The world of exploitation film ripped open and laid raw for you to experience. From 70's grindhouse to current underground, it is all here. So ripe you can practically smell it.
d. Jason Gary, Greg Jacobson Comitted Films Full Frame
Modifyseeks to explore the lives of those who modify their bodies, from the simple to the extreme. But what it really does is bring the mondo film into the 21st century. With the various montages extreme plastic surgery, slicing flesh, insane piercings, suspensions and implants of every sort, this is a gore show of the highest order masquerading as a serious look at a lifestyle documentary.
The movie starts off with a small thesis that modification can be anything from tattoos, to extreme implants and piercings to body building and plastic surgery. We then spend some really unpleasant time with some surgeons who seem like nice people, but their comments are made moot because theyare played over a long montage of outrageously gory surgery footage. Scenes of breast implants, eyelids being cut off, liposuction, labia being construction, huge stomachs being removed and just flesh being cut, torn, sucked and rendered endlessly.
"Here Kitty Kitty. It's time for my next procedure..."
The next big section deals with extreme piercing and body suspension. A theme that seemed to have really took hold in the era this documentary was made around 2005. I remember seeing the troop covered in this movie first on the extras of the movie HELLRAISER in 1999, but from then until this doc it seemed to exploded. With hundreds of suspension performers the lifestyle seems to have a permanent foothold these days. Though certainly not to the extent the gentleman in the movie claim where he says there are hundreds of thousands of people in American doing it.
We meet a young man who has started modifying using his artistic vision as a sculptor and his biology background by doing implant work using Teflon and silicone. He also shows off his surgical tools he has sculpted himself. Seems that he is a real life version of a character from a Cronenberg movie.
Once the movie moves into the mid-section of the discussion of modification mutilation a lot of the interviews take a nosedive with man of the participants dropping in I.Q level. Up to the point 95% OF the interviewees have been very intelligent folks. But suddenly we get some people who claim to work the sideshows who say things like “I am a cynical nihilist, but I really don’t know what that means. I heard Flea explain it once though”. The opinions on what equals mutilation against modification seems to vary wildly from each person, but all of them seem to agree the line is drawn where people can’t really decide for themselves of it the modification will impair the lives of the person in some way.
"They may have not fully understood what she meant by a lace up the back dress"
We spend another uncomfortable amount of time with a fully tattooed dude as he pushes beads into the flesh of his cock in a bloody mess of a scene and then meet several other people who have sliced up their wieners into strange positions. Interestingly enough most of the modified people admit that their lifestyle is an addiction and openly discuss that thy feel that want it more and more. A doctor has a cockimamee explanation saying it is some defeating fear bullshit. But most of them seem to understand it is a endorphins rush combined with a need for something more extreme. A natural high. The extreme plastic surgery cases obviously have something bigger going on though.
There is a short interview with groundbreaking modifying Fakir Moustafir who was the original person at the ground floor of the movement. He discusses a lot of the so called spiritual sides of things involved in this. He also goes into a rant about how if people are willing to modify themselves they are radical enough to take to the streets and effect change I the world and that is why society thinks they are dangerous. Which is why they try to legislate these sort of things. I think he is overstating things more than a little bit.
In the last third of the movie we get to see a tongue split into two halves, a cock split in two halves a a full sexual reassignment surgery all in the discussion of how modification is being legislated in weird ways. But this is more of the big time Mondo footage and some of it REALLY hard to get through. The tough split it especially hard to watch and actually doesn’t go a long way towards the discussion that the procedure shouldn’t be regulated.
The discussion of religion comes down tot pretty much only Jim Ward of The Gauntlet only comes off not sounding like a prentious dufuss. Everyone else sounds like a typical artshool airhead with too lofty self-importance on the subject. Which is why it probably shouldn’t have even been asked in the first place.
Naturally it all ends with another music video montage of the best and the nastiest moments, with a song called “Unforgettable” playing. The sound bytes try to convince us that the bottom line is about having an open mind and not judge people. Which is all nice and good. But the bottom line is REALLY we just saw a major gore filled freakshow of modern day epic proportions that something like FOX wish they could get away with showing if the censors would allow all the bleeding sliced open breasts and split cocks on TV.
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010) D. Steven Monroe Anchor Bay Ent. 1.85
It is certainly arguable if the world even needed a remake of Meir Zarchi’s brutal exploitation classic I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, and really any movie that tried to update it was not going to live up to the big shoes of the original. That film is one that has for years split horror and sleaze films fans to almost violent extremes. In one camp you have those who feel the original movie is nothing but misogynist, hateful garbage. A film that brutalizes women for the enjoyment of a rag tag crowd of impotent men who get off on seeing females dis-empowered and sexually abused for lengthy amounts of time. On the other side is the group who see the film as a superior piece of exploitation cinema, that attacks the material with an almost feminist agenda. A work of primal rage, that contains a surprising amount of quiet beauty and fury. The controversy of Siskel and Ebert reviewing the movie has become stuff of film criticism legend and even a lot of genre critics have spent years poo pooing the film as a way to not have to take a stand on it.
"The remake will be remembered for the subtle use of phallic imagery"
But with the major success of so many remakes it was only a matter of time. When something like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT has a major Hollywood remake that lands in theaters it is only fitting the I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE will have one too. So the question remains how do you update one of the seriously most disturbing movies of all time for modern, jaded audiences?
