Cannibal Holocaust

Plot synopsis:
In New York City, a TV news reporter recounts the details surrounding the mysterious disappearance of a documentary film crew who has gone missing in the jungles of South America for two months. The reporter introduces them as Alan Yates (Gabriel Yorke) the director; Faye Daniels (Francesca Ciardi) his girlfriend and script girl; and friends Jack Anders (Perry Pirkanen) and Mark Tomaso (Luca Giorgio Barbareschi) who work as cameramen. They were last seen departing from the remote Columbian town of Leticia which sits deep in the jungle on the border points between Brazil and Peru, to document the existence of cannibal tribes in the jungle. NYU's noted anthropologist Professor Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman) is assigned the task by the university to find out what happened to the conceited, and over-confident film crew.In the jungles of South America, a group of Columbian soldiers, led by a balding Negro lieutenant, are on patrol when they stumble upon a group of natives engaged in a spot of cannibalism; eating human remains. The soldiers attack and kill many natives while the rest flee. One fights back by shooting one soldier with a poison dart, hitting him in the arm before he is killed by the other soldiers. Despite the quick medical treatment, the soldier dies soon afterwards. The Columbian Lieutenant then meets with Professor Monroe who arrives by plane at the soldiers' outpost on the Amazon. The Lieutenant shows Monroe the captured native which they identify as a Yacumo, for to the soldiers, a Yacumo prisoner is like a ticket into the 'Green Inferno', the inhospitable jungle the South Americans call it. The Yacumo is in possession of a cigarette lighter which Monroe confirms belonged to Faye Daniels. Monroe is assigned a guide, a Venezuelan named Chaco (Ricardo Fuentes), who explains to Monroe that a tattoo borne by the prisoner indicates that he is the son of a shaman, and that the Yacumo are not really cannibals. The conclusion drawn by Chaco is that they were this far out from their village near Leticia where they were probably indulging in a religious ceremony meant to chase evil spirits out of the jungle. White men spirits.Monroe, Chaco, and another young guide, named Miguel, with their Yacumo prisoner in tow, head off into the jungle, crossing a few streams, encountering the badly decomposed remains of Felipe, the guide of the Yates team near their former campsite. A day or so later, the search party comes across a strange and savage, ritualistic punishment for adultery where a Yacumo man hauls his bound wife to a riverbed where he sexually violates her with a phallic dildo and bludgeons her to death with it. Monroe, Chaco, and Miguel soon reach the Yacumo village where they are met with fear and suspicion. After demonstrating their good intentions of releasing their captive, they are allowed to stay for the night.The next morning, Monroe, Chaco and Miguel set off on the next stage of their journey, deeper still into the jungle, towards the ultimate goal of the Yates team: meeting the feared Yamamomo tribe, who are also known as the Tree People. A stone-age tribe that has had little or no contact with the outside world and still live in the stone age period. The Yamamomo are constantly at war with a rival tribe called the Shamatari, called the Swamp People. Monroe and his two guides see the Shamatari driving out Yamamomo warriors out of their high up trees by burning fires whose smoke makes the tribesmen fall to the ground. Soon they stumble upon a skirmish between the Shamatari and Yamamomo warriors. Monroe and his two guides intervene by shooting several Shamatari warriors, forcing the rest to flee and establishing themselves as allies to the Yamamomo. The Yamamomo tribesmen permit Monroe and his guides to stay, but treat them with fear and suspicion as did the Yacumo, which confirms to Chaco that the Yates team did something to stir up trouble. Despite the language barrier, Monroe becomes determined to find out from the Yamamomo what happened to the Yates team.The following day, Monroe gains the trust of the Yamamomo by stripping off his clothes and bathing in a nearby stream. A group of carefree Yamamomo women arrive to bath with him and playfully splash around in the water, while Chaco and Miguel watch from the riverbank. After a few minutes, the Yamamomo