Horrorfest 2010: Cannibal Holocaust

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST -- what a shitty film.

In my teens, when Tarantino was just bursting onto the scene and a new interest was developing in ultra-violent cinema, I read a lot about the subject and watched a bunch of movies ranging from the great LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT to the terrible I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. At the time, I also read about CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST but never got around to watching it.

These days, I don't have much stomach for this kind of stuff. I think part of it is once you've satisfied your curiosity, you've seen it all. One disgusting, depraved shock film is as good (or bad) as another. There's no reason to watch a bunch of them. You've seen one, you've seen them all.

Still, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST was on the list of the 100 greatest horror films I'm working off of, and I hadn't seen it before, so I checked it out. Unlike some of the other ultra violent horror films that snuck their way into cult status in the early days of VHS, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST has a little bit of a legacy. The controversy generated by the film in the first place is partially due to the pseudo-documentary style employed by the filmmakers, and it is that same approach that has led to a little bit of a renaissance for the film as it has been mentioned as inspiration for the huge 90s hit THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

The premise will seem familiar to anyone who has heard of BLAIR WITCH -- a group of young filmmakers disappears in the wilderness. Their raw footage is discovered and examined to find out what happened to them. Their fates turn out to be gruesome. Like BLAIR WITCH, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is pretty much set up as a true event, though, unlike BLAIR WITCH, the film itself breaks the fourth wall almost from the first scene, establishing it as clearly fictional to anyone who is even halfway familiar with filmmaking techniques. At least, I guess that's by today's standards. Maybe back when this stuff was cutting edge audiences were less savvy. My guess is the movie seems more real and more disturbing when viewed on an old abused film print, or on a watched and re-watched shitty VHS copy. This is one case where a meticulously restored DVD probably hurts the film's impact.

Or, maybe the pristine film format on DVD betrays the film's inherent cynicism as a direct result of robbing it of some of its power.

Anyway, I've said so much without saying anything. In this case, the young filmmakers are a documentary crew hired by a news organization to document indigenous tribes of the Amazon. They disappear into the jungle and an anthropologist (Robert Kerman) is sent to track them down. He finds that they've been brutally murdered and eaten by a cannibal tribe, is able to recover their lost footage, and returns to New York where he's assigned to help the news company make the footage palatable for broadcast. The story is sensational enough that the news organization just sees ratings and dollar signs. The anthropologist, having been to the Amazon, met the tribes, and viewed all of the footage in question, knows it's unsuitable for broadcast and makes his case.

The film has a strange structure -- even though the "raw footage" element is hinted at from the beginning, and even though most of what you'll read about the movie is about its unique pseudo-documentary style, the first half is firmly planted in the realm of traditional cinema. All the stuff involving the anthropologist traveling to the Amazon and tracking down the footage is clearly straight narrative -- we're not meant to believe this is real. Then, suddenly, when the anthropologist returns home with his "found footage" we're presented with the raw footage in an amateurish "real" and "unedited" format as the last half of the film unfolds, showing the fate of the lost film crew almost from a "first person" point of view, as if you're there with them in the middle of the horror. Even though we're told that these filmmakers are amazing professionals, most of the footage is shaky like no one ever learned how to hold a camera still.

To be sure, this is a revolutionary approach, especially for a low budget exploitation flick like this one. And, this is probably the primary reason why people remember the movie to this day. It was certainly influential. But is it any good?

I'm inclined to say no. Again, maybe 25 years ago before reality television and before other similar movies, this one had more power. Maybe viewed on a damaged print or abused video tape, it added to the voyeuristic snuff film allure of the thing. I don't know.

All I know is what I saw. From what I saw, the filmmaker's betrayed their own cynicism at almost every turn in the film, and that undermines any power the movie might have had. When you get the feeling that the people behind the camera have some kind of prurient interest or ulterior motive, it becomes difficult to take them seriously. So, even if they try to make some point about the influence of media on the third world, or the influence of media turning supposedly civilized cultures into savage ones, or even if the film ponders who the real savages are -- the cannibals in the jungle, or the Western media -- it's all totally shot to shit when you don't believe the filmmakers are being honest with you.

The same can be said of the violence -- extreme violence can be powerful. This ranges from gore, even to staged rape scenes -- see A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, PULP FICTION, etc. It can work. But not if you suspect the filmmaker is trying to trick you. In Kubrick or Tarantino's flicks, you always feel like the filmmakers are being totally honest with their intentions. With a film like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, all the gore and sexual violence is rendered hollow and exploitative by the obscured, dishonest intentions of the filmmakers.

What makes me think director Ruggero Deodato and writer Gianfranco Clerici aren't being totally honest with me as an audience member in their intentions? There are too many examples in the film for me to list, but one easy metaphor for what I'm talking about is the animal cruelty in the film. Yes, the real animal cruelty. You know you're in trouble when you pop the DVD in and it asks if you want to see the film in its "theatrical" version or "non-animal cruelty" version. Sheesh.