The answer seems to be simply just up the gore to the expected splatterpunk levels and hope for the best. Story wise this is almost exactly the same. Young city girl Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler) goes to the woods to write her first book in peace and quiet. Her first interaction along the way is at a redneck gas station where she inadvertently humiliates the group of yokels there when she spurns the advances of the local tough guy when he hits on her. Once settled in she has plumbing issues and the town handicap Matthew (Chad Lindberg) helps her out and develops a crush on her. Soon the town goons and Matthew have crashed her cabin and are abusing her in an attempt to have Matthew lose his manhood.
"A moment clearly echoing the original film. Or the Denmark Classic A Summer Day"
The scene is clearly here driven by class distinction as much as by sexual desire or even violence as the men are consistently driving home the fact that they feel she is looking down on them. The actual humilation scene goes on for quite some time as they scare, here, call her names, read her book out loud and make fun of it and finally force her to fellate a gun and bottle while comparing her to a horse that needs to be tamed. It is a long and unpleasant scene, made worse because knowing the original film, you know this is all leading up to her being brutally raped at any time.
But in a new twist, she gets loose and finds the town Sheriff in the woods hunting. (SPOILER ALERT) who of course knows the boys and once has her back to her cabin starts to arrest her for making false accusations and for having drugs. Then the boys come back and the expected rape begins. Which is not as brutal as the original film. Here only the character of Matthew and the Sheriff are shown fully forcing themselves on Jennifer. The others are shown in kind of a in and out haze as she loses consciousness and the movie fades out. It is actually a far more tasteful choice in direction that was expected given the pedigree of movie being remade. It still follows the same structure, though backwards, as she is here attacks at her home first then in the woods. This time she jumps off a bridge after her attack and the guys loose track of her once she is in the water. Unlike the original where she is left for dead after they believe Matthew has killed her.
"Hill-billy bathub time!"
Here in the remake the movie takes a severe bad turn. Jennifer simply is removed from the narrative for a significant amount of time. The film is supposed to be her story, yet for a good ten minutes or more she is gone from the film as we spend time with the rapists as we know their families, and how they are trying to get away with the crime. What steam the movie has built up to the point, and it isn’t terrible, goes all over the place and becomes an unfocused mess.
Then it tries to become a slasher/stalker picture as she comes back for vengeance, asking the audience to put aside some pretty illogical things, like for example that Jennifer has survived in the woods, injured for over a month on her own. But even more that she is now able to overpower and kill these hulking maniacal men on her own, even in her crazed malnourished state.
The movie really goes limp in the second half as the filmmakers start giving Jennifer goofy catch phrases such as “It’s Date Night!” after she kills her abusers in an attempt to make her really clever and to set her in the pantheon of on screen killers. In an attempt to keep up with the Jones the filmmakers chose to have her slaughter her abusers in complex and painful ways that would be much more at home in one of the SAW films that a simple revenge set up. So one fellow is strung up over a bathtub full of water and lye, and their has his eye-lids pulled open with fish hooks and smeared with fish guts until CGI crows appear and tear out his peepers (seriously, I am not making that up!) and finally one unlucky rapist scum is strung up like a stallion with a metal bridal knocking out his teeth and finally castrated in a nod to the original film. But taken one step further as his removed member is shoved into his broken, bleeding mouth. There is also a shotgun sodomy bit where she viciously fucks one of the slobs in the ass with the barrel of a shotgun while screaming at him about why he violated her. The biggest problem with that scene is that it was done better a couple of years ago in the film CLOSURE with Gillian Anderson, almost down to extremely similar dialogue,
"Just whatever you do, don't stuff a fake severed cock in my mouth. That would be REALLY humiliating..."
The director has stated one of his goals this time around was to “correct” the flaws of the original by not having the Jennifer Character use her sexuality to seduce the villains into her grasp. Such as the scene in the original where she Seduces Matthew before Hanging him. It is the ONE questionable scene in the original that really muddies the moral waters about the intention of the filmmaker. But the director here simply pulls that back entirely too far and almost gets rid of the main character’s point of view altogether. By removing her from the mid section of the film we lose touch with her and lose sympathy. We don’t see what she is going through, her pathos and he need to do these guys in. It simply doesn’t work. I commend him on his attempt to try to make it less sleazy, but at the end of the day he also makes it kind of ridiculous, making the bad guys charactitures in the process (not that the original isn’t guilty of that either). The main villain's speech about “a man being just a man” from the original film is also absent here, which was another focal point.
So what you are left with is a rather unfocused modern revenge film, with a few well done suspenseful moments, some heavy gore, and not a lot else making it worth the time. It certainly is not the worst of the remakes I’ve seen, but redundant keeps popping into my mind as a word to describe the experience.
ReGOREgitated SACRIFICE (2007) D. Lucifer Valentine Kingdom of Hell Productions S.O.V.
This sequel to the underground sickie SLAUGHTERED VOMIT DOLLS goes out of its way to up the ante on the violence, gore and all around bad taste in every single way possible. There is certainly a case of one upmanship in the gore underground in who can make the most repellent and disgusting movie and Lucifer Valentine is clearly going for the gold here. The thing is that the guy clearly has a specific and unique vision that is unlike any other underground filmmaker out there, even if some of his material is a little too familiar at times. It is this technique that sets what he is doing apart and makes this film interesting, especially when it simply devolves into a fetish spectacle of puke, piss and prurience.
Ameara Lavey stars as the put upon porn star telling her tortured story.
The sort of story is almost impossible to decipher without having read some material before hand, or seen the first film. Ameara Lavey plays a young porn store who is holed up in a hotel room on a drug fueled suicide jag. Apparently this is meant to represent the final days of Kurt Cobain or at least be heavily inspired by them (late in the movie actual footage from outside his house is shown, with a bit of writing on the fence there serving as a major piece of the movie). She recants memories, confessions, and disappointments.
