Directed by: Ruggero Deodato
Starring: Robert Kerman, Francesa Ciardi, Perry Pirkanen, Carl Gabriel Yorke, Luca Barbareschi
Plot: A New York anthropologist named Professor Harold Monroe travels to the wild, inhospitable jungles of South America to find out what happened to a documentary film crew that disappeared two months before while filming a documentary about primitive cannibal tribes deep in the rain forest. With the help of two local guides, Professor Monroe encounters two tribes, the Yacumo and the Yanomamo. While under the hospitality of the latter tribe, he finds the remains of the crew and several reels of their undeveloped film. Upon returning to New York City, Professor Monroe views the film in detail, featuring the director Alan Yates, his girlfriend Faye Daniels, and cameramen Jack Anders and Mark Tomaso. After a few days of traveling, the film details how the crew staged all the footage for their documentary by terrorizing and torturing the natives. Despite Monroe's objections, the television studio Pan American still wishes to air the footage as a legitimate documentary. In order to change their minds, Monroe shows the station's executives the film's final reels, so they could see first hand how the crew's fate came to be.
The traumatic scene you just watch almost makes you not realize that that guy standing over him is cupping his balls.The film starts with a sky view of the amazon with lots of scenic trees and soft cheery 70s music that seem to be telling us that we're about to experience the joys of painting with Bob Ross. We are then taken to a news reel about 4 documentary makers who went into the rain forest and never came back out.
Professor Harold Monroe enters the jungle to find the four people, what he turns up with are bones. After bartering with the village chief with a tape recorder and being invited to "dinner" (recall the title of this movie) he gets the footage and goes back to edit it. What he finds is horrifying and disgusting chronicling the film crew's blatant and savage treatment of the people.
I often have this argument with people, most people would say that a horror movie is a movie with monsters, serial killers, aliens, all sorts of fantastical things that are usually even when shot in a realistic tone confined to fantasy. But I maintain that films like Dirty Harry, Death Wish, the new Rambo movie, that's horror, that shows the real sick twisted side of human beings, the true monsters.
I can sit through Hostel unblinking, I laughed through Wolf Creek and all the Saws, they didn't phase me a bit but to this day the scene of Paul Kearsey's wife and daughter being raped in Death Wish weighs heavy on my mind, when I think of real fright I think of the scene in Dirty Harry when the killer kidnaps a schoolbus full of children at gunpoint and you can clearly see he would kill them. Cannibal Holocaust IS pure unadulterated horror in its most distilled form.
He seems traumatized, but he's really just the village William Shatner.The big stand-out is Carl Yorke who plays Alan Yates, a famous documentarian who stages violent scenes just for better ratings. Carl is a truly sick fuck in every meaning of the word, he actually ends up shooting one of the crew later in the movie just so he can get footage of the natives butchering and eating his corpse.
There are 2 parts to "Cannibal Holocaust", the first being the Professor traveling into the jungle to find the film crew, the second of him reviewing their footage, all of which is shown in the first person camera view known now as "Blair Witch" style or "Coverfield" style or what have you.
The first act depicts some atrocious acts. The punishment of an adulterous wife involving rape and being bludgeoned to death, the horrific death of a real coatimundi (referred to as a muskrat in the film) I have killed and butchered animals before but it was hard for me to watch as it was held and cut from sternum to groin and then had a knife impaled through its head, the screeching was terrible this is the only real animal killing in the film (there are 6) that I felt was going too far.
In just the first act we witness rape, bludgeoning, a native's face more or less exploding when shot with a shotgun (it is obscured by grass but you get the general idea), and of course cannibalism. It truly was the feel-good comedy of the year.
I would also like to address the now infamous animal torture scenes. There are five other on screen deaths beyond the aforementioned "muskrat" scene, I didn't find any particularly offensive, unnecessary but not offensive. The turtle scene is one that's often brought up and is given quite a bit of attention in the film, sorrowful music that lets you know you're seeing something terrible take place plays here which I found odd as I think I would have saved that for say... the rape of the native girl or the 3rd world abortion scene or any one of the human mutilation scenes, but hey, clearly the turtle is the real victim here.
True enough it was a real turtle, but it was also obviously butchered by someone who knew what they were doing and it was clear the animal was not made to suffer and was also actually used for food, the same goes for a monkey that is killed later, the tribesmen in the film were actual natives and insisted on a real monkey as monkey brains are to them a delicacy. One was a pig which was shot in the head at point blank range with a shotgun, this pig was however dead almost instantly and was eaten by the actual natives. The other two were a spider and a snake, both killed instantly albeit unnecessarily, but still hardly the "animal torture" everyone asserts.
Mmm, turtle heads and porn staches, this picture is so full of win.Before we're shown any documentary footage, there is footage shot of interviews with the four film crew members' families where most talk about how their family members were wonderful, all of this seems to have a deeper impact when you find out what actually happened.
I only feel comfortable giving bits and pieces of this as the film is very much a traumatic experience. I usually only see special effects in movies, but I didn't see many in this movie, most of it appeared to be genuine which is probably the reason why this film has been seized multiple times under claims that it is a snuff film.
But one of the more choice things that the sick fucks on the film crew do are to take a young native girl and film while all 3 male members of the crew take turns raping her, the same girl is seen later in the film impaled on a pole as she was rendered impure by the natives due to her rape, this image has become iconic and is found just about anywhere this movie is mentioned. When the crew sees it they are happy, jumping up and down and even laughing at their fortune of having found this scene, then the cameraman says "Okay lets film" and they all become somber and act disgusted at the sight.
