DPP72: Cannibal Holocaust

So today I am going to be handling a second Cannibal film from the DPP72, this film is called Cannibal Holocaust. The film caused a scandal in Italy when released. Ten days after premiering the film was seized and the director, Ruggero Deodato, was arrested and charged with obscenity first and then eventually murder, there was allegations that it was in fact a snuff movie. For those not in the know the term Snuf film refers to a movie in  which a person is actually murdered on camera in reality, now its debatable if this kind of film has ever been made as far as I know every film to ever be accused of being a snuf film has been disproven, the FBI have been involved in investigating some of them and every time they have found proof that people have merly thought something was real that wasnt in fact real.

Despite it being proved that Cannibal Holocaust was not a snuf film and was instead an actual regular movie the film was still banned in Italy, the UK and several other countries because of its extreme gore, sexual violence, and the fact that a fair amount of animals were genuinly killed on camera. I have already talked about my oppinion on this when talking about Cannibal Ferox but I feel I need to state it again because I have strong feelings about this. I disagree with the idea of killing animals for the purpose of making a film, I wouldnt care if it was a low budget horror or the work of the most renowned director in the world I simply think killing any sentient living creature for pure cinematic entertainment is wrong; as I previously stated if you can simulate the deaths of people using effects then you can either simulate the death of an animal or merely offer up enough to suggest what has happened. I wont however judge the film based on this, I will for the purpose of reviewing it as a film without bias pretend that these deaths are artificial and not real (I really hope no film ever does this again as I hope we have evolved somewhat as a society).

Ok so I will try and briefly explain the plot without running the film. An anthropologist is sent to South America find out what happened to a previous film crew. His team on arriving are assigned a guide at first they meet one tribe and see several of their practices before meeting another tribe and helping them. This second tribe seems nervous of them despite the help they have given. It would seem that the tribe had killed the first crew but the anthropologist manages to barter for the crew’s films footage and leaves with it. He then views this footage so that he can learn what became of the first film crew. 

There are lots of opinions about Cannibal Holocaust. There are those who feel that the film is a sick piece of filth which should be banned. You can point to the murder and cruelty directed to animals or the level of gore or even the sexual violence. Then there are those who would argue that the film has a political message which it tries to put across to the viewer; that it is in fact a piece of social commentary about civilized society. Then there will be those who just simply enjoy violent, films full of gore and sadism because they happen to enjoy it. So which camp do I fit in?

I think that there can be an argument made that there is a degree of social commentery in the film, that the director is asking questions about if modern man is more or less civilised than the tribes that we look down upon, but this point is a little ruined by the animal crulty and on top of this the reports that the film maker treated his cast and extras like shit. The film is  a 7 out of 10 in my humble oppinion. It took a lot of supressing biases to score this film so highly though, I cant stand that animals were killed for it or the strong proof that the person behind it was suge a massive dick to those who worked for him. Also I guess I should have said this a long time ago when I did the first of these reviews but please remember that I am scoring these with fans of horror in mind, if you dont like horror and you have found my blog then you would most likly not get 7 out of 10 enjoyment out of something like this, I would rate them far more harshly if I thought I was communicating to the overage viewer who is more into hollywood style films.