Siamese Twins get separated, the hard way.
Concurrently there is a "story" about two porno twins and a cameraman (who is shooting this entire movie and we never actually see) that are going around conning women into sexual congress, getting them drunk, forcing things into their mouths until they puke violently over and over, abuse them all night and then violently mutilate and kill them. We meet these twins as they are actually Siamese twins attached at the head and the "Cameraman" separates them with a butcher knife. Later they seem completely healed and normal and begin these vile attacks.
But look and feel much, much better after the "operation".
The women they attack are usually on board sexually until during or after the violent puking and it becomes clear that it is leading to a brutal ending. Between these interludes we sometimes "meet" these women as they talk openly to the camera about being a whore, stripper or teenage porn star and their rather unsettling experiences doing those jobs. Almost as if the road traveled has led them to this fate. Eventually another man appears without explanation into the proceedings while the twins are gutting a naked woman and forcing her to gag on her own entrails until she regurgitates continuously.
Forced to puke and choke on her own entrails. How lovely.
This dude, painted up like one of the Insane Clown Posse is apparently the Puke Master as the vomit quotient raises ten fold with his entry into the movie. He just fuckin pukes on everything. Continuously. His purpose in the movie is to puke and later, to maul and desecrate a severed head (that he eventually pukes into). Several of the girls are forced to pledge their allegiance to Satan before they expire.
The Puke Master applying his trade. Somewhere a Carnival is crying.
The movie climaxes, if you will, after several really intense murders, with Lavey looking absolutely beautiful (the rest of the movie she has looked strung out, pimple ridden, tear streaked and pitiful) as she reads the essays left on Kurt Cobain's fence outside his mansion.
Ameara is FINALLY allowed to look good! It doesn't last long though.
Then the Camera Man makes her fellate him as he throat fucks her until she vomits. Then his clearly fake cock starts to come blood - fountains of it - covering her naked body in some sort of baptism. The end.
Ejaculating blood is good times for all!
Stylistically this movie is a triumph. Valentine takes what is clearly a shoestring budget and stretches to the breaking point. His editing is breakneck -literally thousands of cuts - with dozens within any given moment. This guy must have shot so much footage it cannot even be fathomed. The Whitehouse inspired industrial drone/noise soundtrack is disconcerting as all get out too. The hyper-editing and soundtrack alone make this something that get under your skin from the get go. The content wouldn't even have to be startling and aggressive the way it is put together. The shot choices and images are very often incredibly striking and powerful. The first shot of the Siamese Twins for example with them appearing at a distance, just a little out of focus, among the trees, is haunting.
Several of the murder scenes are among the most brutal and harrowing I have ever seen in a movie. About midway there is a scene where the camera man murders a hooker and forces her to pledge her soul to the devil. Shot with the camera scooting around about two feet, almost randomly, which coincides with an ear piercing scream and white noise on the soundtrack. The whole time she is begging, pleading and being forced to obey. By the time she is finally mauled and mutilated (which isn't even entirely on screen) it is among the most disconcerting things I've ever had the displeasure to witness. Powerful? Yes. Would I watch it again? I'm not sure I would.
The aftermath of one of the most harrowing and brutal murder scenes I have ever seen in a movie.
Which brings me to several topics of concern with the movie. Several moments in the film when the girls are talking openly, or Lavey is breathlessly confessing her past, feel a lot like voyeurism into real people's lives. Which I am sure is the intended effect. But part of me cannot help but to wonder if there isn't some serious exploitation going on of these girls who think they are going to be in some gooey horror movie and end up bearing their darkest secrets in a freakshow, underground assault piece that makes them look really bad, before stripping them bare and forcing them to puke relentlessly? I mean, I'm sure they knew what they were in for to a degree, but were they aware how much of their personality would end up on film? Or am I just barking up the wrong tree and being fooled by really good acting? Also there are several moments in the movie where the "acting" goes too far and crosses the line into what looks to be real assault. For example the twins are roughing up this black girl and forcing her to puke and beating on her with what looks like an answering machine. They are clearly hitting her in the head FOR REAL over and over, but the girl is being held down and being forced to puke so how can she protest? Earlier in the movie the same twins are abusing the stripper whom they have gotten drunk and scratching her with their nails, once again it appears to be all for real. As the welts all appear on her body as they really scratch the shit out of her. She is clearly REALLY drunk off her ass and really pukes up what she has been drinking up to that point. Where is the line crossed here? It is not up to me to be the morality police or anything, but watching this made me feel extremely dirty and wrong. Much more than all the porn, puking and Satanism stuff.
Which leads to the biggest complaint with the movie by far. For all the artistic integrity the movie displays, and there is a lot, it still devolves endlessly into a fetish movie for the director who clearly has a thing for vomiting and piss. The girls and forced to vomit over and over and most of them are forced to piss on camera as well. One even drinks her own pee for no real reason at all other than to do it on camera. By the end of the movie the whole thing becomes one endless jack off fantasy for the demented, mixed with tons of gore. Which distresses me to think there are probably people out there willing to jack off to that too. Thank god no one was shitting on people in this movie, the ONE thing that isn't explored here.
This movie was only available as a DVD-R that cost $50(!) directly from the filmmaker (and through Xploited cinema, who are now unfortunately gone) in a limited edition. Unearthed Films has picked this up as well as the first movie. Getting this into any kind of stores ought to be a challenge for them. I'd imagine there is a limited audience for Vomit Gore. But then again I've been wrong before.
