingly becomes a deeper movie, right before our eyes as we review the found footage along with him.


It becomes clear that Yates, Daniels and the rest were prone to embellishment, in fact they court it at every turn. Where it was easy to condemn the actions of the tribe in the first part of the film, we also have to take stock of our own horrific nature- especially in regard to exploiting suffering and violence for our own entertainment. The birth of the internet, youtube, and tiktok has only made getting “great footage” all the more prevalent and in that, our own ritual has become one of self-interest. Of attaining the best document that will catch the attention of the masses and lead to accolades and notoriety. This is our way of life and is it really so different from the dog eat dog nature of the more primitive culture?


As we see the film crew continue to keep the cameras rolling as people suffer and die, as they contribute widespread terror to villages in order to get a better shot, as they continually see these people and the animals around them as less than, I was reminded of our own history in Vietnam and other places, where it becomes so easy to lose humanity and be cruel.


The movie of course goes very far at times, and regarding animals, toward the realm of the inexcusable. Over the years the film has come under fire for its depictions of pigs being shot, spiders and snakes being killed, and perhaps cruelest of all- a turtle being dragged out of the water, beheaded, and basically gutted. “Cannibal Holocaust” makes you proud Hollywood films at least have protections in place for situations such as this and makes you wish the filmmakers had used animatronics instead.


Still, there is much to ponder here about the evil of man- a scene where a woman is crucified worse than Jesus just reinforces what a sad history man has towards anything he perceives below his level. The somber musical score by Riz Ortolani is also very surprising- not there to up the suspense as much as to give the film a greater sense of tragedy.


In the end this movie may be playing me like a fiddle- fake outrage in order to really just sell a bunch of depraved, violent, horrifically abusive schtick. But it worked on me. It’s horror that works as horror but also as a criticism- one that only seems to be more needed as we’ve turned more and more to our cameras rather than our humanity.