women lead Monroe and his guides away from the river, into the jungle, and to a clearing where they are introduced to a bizarre totemic shrine: the remains of the Yates team, with their four skulls arranged in a ghoulish manner confirming that the film crew is dead and that the Yamamomo have been trying to exercise the jungle of their spirits.Seeing the crew's film cameras and the silver canisters of film untouched by the Yamamomo custom, Monroe decides to use another psychological manipulation to gain access to the film reels. Monroe manages to manipulate the Yamamomo chief by showing him a cassette recorder which has the sounds of the Yacumo and other tribes chanting. The chief accepts the recorder as a gift and allows Monroe, Chaco and Miguel to partake in a ritualistic cannibal feast by eating part of the dead body of a Yamamomo criminal recently executed. The Yamamomo chief then allows Monroe to leave with the film canisters.Several weeks later, Monroe arrives back in New York where he gives a TV interview about his experiences in the jungle and about the death of the Yates team and that the film reels recovered may prove the answer of what brought on the deaths of the Yates crew. Monroe meets with three NYU board executives, two men and a woman, who want him to review the film in preparation for a TV documentary to be shown as Yates's final work in the Amazon.Monroe is shown the Yates footage at an office where the female executive introduces Monroe to Yates's style of filmmaking by showing him extracts from a film he made in Africa a year earlier entitled "The Last Road to Hell" showing archive films of firing-squad executions. At this point, Monroe sits down in the editing room to watch the raw footage of the last days of the Yates party. The Yates team is shown from their hotel in Leticia to traveling by plane several miles away to a point to hike into the Green Inferno to make contact with the legendary cannibal tribes. Monroe watches the arrogant and superficial film crew of Yates, Anders, Faye, Mark, and their guide Felipe hike into the jungle, traversing the same streams Monroe and his group crossed months later, and them bragging to the camera about the natural beauty of the jungle, while they commit various and unforgivable atrocities against various wildlife. In one repugnant scene, Felipe and Anders catch a large river turtle; they haul it ashore at their camp, and proceed to hack it apart before cooking and eating it while the camera is still rolling. Later, they shoot at various birds and small mammals in the jungle for no reason, but then Felipe screams out when a snake bites his foot. Anders and Mark, in desperation, hack off Felipe's leg in a vain bid to save him, but Felipe goes into shock and dies thus revealing how he died. Yates tells his team that they must continue on.Taking a break from watching the footage, Monroe then embarks on interviewing some of the Yates team's family members, some of whom tell Monroe little about the death of their relatives, and a few who scorn them for the trouble they would stir up. As Monroe begins to realize with growing horror about what really happened to the Yates team months earlier, he proceeds to view the rest of the film:After the death of their guide, Yates, Faye, Anders, and Mark head further into the jungle and finally make contact with warriors of the Yacumo tribe. For no clear reason, they shoot at the natives, and then upon entering their village, proceed to humiliate the natives by killing their livestock and burn their village to the ground, in which they intend to use the killing to stage a mock up of a Yamamomo raid on their village. Several natives flee, while a few others are killed or burned alive by the sadistic Yates team. Then Yates, aroused by his murderous actions, has sex with Faye in full view of the frightened and bewildered natives, while Andres secretly films it. In the films' most gratuitous scene, the team happens upon a ritualistic forced abortion and the clubbing death of the mother-to-be.Monroe tells the female executive, who also viewed the footage, against broadcasting it as he attempts to persuade the executives to abandon their plans to air the footage. But his request falls on deaf ears as the executives want callous sensationalism that the public needs to thrive on with the brutal footage, which will bring ratings to their company.