This official trailer makes more sense and tells more "story" than the actual movie does. The plot points in this trailer are not clearly apparent in the actual movie.
This blog is dedicated to the late Bill Landis of SLEAZOID EXPRESS. Without him there would be very little of what we see as exploitation criticism. And more to the point the format I plan to use today is something I am borrowing directly from S.E. in which I will write the meat of the article and then have invited various people from the exploitation film community to chime in with their opinions as well. Bill did this first in S.E. with articles about SALO and LET ME DIE A WOMAN. Both of which are worth your time to track down and read. Bill Landis
passed away in December of 2008 and left a hole in the world. He is missed.
Now, on with the show.
I was asked by a longtime reader to do a column on a couple of “extreme” movies because they wanted to know my take on them. Those movies were Cannibal Holocaust, and The Guinea Pig Series. Today I intend to explore the world of Ruggero Deodato’s controversial cannibal masterwork Cannibal Holocaust and the fallout that came in its wake.
Cannibal Holocaust is a polarizing film in the horror film community. Without a doubt it is a film that anyone who has seen it, and even many who haven’t, have intense opinions on. This is a rare film that simply grabs the viewer by the throat and shakes them relentlessly until the final frames of the celluloid have run through the projector. The film is no vicarious thrill ride; it is mean, no vicious, attack on the souls of the viewer. If there ever was a film that was out for your blood, this movie is it. To an average horror fan who was brought up on a staple of Friday The 13th, Nightmare on Elm St. and the like this film would be like gasoline pumped into their heart. There’s no fun to be had from Cannibal Holocaust, unless there is something really morbid and deranged about you. This film is out to stir up shit deep down in your soul and will stop at nothing to do just that. No depth will be too deep to go, and you will be plummeted right into the abyss with the characters on screen.
The film went into production on June 4th 1979 with a release to happen in early 1980 (though I have heard some sources say it was actually late 1979). The film was an instant hit in Italy when it hit theaters, then within two weeks was withdrawn and banned, with director Ruggero Deodato pulled into court on charges of Animal Cruelty and possible murder. More on this in a little bit.
The story revolves around a Professor Munroe (played by Porn actor R. Bolla aka Robert Kerman most known for starring in Debbie Does Dallas) who is sent into the Amazon rain forest to find a group of missing documentary filmmakers headed by one hotshot named Alan Yates (Gabriel York). Seems these young filmmakers went there in hopes of making the ultimate film about native tribes and have since disappeared. The first half of the film follows Munroe as he goes deep into native territory, witnessing the horrors of the tribes and their rituals (such as punishment for adultery, and what happens when a pregnant woman is though to have a sick fetus in utero). He eventually gains the trust of the tribe and finds cans of film that belonged to the missing filmmakers.
The second half of the film details what is on that film as Munroe and a group of TV producers screen and develop the footage for a possible documentary project about the lives of the fallen filmmakers. But what they discover is horrors beyond belief. The film shows the crew slaughtering animals, raping the natives, burning villages and doing whatever they can to agitate the natives into action for their cameras. And finally the natives strike back in a final act of savage brutality and cannibalism the ends with the crew filming their own sickening dismemberment and death.
The first half of the film is made with conventional film techniques of real camera set ups, professional edits, music etc. To put it in layman terms, it looks like a “real” movie. But once we start screening the footage in the second half things drastically change. The footage we are witnessing is supposed to be “raw” footage. Unedited by anyone and straight out of the cameras. So it is messy, hand held, filled with spots where the film runs out, or fades to white between shots. There are ragged cuts from where they supposedly shut off the camera and got a different angle or vantage point. But the brilliance of this is that of course none of this is the case. The film has been carefully stage to look this way. Manipulated to feel like raw footage so that we the audience think what we are seeing is absolutely genuine stuff.Other narrative movies used the “cinema verite’” style before. It was basically invented in Italy post WW2 in films like Roberto Rossellini’s (who Ruggero Deodato worked with) Open City or The Bicycle Thief.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the first to apply it to horror films. But Cannibal Holocaust is the first film to take it to the next level and make what we are seeing feel completely real by design. So many people are shocked, sickened and struck numb by the content of the film that they miss the brilliant artistry that Deodato pulls off here. The directing in this film is in a league all its own.
A big part of why we buy that what we are seeing is real though is the use of casual violence throughout the film. Some of it quite unfortunate and disquieting. The biggest controversy surrounding this film to this day is the use of non-simulated animal torture and killing in the film. This decision is without reproach a morally reprehensible one that is indefensible on any level. But to deny the power it applies to the final film would also be lying too. The film shows several animals killed on screen including a coatimundi (which most people mistake as a muskrat or ferret) being skewered, a giant turtle being totally dismembered (very slowly I might add), a monkey with his face hacked off, and a pig being shot and beaten. It is worth noting that the scene where the pig is shot, Gabriel York refused to perform it. He flat out refused to shoot this pig, so another actor was asked to do it. Actor Perry Pirkanen wept after they shot the turtle scene. The crew claim that these animals were eaten after the scenes were shot, especially by the Tribal extras who considered things like monkey brains a delicacy. But yet these scenes are probably among the most horrifying in any cinema and are tough to watch. But what they do is set up the feeling that you are indeed watching something real. That if the filmmakers are insane enough to kill these real animals, then maybe just maybe they are insane enough to kill real people too. That maybe the entire film you are seeing is the real deal. Like I said it is morally reprehensible, but it works nonetheless.As a filmmaker and artist, I most certainly would never, ever do it.
