The low-budget trappings work to the film’s advantage by giving it another layer of grime.
Since its release in 1980, Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust has become infamous for its depictions of rape, cannibalism, and animal cruelty. For exactly those reasons, I never bothered to watch it. But, like Salò before it, my curiosity got the best of me. I felt that as a horror fan, avoiding a film that’s inspired so much controversy and outrage also meant that I couldn’t really speak to the influence the film has had on other films that have followed it.
When four filmmakers disappear in an area of the Amazon rainforest known as the “Green Inferno”, an American anthropologist, Professor Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman), launches an expedition to find them. With his guide, Chaco (Salvatore Basile), his assistant, Miguel (Lionello Pio Di Savoia), and a Yacumo tribe member who was captured by the local military, the professor enters the jungle to try and find the missing group. Using the tribe member as a negotiation tactic, the team is able to get to a Yacumo village, where they learn that not only were the filmmakers there, they were also rather disrespectful. That kind of disrespect may not have proven fatal when directed towards the relatively peaceful Yacumo but could be deadly if applied to the other two local tribes in the Green Inferno: the warring Shamatari and Yanomamo since both of them are cannibalistic. The professor uses a unique tactic to gain the trust of the Yacumo tribe in an effort to find out what happened to the young filmmakers and the footage they shot along the way.
It is in the second half of the film that the script attempts to make a point about who is more civilized: the “untamed savage” or members of our supposedly more modern society. Through the footage of the four missing filmmakers, we see how humanity can revert to savagery and cruelty regardless of skin color, religion, or education. However, I remain skeptical that Deodato meant Cannibal Holocaust to illustrate that point. I’m sure he was trying to figure out how to justify throwing as much gore, brutality, and literally gut-wrenching footage together into a motion picture he could sell on the back of controversy.
Make no mistake, this is not a film for the weak-of-stomach. With handheld, documentary-style camerawork and editing, Deodato is able to convincingly portray realistic decapitations, beheadings, impalings, and the like. (So much so, that he was actually charged with murdering his cast until he brought the actors, alive and well, before an Italian court.)
Unfortunately, several animals who were brought in front of the camera did not have the benefit of prosthetic stand-ins or tricky editing to save them from a horrific fate. This fact alone has garnered the film its notorious reputation among many people (and rightly so.) I found these particular scenes repugnant and highly unnecessary, especially when the staged scenes involving humans were realistic enough on their own. If Cannibal Holocaust was an otherwise terrible film, I would discount it based on the inclusion of these scenes alone.
But it’s not. It’s rough around the edges, sure. It’s purposely repulsive. The English dialogue dubbing is poorly done in spots. But, as flawed and calculated as it is, it still makes a valid point about the barely concealed barbarism that exists in humanity. It also features an excellent score by Riz Ortolani that adds an almost ethereal feel to some scenes and helps punctuate some of the more disturbing ones. The low-budget trappings work to the film’s advantage by giving it another layer of grime. None of these things makes Cannibal Holocaust a great film but they do add up to make it an influential and essential piece of movie horror history.
And, quite honestly, it’s a film that you will not soon forget.
3.5 out of 5.0 stars
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