The next day, Monroe's anxiety has turned into anger when he meets again with the three executives and tells them that he has viewed the final reel and says that it is "offensive, dishonest, and inhuman". He leads the executives into a screening room to view the final reel of the film:In the final reel, Yates speaks to the camera where it is days after their massacre of the Yacumo tribe; they are in a different part of the jungle for the vegetation is different and there is no sign of the feared Yamamomo tribe. Suddenly, the group happens upon a young woman, a Yamamomo woman. Triumphantly and inexplicably, the men attack her, taking turns raping her while rolling in the mud of a nearby clearing, while one man holds her down, the other rapes her, and the third gleefully films the action. Faye tries to protest, but is held back by Anders. As Yates takes his turn to rape the terrified young woman, a Yamamomo warrior crouches in the grass yards away, watching the savage film crews' atrocities. The film cuts to a riverside clearing where the mud-covered Yates team find the same Yamamomo woman dead and vertically impaled to the ground with a 12-foot pole exiting out of her mouth. Yates looks overjoyed and is told to look concerned for the camera. The epitome of hypocrisy, Yates talks about the profound disrespect the Yamamomos have for their women and that the woman was killed as a form of sexual punishment. It is not clear whether the woman was killed by her own people for being sexually violated by the Yates team, or if Yates and his group killed the woman themselves to rig up this latest spectacular footage for their people back home. As a result of their actions, the vengeful Yamamomo emerge for a final 10-minute violent confrontation. In the jungle, the group is surrounded by dozens of Yamamomo warriors throwing spears and arrows at them. Anders fights them by rashly shooting at several of them, while Yates (deranged to the last) continues filming, saying the footage is beautiful. Anders is felled by a spear, as Yates continues filming. Anders' dead body is dragged away by the Yamamomo where they castrate, behead, and hack him apart before cooking his remains and eating them. Faye is the next as she is grabbed by several Yamamomo warriors where she is stripped, gang raped, and is also beheaded and mutilated by the vengeful warriors. But it isn't long before Yates and Mark pay the price for their own indiscretion when the warriors spot Yates still filming them, and attack. Yates is attacked and falls to the ground, his camera still rolling as it drops from his hands, capturing his own horrifying death in close-up. In a fitting touch of irony, the last thing which his dying eyes see is the same camera lens which he and his crew used to capture the images of death and mayhem...... which in fact they were all responsible for.Back in the screening room, Monroe looks at the three executives, who look on with silent shock and disgust. Finally agreeing with Monroe's assessment at last, one of them orders that the film be destroyed and not shown. As Monroe walks out of the building and into the hostile concrete jungle of New York, he looks around at the people on the streets and mutters, "I wonder who the real cannibals are".

Tags: cruelty, murder, violence, cult, horror, insanity, tragedy, suspenseful, sadist

Review:
In a strange way the violent scenes somehow speak for themselves and do deliver some kind of message, but that's open for discussion.If ever a movie deserved the label "disturbing", it's "Cannibal Holocaust".
But after watching it in completion I was bowled over ..I wasn't expecting to be challenged by its visuals as well as with the sociological lessons and questions it raised.The film is real, genuine and honest to the subject topic: 'Barbarity' can be innate in all humans.It can be argued that humans coming into the homo-sapiens stage of evolution survived and expanded because of what is now considered barbarous savage ways.
It gives a feeling of Blair Witch done right, even though there are some very obviously contrived scenes in which nobody is holding the camera, but despite some small cosmetic problems this is the best horror movie I have ever seen.Unlike most "shock" films, such as the Guinea Pig movies, Cannibal Holocaust has a very well written plot and a definite progression.
Cannibal holocaust is a truly charged viewing experience; in all its 20 years of existence no other non mondo film (until maybe Men behind the sun) had such a reputation to shock, even today it is believed by some at the UKs trading standards to be an actual snuff film.
But perhaps the most unsettling thing about CH is that it is an exploitation film, and the scenes of animal cruelty (and even human) unsettle because they are being shown to promote a response...should you look away or not?Like I said Cannibal Holocaust is a truly unique experience, not some Gory novelty like Cannibal Ferox, and in this time of increased media coverage of true life atrocity maybe its pertinent?
Cannibal Holocaust is garbage at its absolute worst.First off, this film is commonly referred to as "disturbing." Truly, the only two things truly disturbing about this flick are the animal killings, and the appalling atrocious acting, directing and writing.