But to muddy those moral waters even worse there is actual human death footage in the film as well. There is a sequence in the film called “The Last Road To Hell” where Professor Munroe watches one of Alan Yates' previous documentaries about third world war atrocities. The footage he looks at, showing people being executed by firing squad, is absolutely genuine. Not fake at all. But to make matters worse when the footage ends and Munroe inquires about the footage the TV producers tells him it was all fake and staged for the camera! When it clearly is not.
Deodato claims his need to make this film stemmed from his reaction to the violence on TV at the time. This was during the height of the Red Brigade terrorist violence in Italy and the TV news reports often only focused on the death and destruction left in their wake. Deodato has spoken in interviews about how his young son was often exposed to this footage of death and violence on TV do to the sensationalistic coverage. It angered him to the point that he worked the themes of exploiting violence to the point of causing more violence into the film we see today.
So after two weeks in theaters in Italy the film was seized and pulled. During those two weeks supposedly none other than Sergio Leone sent Ruggero Deodato a note praising the film for its raw power, but also warned him that it will stir up trouble. He was right. In court Ruggero was asked to prove that the main actors were indeed not dead, especially the leads playing the documentary filmmakers and in particular a woman playing a native who appears in a famous scene where she is impaled on a wooden stake from vagina to out her mouth. The biggest problem facing the director was that he had put the actors under contract to not appear in any other films, plays or TV for a year to help sell the public on the idea that they were actually presumed dead. He managed to round up the leads up and had them on a talk show thus showing they were still alive. The impaled girl was harder to locate but he was able to show photographs of the girl on set as she got into the apparatus, which was simply a bicycle seat on a pole with a balsa wood prop in her mouth. The photos also showed her after laughing with the cast and crew.So the murder charges were dropped.
The animal cruelty issue was not dropped however and Ruggero and the producers were sentenced to heavy fines and the film was banned for a few years until 1984. The movie went on to be banned in many other countries as well including New Zealand, Singapore, Iceland, and Malaysia. It was available uncut in the UK on video until the Video Nasties controversy exploded
and then it went onto the banned list there, only to resurface in recent years in a heavily cut form with the animal violence and sexual violence removed.
The movie played the United States in the mid 80’s (though I’ve heard conflicting things about this, some say it played 42nd Street earlier than that, some say like 1985, all are in agreement is played 42nd Street). The film was never released legitimately on VHS in the USA. Every company that tried would fold within a few months of acquiring the title it seems. So the reputation of the film rose on the strength of import copies and bootlegs.
The film was finally granted a proper release in 2004 from Grindhouse releasing when they remastered it and started doing limited theatrical runs, then followed up with a limited edition two disc DVD set that presented the film uncut. Among the many features on that DVD was something that was unique and certainly a nice change of pace for many viewers. The ability to watch the film with out the animal violence. Thanks to seamless branching capabilities you can watch the film while the DVD skips the scenes where Animals are killed or brutalized.
There are only a few films that really touch the outer boundaries of the human condition. Films that scrape the bottom of the soul and make you feel things you probably do not want to feel. Films that work maybe the same way that terrorism might work. Pasolini’sSalo 120 Days of Sodom, In A Glass Cage, Henry Portrait of A Serial Killer, Last House on Dead End Street and maybe a couple of others. These are rare animals that only certain people can watch and have the capacity to deal with properly. Cannibal Holocaust Is among those films. There have been countless other cannibal films before and after, but none of them can match it. It is a film that almost forces you to take a stand on what you are watching in a lot of ways. But yet it is an undeniably well made, chilling motion picture that commands your attention. There will never be another one like it. And that is probably a good thing.
Andy Copp
The following are reactions from some various folks from the horror community that have seen Cannibal Holocaust. I especially wanted them to mention how they first saw the film and their reactions.
Andy Copp, Moderator of Exploitation Nation, and Filmmaker, Director of The Mutilation Man & The Atrocity Circle
I first saw Cannibal Holocaust on a bootleg I rented from Bookery Fantasy a comics store in Fairborn, Ohio when I was in college. I was a pretty well traveled extreme cinema viewer at that point and had already seen Cannibal Ferox, Nekromantik, Salo, Last House On Dead End St. and lots of others. So I knew what to expect with this one. I watched it by myself, which was not uncommon with the more extreme titles as my girlfriend was not usually game for them. The print I saw was not censored or fogged in anyway and was in surprisingly good shape. The animal cruelty was too much for me. I looked away during the little critter being skewered. I fast forwarded during the turtle (and still can’t watch that) and couldn’t then and can’t now stand hearing the pig squeal as it dies. I remember dreading the abortion sequence as I had seen pictures but it wasn’t as graphic as I thought it would be. But the sexual violence got to me. The adultery punishment was upsetting, as was the scene where they rape the native girl. Those scenes probably bothered me more than the rest of the movie (animal stuff not withstanding). The second half of the film was sickening and stressful, but I remember being in awe of how well made it was too. They way it manipulated you into thinking what you were seeing was so real really flipped my lid. I remember when the last frames of the demise of the crew rolled through feeling pumped up and really freaked out. Not too many other films had done that to me. I praised this movie to anyone who would listen. A lot of people thought I was nuts. Years later I would see it with a crowd when the remastered print would make the rounds. The crowd was about thirty or so people. You could feel the movie pour over them like a wave of wet cement. It weeded out the poseurs who were there just to goof on an old gore movie really quickly. There were a lot of walk outs. Oddly enough there was a couple of probably 20 year old girls and there bo hunk beefed up jock boyfriend there. I thought they would vanish before the thing was over. They made it to the turtle slaughter (which I walked out on, though I knew I would go back in a few minutes). To my surprise they all went back in too. But when it got to the part where they raped the native girl, the bo hunk boyfriend shot up and ran out. I went out to pee later and found him lying on a bench in the lobby looking very sick. He remained there for the rest of the movie, while the girls watched the whole thing.