Some interesting use of music is employed at several points throughout the film but one of note is when the film crew herds all of the members of the tribe into one hut and set it alight, not allowing any of them to leave. The music kicks in with the same folksy happy music heard in the opening credits, the stark contrast between the horrific images you are watching and the peaceful music you are hearing is easily twice as horrifying as watching it with scary music.
The score is well implemented and the music trick is used more times with even more terrible events in the movie, also after the hut burning it flashes quickly to the director of the documentry and the female member having sex. This flash from horrific to beautiful serves to make the act of sex almost grotesque in nature, you feel dirty and vile for watching it after what has just happened. It was a brilliant transition and was done perfectly to make matters seem all that more horrible that this man can kill several people and then go make love to someone without batting an eye.
Taken from the 10 minutes of the movie where Faye actually stops being a prick and acts like a human being.
"Cannibal Holocaust's" deeper message revolves on two things. The first being a question of just how civil human beings really are, in this movie it makes unsure on just who the savages really are as we see the same tribes in the beginning as relatively peaceful if somewhat confrontational wheras in the footage they are savage killers, but then again so are the film crew.
The second message is that the media is hungry for blood and they will find it even if there is none. One of the greatest lines in the movie is shared by a female colleague of the professor who is trying to get him to release the footage, she says "People want sensationalism. The more you rape their sense the happier they are." This message I feel still hits very close to home with footage from overseas in the middle east, in Africa, it made me wonder how many people are doing the same thing as this film crew and stirring up trouble just to get better angles, news and documentaries do tend to focus on the violence.
"Cannibal Holocaust" referred to as a "video nasty" and a "grindhouse classic" is easily the most powerful and shocking film on the human condition I have ever seen. This movie makes Hotel Rwanda and Schindler's List look tame, it shows you just how sick and twisted some human beings truly are and pulls no punches in doing it.
Rating this movie is hard. I briefly considered not writing the review as the subject had a deeper impact on me than I had anticipated but I decided that I would not shirk at any movie no matter how challenging the review may be to write.
I do warn that anyone who decides to watch this, you will need a strong stomach and you will be affected by this as if it's real and if you're looking for some blood drenched escapism put this back on the shelf and go rent "Evil Dead" or something.
With that understanding I give "Cannibal Holocaust" a 5 out of 5. It delivers a message that needs to be heard, even if it is extremely hard to listen to.
I only feel comfortable giving bits and pieces of this as the film is very much a traumatic experience. I usually only see special effects in movies, but I didn't see many in this movie, most of it appeared to be genuine which is probably the reason why this film has been seized multiple times under claims that it is a snuff film.
But one of the more choice things that the sick fucks on the film crew do are to take a young native girl and film while all 3 male members of the crew take turns raping her, the same girl is seen later in the film impaled on a pole as she was rendered impure by the natives due to her rape, this image has become iconic and is found just about anywhere this movie is mentioned. When the crew sees it they are happy, jumping up and down and even laughing at their fortune of having found this scene, then the cameraman says "Okay lets film" and they all become somber and act disgusted at the sight.
Some interesting use of music is employed at several points throughout the film but one of note is when the film crew herds all of the members of the tribe into one hut and set it alight, not allowing any of them to leave. The music kicks in with the same folksy happy music heard in the opening credits, the stark contrast between the horrific images you are watching and the peaceful music you are hearing is easily twice as horrifying as watching it with scary music.
The score is well implemented and the music trick is used more times with even more terrible events in the movie, also after the hut burning it flashes quickly to the director of the documentry and the female member having sex. This flash from horrific to beautiful serves to make the act of sex almost grotesque in nature, you feel dirty and vile for watching it after what has just happened. It was a brilliant transition and was done perfectly to make matters seem all that more horrible that this man can kill several people and then go make love to someone without batting an eye.
Taken from the 10 minutes of the movie where Faye actually stops being a prick and acts like a human being."Cannibal Holocaust's" deeper message revolves on two things. The first being a question of just how civil human beings really are, in this movie it makes unsure on just who the savages really are as we see the same tribes in the beginning as relatively peaceful if somewhat confrontational wheras in the footage they are savage killers, but then again so are the film crew.
The second message is that the media is hungry for blood and they will find it even if there is none. One of the greatest lines in the movie is shared by a female colleague of the professor who is trying to get him to release the footage, she says "People want sensationalism. The more you rape their sense the happier they are." This message I feel still hits very close to home with footage from overseas in the middle east, in Africa, it made me wonder how many people are doing the same thing as this film crew and stirring up trouble just to get better angles, news and documentaries do tend to focus on the violence.
"Cannibal Holocaust" referred to as a "video nasty" and a "grindhouse classic" is easily the most powerful and shocking film on the human condition I have ever seen. This movie makes Hotel Rwanda and Schindler's List look tame, it shows you just how sick and twisted some human beings truly are and pulls no punches in doing it.
Rating this movie is hard. I briefly considered not writing the review as the subject had a deeper impact on me than I had anticipated but I decided that I would not shirk at any movie no matter how challenging the review may be to write.
I do warn that anyone who decides to watch this, you will need a strong stomach and you will be affected by this as if it's real and if you're looking for some blood drenched escapism put this back on the shelf and go rent "Evil Dead" or something.
With that understanding I give "Cannibal Holocaust" a 5 out of 5. It delivers a message that needs to be heard, even if it is extremely hard to listen to.
No comments:
Post a Comment