Cannibal Holocaust has always enjoyed that special sort of notoriety that comes from been banned in various "territories" but whereas some movies get the cull for reasons of self-censorship or cultural sensitivity (A Clockwork Orange for example), Holocaust is a thick soup of voyeuristic, demented violence and gore - censored despite the fact that the sort of people who'd want to see it more than once are precisely the type of malforms that will get a copy anyway whereas most others would either chose not to watch it or start to and realise that it's a load of old crap.
The story or hook if you like, is that, some movie makers go into the jungle, encounter a tribe of base savages who eat their fellow man and get horribly brutalised, murdered and consumed but luckily for us the whole thing is captured on film.
A group of rescuers set off up the Amazon in search of a film crew that has not returned.The rescuers soon come to the realization that the film crew have been murdered and eaten by the local cannibals.They rescue the film footage from the cannibals and bring it home in the hope it will shed some light on the fate of the crew,but what they find in the reels of film is even worse than what they experienced themselves in the jungle.After so many years being told it was a piece of trash I was very interested to see for myself what all the fuss was about.....well I gotta tell you I was blown away,it is technically very proficient and added to that a very memorable score that at times doesn't quite suit what you are seeing on screen but I think that was the point....the animal killings I must say were quite disturbing especially the turtle,I really don't know how someone slaughters animals for a living EUUUGGHH!.....even the natives were very believable and I can see why someone might believe that it was a documentary,it really hit the spot,its gore/torture/rape scenes were all done with the utmost reality,I guess the prominence of nudity and genitalia aided the believability....
I would like to rate this movie a 20 out of 10 for the pure horrofying, shocking, heart devouring impact it had on me and a 50 out of 10 for its attempt to approach the reality of a documentary - because at first that's what I thought it was - but then I read somewhere that in the making of this movie the animals were actually tortured and that this part was no SE work.
- A pig is kicked and then killed with a rifle when shot in the head by an actor.Although I'm the kinda guy that likes to be shocked now and then and have his blood being pumped faster through his veins by a film, this is not quite what I'm looking for when I consult the horror section.
With that said, here's a very quick summary to get you started: Some people film a documentary, they disappear, the footage is found later and watched.This movie was disturbing.
But the filmmakers would like you to think there's some in there, and that, in a way, actually hinders what could have been a really powerful movie.Not that CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST isn't outrageously violent and extremely disturbing at times, but like so many other "serious" exploitation movies (e.g. SALO, MEN BEHIND THE SUN), the filmmakers go so far over the top depicting the spilling of blood and guts that whatever points they purport to want to make are drowned in their own gruesome sensationalism.This is especially counter-productive in CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST because it is the very thing that director Ruggero Deodatto claims to be satirizing.
Deodatto, like Stone, smacks you over the head with a bludgeon, making his points so obviously and self-righteously that they go right out the window, and the movie winds up being little more than a freakshow of eye-popping special effects and nauseating live animal slaughter.The animal slaughter in CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is especially offensive, more so than any other of this odd subgenre, because most of it is perpetrated by the explorers and not the (supposedly real) native cannibal tribe.
The camera shake makes it look like it's real, but you can tell at the first glance that it is not.The plot is weak and the violence is not what I expected, it is NOT BRUTAL, it's just something that might look brutal and have an impact, but in another movie, with a different crew.Basically, if you would take aside the animal killing (which is for real, it doesn't bring anything to the movie and is just disgusting - I don't know how some people can enjoy watching that), you would end up with a movie that doesn't make you feel anything.
In a subtle way, Ruggero Deodato asks the question who the real cannibals are in this film...those who're just following their traditional and ancients life-styles or those who're full of disrespect and willing to sacrifice everything in order to shoot a controversial story.
Admittedly Deodato (the director) deserves his dues, for an exploitation pic' Cannibal Holocaust is a lot more crafty and manipulative than most and is certainly the better of a pretty awful bunch of movies, but that doesn't mean it's all that good in it's own right either.
Cannibal Holocaust recently has collected more of it's fair share of attention, with people pointing out similarities with 'The Blair Witch Project' and it's use of 'lost footage' and a storyline of a film crew ending up in s**t creek down in the woods (or in this case the jungle).