42nd Street Pete. Writer, Film Historian, and all around badass and survivor of the Deuce
Cannibal Holocaust was one of those films shrouded in mystery. It was playing here at a theater called The Wellmont in Montclair NJ. It was pulled after three days due to the cruelty to animals. Didn't get to see it in an actual theater, although I tried to catch it at The Liberty on 42nd Street, but the people I was with were appalled that I wanted to see it.
According to Bill Landis of the Sleazoid Express, this film pummeled the audience into stunned silence. The usual rowdy crowd was flat lined by the film. Then it disappeared. Grainy bootlegs made the rounds of the convention circuits. Rick Sullivan peddled copies from his Gore Gazette Fanzine. Rumors persisted that some of the actual killing was real, especially the scene with the girl with the spike shoved up her ass.
I finally saw a copy off of a Japanese laser disc with all the nudity cropped, go figure. Even a shitty tenth generation bootleg would flat line a viewer. Even today, it still has that ability. Probably one of the most powerful horror films ever made as , even in today’s CG world, it has the power to shock & disgust a viewer. Chas. Balun said it best when he said the film kicks you square in the balls. Balun was also instrumental in getting the word out about Cannibal Holocaust.
Art Ettinger Managing Editor of Ultra Violent Magazine and Expert on Confrontational Cinema
I first saw Cannibal Holocaust on bootleg VHS tape in 1994. I had read about it for years and knew what it was, but hadn’t delved into the world of tape-trading yet. I had already seen other confrontational horror movies available on legit VHS including I Spit on Your Grave, House on the Edge of the Park, and Last House on Dead End Street. I also had already seen Jungle Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox since they too were easy to find in VHS rental shops. Even having already seen confrontational horror movies and having a slight familiarity with cannibal films, Cannibal Holocaust blew my mind. Unlike Ferox, Holocaust wasn’t campy. It quickly became one of my favorite movies. The first bootleg I watched was mediocre in quality, but I saw a crystal clear version shortly thereafter. I began collecting any versions I could find and did some library research on it. I distinctly remember reading various sources that claimed that the movie never played theatrically in the United States. When I found a review of Cannibal Holocaust in Variety’s Film Reviews from 1985 (hilariously located on the same page as their Back to the Future review), I realized how full of shit most genre writers were on the subject. It clearly played U.S. theaters, albeit briefly, in 1985. Right around that time, I also learned that Bill Landis covered it in a 1985 issue of Sleazoid Express when it first played NYC and that a Cannibal Holocaust marquee can be seen in the sketch comedy film Outtakes. I made it my mission to spread the word about the movie, not just to horror fans, but to other college students. I started making random people watch it, the culmination of which was a screening of it in a film class I taught while in college. Seeing Cannibal Holocaust with an audience of 50+ liberal arts students, none of whom had seen it before, was an incredible experience. Years later, when I got to see Cannibal Holocaust in 35mm in Cleveland, the movie blew my mind all over again. Even after interviewing and meeting Deodato (as well as Gabriel Yorke and Robert Kerman), Cannibal Holocaust still has a mystique about it. It’s still an amazing, “can’t believe this movie exists,” artifact of a bygone filmmaking era. Cannibal Holocaust defines confrontational cinema and remains one of the most fascinating films of all time.
Andrew Shearer, Gozoriffic Films, Film Director of Blood Witch, and Others as well as Film Critic.
By the time I actually got ahold of "Cannibal Holocaust", I'd long since composed a version of it in my head based on all the descriptions I'd read and still photos I'd seen over the years in various books and magazines. It was the be-all, end-all horror film, a legendary shocker that would challenge even the most hardcore of hardcore genre enthusiasts, an unforgettable celluloid atrocity that was even banned on planets Earth had yet to colonize. You weren't going to find this sort of thing at Blockbuster, or even the independent shops that still carried a healthy amount of rare hold-over VHS tapes from the 80's (that managed not to get chewed up in some thrill-seeking redneck's top-loader) in those beautiful, gigantic cover boxes. "Cannibal Holocaust" was something you needed a checking account or a credit card to get, because it was either going to come from a Video Search of Miami mail order catalog or Atlanta's nowlong-gone Oxford Video. Membership at Oxford also required one to be at least 18years of age, which, in the summer of 1993, I wasn't quite. However, my friend Dan, recently graduated high school senior and drummer for the punk band I was in, held more than just the keys to a giant Chevy van with teardrop windows and a side door that'd sever your leg at the knee if it closed on you. He was old enough to get an account at Oxford video, had a vehicle to take us there, and was just as eager to step into the jungles of gore as I was. So with that, we were off to our date with Deodato.
Oxford Video was situated on the ground floor of the legendary Oxford Books, a gigantic, warehouse-sized structure filled with every novel or periodical I'd ever heard of (an entirely separate building, Oxford Too, was home to the comic books), the sort of place in which people routinely spent their entire day. I'd cruised the video rental section many times, and was well aware of the selection by the time Dan and I showed up to acquire membership. Since neither of us had a credit card, I split the required fee with Dan and dashed off to take one step closer to disturbing our respective minds forever.