I opted for the "theatrical" version because I wanted to see what made this movie so controversial and famous in the first place, and part of that is the animal cruelty. Here's the thing -- the movie is called CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. You expect some man on man violence, some extreme gore, people eating each other. You get some of that, but it's interspersed with random acts of violence against animals -- real acts of violence. Now, I don't want to get into a larger ideological discussion about whether or not it's okay to kill animals. After all, I eat meat. I can't pretend to be some moral, upstanding human who would never hurt an animal or would never want an animal to be hurt. I understand slaughter houses are awful, and I eat steaks anyway. So, I'm not doing any moral grand-standing here.

But here's what I'm saying: why the animal cruelty in the film? What's the point? The director put it there on purpose. What's his reasoning? I can only speculate, and my line of reasoning while speculating is what convinces me the movie is nothing more than cynical exploitation.

Here's what I came up with: torturing animals is easy. Special effects are hard, and you can't torture and kill humans on film. So, take it out on the animals. You need some easy shock that you don't really need to work for or be creative about? Fine, shoot a 10 minute scene where you slaughter a giant turtle and play with its body parts. There, it's nice and gross, all you had to do was haul a turtle out of the water. You didn't have to create anything or do any actual work. Just force your actors to cut it up and play with it, and you've got an automatic shock scene. Same with chopping a monkey's head off, cutting a snake in half, shooting a pig. Worried you can't deliver the shocks that the word "cannibal" suggests? Fine. Take it out on the animals.

Now, some would argue that the REAL slaughter of the animals blurs the lines between fact and fiction, and that's what the film is about. If you see an undeniably real animal slaughter, then maybe the next scene of depravity against humans seems more real. I guess. But it seems very convenient. These animals can't complain, no one will miss them. I don't know, any time something has one pretentious explanation and one super convenient one, I suspect the convenient one might be more accurate and the pretentious one might just be post-mortem rationalization.

Similarly, the graphic sexuality and violence against women serves to expose the filmmaker's prurient interests. The first sexual assault occurs early in the film as a helpless native woman writhes naked in the mud while a native man assaults her. The anthropologist observes, "This looks like a ritual punishment for adultery!" Other similar scenes follow. The one female member of the filmmaking expedition (Francesca Ciardi) is photographed nude or in compromising situations as often as possible, involving one sex scene with her filmmaker boyfriend (Carl Garbiel Yorke) and then her eventual dismemberment. There's also a scene in which the filmmakers stumble upon a native girl, capture her, and take turns raping her, again, rolling around in the mud.

Now, none of these scenes are titillating. But, butting up against scenes of faked violence and real animal cruelty, what are we supposed to think? What's the point? It's hard not to think the filmmakers are slipping this in specifically to serve the audience members looking for some tits and ass. I'm not sure the filmmakers care that the tits and ass are served up next to and along with violence. If they do, it's only at the benefit of being more extreme -- you get the feeling the sex doesn't exist in spite of the violence, but because of it. Like the animal cruelty, it's easy. Just convince a woman to get out of her clothes and roll in the mud, and you've got 10 minutes of exploitation without having to work or be creative.

In fact, after watching the film I noticed it had a director's commentary and I wondered what a scum bag director can possibly say during a scene in which a female actor is dragged naked through the mud. So, I went back through the film and listened out of curiosity. The director commented that the woman was the costume designer and she was very nice. He then praised the musical score of the movie and pointed out how nice the sky looked during the sexual assault. Very insightful.

Apparently the director ended up in some legal trouble in the mid 80s when the film was deemed too real. Again, I have the benefit of hindsight, but that's simply giving the movie way too much credit. It's all so clearly cynical and contrived from the beginning, I have to assume the courts that prosecuted the director were simply offended beyond rational thought into the realm of blind rage and didn't actually believe Deodato had shot a genuine snuff film.

As I alluded to before, the film tries to make some higher philosophical point or moral observation on the state of the media today, and whether the civilized world is really the savage world. Part of this point is dramatized through the depraved actions of the missing film crew. Their footage reveals that they were glad to contrive situations for sensation at the expense of the natives, sometimes costing lives.

But what about the actual film crew, not the fictional one? What did they do, out in the wilderness, without anyone watching? Did they take advantage of natives and animals? Did they even take advantage of actors who should have known better? Did they brow beat these poor bastards into participating in depravity for the sake of exploitation?

The positive reviews of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST say it's a social commentary. I say it's nothing more than a commentary by director Ruggero Deodato about himself.

Note 1: Re-reading this, I realize I totally neglected to mention the rampant racism. So, here: the film's unforgivably racist. There.

Note 2: Also, I was mystified by the fictional film crew's tactics. They were happy to stage atrocities, like burning down a native village, herding the natives into a hut and setting it on fire. But they film themselves setting it up. Why not set the hut on fire and THEN turn on the cameras? How come all the clear shots are the incriminating ones, and the "sensational" shots of the villagers burning are all shaky and confusing?