If you are on the look out for some kind of queer cheap thrill some may find in the carnage of an auto-accident (which lets face it, can be pretty horrific if you're into that kind of thing) or perhaps you are simply intrigued by so many people's comments, you may be suckered in by attempting to find this movie, but on the other hand if Deodato's disregard for both human and animal life sickens you (and I hope it does) as much as the director relished putting it up there on screen, I can only hope you're choice in whether to watch is more of a thoughtful than voyeuristic one..
Good horror movies don't necessarily have to contain pornographic scenes, or "real" animal torture scenes to make me enjoy them, like this pile of trash "Cannibal Holocaust" does.
From the predictable cries of "Snuff movie!" through the heavy criticism of the animal killings and the condemnation of the exploitative footage, the critics missed the point completely.It's a chilling look at an unknown culture and it tells us a lot about our own civilisation.
Professor Monroe's unanswered question on the New York street at the film's will linger on in many a viewer's mind after they've watched this?Disgracefully banned in a number of countries; "Cannibal Holocaust" is a film which needs to be seen by as wide as audience as possible.
With a title like that I should have known better but nevertheless I was staggered by what I saw.I had the misfortune to get my hands on an uncut version of this disgusting film and I was amazed that it was possible to get together a large enough group of sick individuals to make something so appalling and on such a scale.This whole film is basically a fantasy for those who get sexual gratification from images of rape, murder and animal cruelty and it presents it in the most unpleasant and lascivious tone imaginable.
A man who is quite happy to torture and kill animals for shock value should not be making a film about how civilised people can be more barbaric than cannibals.
The acting is pretty horrific, the entire plot is a mess, and the violence is mostly laughable.If you enjoy fake rape or the totally unnecessary killing of real animals, this film is for you.
The acting is pretty much non-existent and by the time the end credits rolled by, I found myself wishing that director, Ruggero Deodato had been devoured by a tribe of cannibals himself, thus sparing us from such amateur fair.Now, let me be clear that I am not a squeamish type when it comes to movie gore.
This film in so many words is ugly and awful, I got no enjoyment out of it at all, just came out the room feeling quietly discusted.I am a huge fan of the horror genre and respect such early works of directors like Peter Jackson (a god!) and George Romero but this isnt even a horror, its the nearest thing to a poorly done 'snuff' film.I understand that some quite sick people may find this picture remotely interesting for some unknown reason there are people who enjoy seeing a rare giant turtle being ripped open alive or a woman being raped and having her head smashed in by a rock on the aftermath.If your after cheap thrills through real kills then this is the film for you but personally I feel you'd have to have a screw loose to enjoy this poor atempt at film making.
Yet Cannibal Holocaust is not only a collection of brutal scenes, one after the other.Some calm and quiet music introduces us to what the world has come to name the cornerstone of civilization New York, but if the movie is comprehended as it should be, after the final titles close we'll have not only to feel disgust of how an inhabitant of the Amazonas eats raw meat.
One of the original 'Video Nasties', the film features graphic depictions of (staged) snuff, real-life executions (courtesy of newsreel footage from war-torn Africa) and - most upsettingly - Mondo-style images of real-life animal killing, including the dismemberment of a live sea turtle by an Amazonian tribe.However, one of the biggest reasons why this one made such a stir is for a neat trick that the makers of the The Blair Witch Project re-employed two decades later: Cannibal Holocaust is a film within a film, staged as a documentary.
The director further reinforces this idea by showing us the crew's previous film, snappily titled "Road to Hell", which features actual shock-footage of real-life political executions, bodies and decomposition.Deodato's concept of a morally-bankrupt media in love with ratings and awards at the sake of human suffering is an important one; a prospect still very much relevant today, what with the over-abundance of reality TV shows, atrocity websites, and the concept of violence as entertainment.