Our selections, "Nekromantik", "Caligula", and "Cannibal Holocaust", were certain to provide a three-course meal of all things naughty and horrifying. Looking back on it now,
I wish we'd have spread the marathon over a couple of days, chasing each film with acouple Daffy Duck cartoons, rather than douse ourselves with one unforgettably startling scene after another. We were merely teenagers looking for some dangerous fun, a time-honored rite of passage for any youth, doing so with cinema rather than drugs, alcohol or B&E.
In five years' time, I'd go on to see several more movies that had a lot in common with "Cannibal": "Trap Them And Kill Them" starring Laura Gemser, "Make Them Die Slowly" (which I witnessed on the big screen at Georgia State University), and "Jungle Holocaust". While they all feature their fair share of nudity, torture, castration, dismemberment and death, there's one important thing separating them from the notorious one I'd seen first: I'd readily view any of them again. "Cannibal Holocaust", in contrast, was an experience I don't care to repeat. There are films I watched as a kid that disturbed me, thus bringing about feelings and memories that are the opposite of those one desires to visit when seeing a movie, but this was different. By age 16, I'd seen a whole lot of bizarre and disgusting movies, surviving "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Dead Alive" and "Re-Animator" with flying colors (green and red, mostly).
The difference with "Cannibal" was that it so convincingly radiated an atmosphere of reality, driven home by what was most certainly real footage of animals being slaughtered, that I couldn't help but be upset by what I was seeing. Man's inhumanity to man was indeed an important subject to address, but doing so in such a graphic, unflinching way was hard to digest. What bothered me about it then, and what continued to bother me about it for years to come, was that "Cannibal Holocaust" was intended as entertainment, not an actual documentary or educational film. I'd never before seen a horror film that wanted to hurt me rather than thrill me, and it was a
difficult experience to say the least. Viewing it with Dan in the summer of '93, we joked through it and ate sub sandwiches like we did every time we sat and watched old
exploitation movies, but my drive home was much more somber, and it was the one I couldn't stop thinking about.
While certainly a visceral thing to witness, the true impact of "Cannibal Holocaust" is measured by how long the images, actors' facial expressions, music and even the quality of the film itself remain in your mind after the movie ends. I haven'twatched it in fifteen years because I don't need to. It's still there.
Fred Vogel Toe Tag Pictures, Director of Angust Underground series and The Redsin Tower.
Back in the day some of us use to tape trade. I had a friend who had his pulse on the genre and would hook me up with all kinds of videos from Richard Kern to the Guinea Pig films. It was the late eighties / early nineties when I saw CH for the first time. I'm not sure if it was a PAL VHS bootleg but the image was pretty shitty. I remember noticing right off that the guy from Debbie Does Dallas was in it...once I got over the porn novelty the movie's content hit me harder than most. I remember cringing at the animal violence and saying to myself how can they show this also the hand held look was the perfect escape for what followed. I was watching the movie alone and when the footage of the woman impaled came on the screen I stared at the TV in amazement.... How the fuck did they do that I thought to myself as well questioning that could this be real. It can't be real Mr Greenfeld was playing the lead. This has to be fake I thought to myself. I also remember the music from the films score floating around in my head for weeks. I showed as many people I could this movie. It wasn't till the late 90's when I found it again on DVD. I bought it instantly. This is an important film that inspired me as a filmmaker and still to this day I still cringe to the films content and that doesn't happen to me very often.
Well, my initial encounter with the nefarious CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is a rather banal account. A demon from Hell didn't materialize before me and I didn't simultaneously puke and shit myself and fall into a coma or incur any other kind of trauma. It was about five years ago now (so I would've been 21), and I had been into obscure and cult exploitation movies for a while, including the Italian variety, so of course I had heard of this movie and its reputation of infamy. Having an appetite for cinema of an extreme and depraved nature, I naturally had to see it for myself, so bought an import copy (which I of course pawned off after snatching Grindhouse Releasing's awesome Criterion-esque DVD) from DiabolikDVD. com at a rather inflated price (I wasn't so aware of the bootleg market at that point), and with a slight nervousness slipped it in my player one lazy Saturday afternoon. Now before I had seen the similarly nasty CANNIBAL FEROX and Ruggero Deodato's own JUNGLE HOLOCAUST a.k.a. LAST CANNIBAL WORLD, and had even gotten a preview of the flick with Necrophagia's music video of the song based on it, so I had an idea of what to expect. Yes, the film is rough, and I guess belongs on a list as one of the most graphic movies of all time, although I wouldn't put it at the top. So that was how I first saw it, and I'm sorry it wasn't some kind of apocalyptic anecdote.
But I will say I do count it as being among some of my favorite exploitation movies, albeit not too high in the ranking. Because let's face it, it's definitely no masterpiece - there's some cheesy dialogue and huge leaps in logic here (especially the fact that the network had planned to air the footage on national television without even glancing at first. C'mon!), and it seems to just resort to gratuitous shock value too often. But these are common flaws in most Italian productions, and at the same time those things give them their charm. Then of course there's the genuine animal cruelty - definitely an aspect I have mixed feelings about. It's always upset me, but never to the point that I find it intolerable. After all, I'm no vegetarian myself, but the Animal Cruelty Free option on the Grindhouse Releasing DVD is a nice alternative for when I'm not feeling up to it. These aforementioned gripes aside, there is also a notable level of intelligence to the film that you don't find in any of its contemporaries, mainly in its satirical tackling of the news media and how it likes to distort and manipulate reality and its comments on civilized society - which unfortunately it has to beat you over the head with in the final line. On a technical level it is also noteworthy for its solid direction and the stirring soundtrack.
One little memory of interest I guess is a couple of years or so ago when it showed as one of the midnight movies locally. The controversial title had drawn a fairly sizeable crowd. A couple of young girls were sitting next to me, I think with their boyfriends in the row in front, and it was interesting to observe their reactions throughout the show. Ironically enough, they weren't too offended by the animal killings - they just made pitiful "ohhhh" sounds. It was the gang rape of the village girl by the documentary crew that finally hit their last nerve and drove them to the lobby for the remaining duration. Granted that's a harsh scene, but I think it's odd a simulated rape would get somebody over the actual brutal butchering and cooking of a tortoise. Oh well. And I think it's bizarre people can go down to their local Best Buy and pick up this and other movies of its ilk.
My first encounter with Cannibal Holocaust came more years ago than I care to remember, back in the good ol’ prehistoric days of VHS, just before the internet came to be the household tool that it is today. I found a copy of a book of horror movie essays and one of them, by John Skipp and Craig Spector, listed “The 13 Most Disturbing Movies of All Time”. The list included such cinematic atrocities as Ilsa, Salo, In a Glass Cage, Last House on the Left, etc. Cannibal Holocaust was listed among them. And, in my post-high school years as a film “scholar”, I was determined to see everything on that list.
The problem was, of course, running the damned things down, because not everything on that list was available domestically on VHS. Fortunately, I was a member of an elite, underground group of bootleggers who sold and traded the most obscure titles. I say this proudly, now that everyone with a DSL connection is considered a video pirate. Back in these days, you needed to know people. You needed a network, not a connection. And, most importantly, you needed to own two VCRs.
Last House I’d already seen a number of times, in different edits. That was no problem. Check one. It took me years to run down In A Glass Cage and even then years to get around to watching it, and by that time, it had been released on DVD. So out went my old, deteriorating, nth generation tape.
Salo, One Hundred Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Passolini’s final film, was considered art, so that was actually easy to find. Unfortunately, that was the one I started with.
It took a few weeks of recovery before I could watch the next one I dredged up. Which happened to be Deodato’s masterpiece, Cannibal Holocaust. After one viewing, I started to lose my taste for “film as endurance test.” Where Salo dealt with themes and a certain level of evil (Italian Fascism and coprophilia) that I wasn’t quite ready to handle, Cannibal Holocaust operated on a more surface, yet visceral, level. The gore and the cruelty to humans I dealt with handily. I’d been a life-long gorehound and I am still captivated, to this day, with the sudden and violent impalement of the young tribal girl. But the on-screen and very real animal slaughter was more than I could take. For this same reason I’ve avoided the other Italian cannibal movies as well as Mondo Cane and the Faces of Death series. I just saw no reason for the real-life butchery. One of the wonders of film is that it’s not real, no matter how realistic you can make it. If I wanted to watch animal cruelty, I could go visit a slaughterhouse.
Between the actual horrors, I find Cannibal Holocaust to be alternately dull and insipid, but those are traits I often find in Italian horror. I was admittedly intrigued by the “this is a true story and this is the footage recovered” presentation, but I grew weary of the full cast of utterly unlikable characters and the gore-for-gore’s-sake delivery. Ultimately, I didn’t see the point in the exercise. The “who are the real savages?” interior theme, I felt, had been done before and better. Finally, the film ended, with the film-within-the-film burned and I went off to do other things.
Yep, I was disturbed. It lived up to its place on the list, that was for sure. But like most of the other movies on the list, I was left with a feeling of “so what?” Beyond the iconic impaling scene, which is, indeed, haunting, what was the point of the movie even existing? And worse, what was the point of the others that it spawned?
As usual, I’m the minority opinion with regards to this movie. Mostly, I mourn the turtle
Actually watching Cannibal Holocaust wasn't a task, nor was it a terrible puke inducing experience that its reputation forced me to expect. Yes it is shocking but the animal killing infamy lead me believe that the film was absent of culture, satire and genuine terror.
I agree with the masses as far as the score goes. When I watch the tribe and their home set ablaze to the entertainment of the antagonists, all while realizing their manipulating the footage, its truly a heartbreaking moment. Forget the ritual wife killing, the manual abortion or the throat slicing of a muskrat. What damaged me was the sheer vanity of the documentary filmmakers.
The in ignorant or unaware circles seemed to be not only the real deal but thought of as real by those who didn't see it. A lot of filmgoers now days are savvy to editing and reality but back then people went about saying the film was legit. Or that’s at least what I read.
The shocks, the lead porn turned decent actor, the tribes and the fact that I believe the film to be the best edited story in the history of the genre make this a picture worth talking about and watching over and over. I dig Umberto Lenzi and all those who helped start the Cannibal subgenre but Cannibal Holocaust is by far the best of the bunch and easily a top 10 horror movie. Not for reputation, shocks or even its staying power. This film amazes me for how well structured and how it embodies true terror, horror and human ugliness.
I first say Cannibal Holocaust on VHS bootleg that my brother bought at his first convention. (Back when he wasn't so uptight about buying bootlegs at conventions). This would have been early 2002 I believe maybe 2003. This was before it was released by Grindhouse Releasing. I remember being shocked about how brutal it was and way different then the over the top Cannibal Ferox. The violence towards any living creature (man, woman, animal) had such a shocking impact that I found myself not being entertained, but more appalled by it. I had not seen too many hardcore horror films so I was a little taken aback by it's more realistic approach compared to similar cannibal film fare. I've grown to appreciate it's take and manner and I'm not quite as "shocked" by it like I first time I viewed, but it still left a impact.