2)Like lots of other people, I am tempted by the fact that it was banned!I have to say that as far as the basics of the film go....the rape and murder....the cannibalism and the torture...it's all pretty much mundane and you can actually find far worse in a lot of films.The only thing that really got to me was what was done to the animals!There are scenes of real brutality towards a lot of animals in this film and frankly it appalled me!I love films with buckets of blood and gore and rape.
Cannibal Holocaust was banned at the time of release and even had claims of being a 'stuff' film (i.e. one where real people are killed on camera).
This maybe untrue, but viewers should be warned that, although the people who die are all just covered in fake blood and prosthetics, REAL animals were killed for the making of the film.
"Cannibal Holocaust" lies within the annals of the horror genre with an immense reputation looming over it— I, like many, had heard various things about the film over the years, with the most general common threads being that it was disgusting and utterly abhorrent.
Problematic in so many ways, yes, but I do believe there is a significance to seeing actual death on film (of animals), considering how removed most people are about what killing a living creature actually looks like.Overall, I got way more than I bargained for with "Cannibal Holocaust." It's a film whose moral implications run far deeper than the gorefest reputation it has attained, and that was something that caught me completely off guard.
'Cannibal Holocaust' bucks this trend in a major way in both having an intelligent point to express about humanity's savagery (as relevant then as much as now) and doing so in a manner which, despite some patchy acting and directing, retains the power to challenge and shock even the more jaded modern film buff, i.e. me.The plot of the movie sees Professor Monroe travel into the South American jungle to find out what happened to a group of three documentary film makers who have gone missing.
So far, so typical exploitation Video Nastybut both the realistic depiction of some of the horrors via the found footage format (which this movie basically started and which would go onto to spawn the likes of 'The Blair Witch Project' (1999) and 'Cloverfield' (2008)) are so well done that there is a story that upon finishing the film and returning to Italy the director was suspected of actually killing the actors in the film and had to track them down to prove that it was not a snuff film.
Apocryphal or not, the story captures the mood of the film and, indeed, the animal cruelty scenes are actually real and may sincerely disturb some viewers.However, the violence is not for no good reason.
This is probably the most brutal film I've ever seen.The acting was very realistic, the music and camera work help add to the eeriness of it all.This is basically the birth of the found footage sub-genre.While I agree what they did killing the animals was horrible and unforgivable I feel the Director and Actors should be held accountable, but the movie itself should not be considered trash due to that.It has an amazing story that's really quite poetic, questioning who are really the monsters?
Cannibal Holocaust is more of an experience than an actual film - and that's just what the makers of this feature planned.If you can stomach it, watch it in disgust, shock, and reverence.
Cannibal Holocaust is a 1980 Italian horror movie directed by Ruggero Deodato which is shot in a documentary style.
The point of the film is that us civilized people can be extremely savage, but actually killing animals for the sake of a movie, even one with a message such as that, is hypocritical to me.
So director Ruggero Deodato had several animals murdered for his own sick pleasure.The sad thing is people try to defend this film and say its message is about the medias love of violence for ratings.
The movie is 2 parts in one being the first half being a "Predator"-style action adventure and the second half the viewer sees through the eyes of the filmmakers within the movie reels documentary-style, yes the acting is awkward but the movie is very original with a haunting music score and has been known as the source for "The Blair Witch Project" with the same concept of movie-making with a home camera to make it as a fake documentary and similar plot about people looking for something legendary then a year later their footage is found.The movie is filled with realistic graphic violence, unpleasant rape scenes ( the one in the beginning makes the one in "Clockwork Orange" look tame), cannibalism, nudity, gore, smarmy sex scenes, and the most talked about thing in this movie is the horrifying scenes of actual animals getting killed on screen such as a large turtle getting hacked and ripped apart even from it's shell.
I don't want to spoil the unraveling of the message over the course of the film, but by the end, it may really make you think about some things in life a little differently, including this movie.The biggest criticism I hear from people who resent this movie is that several animals were killed in the making of Cannibal Holocaust, which I think is truly horrible, but I think it's more important to look at the film it's self and not the production behind it.