The True Story of The Most Disturbing Film Ever Made.

One would think that any given person should be able to watch whatever they want, whenever they want. However, as a culture, some men and women of much ‘viewing wisdom’ have decided that many things were never meant to be seen. This could be a pornographic film, or maybe even a snuff film nevertheless they are films that reveal true and raw reality. They offer no fiction, but only vulgar truth. But what to make of fiction? Should the sight of a person be cut from something that is purely fictitious solely because one group of officials says so? Where can a film cross the line from obscenity to a violation of the law? A certain amount of gore on screen? Too much nudity? These questions have been thrown around within the industry for years. Many films have risen to question these different ideals with their harsh and grotesque imagery. Films like 1981’s The Evil Dead and 1979’s Zombi 2 have been censored, banned, and destroyed all across the country by officials to ensure their frames are never projected again. The objective is to ensure that the wellbeing of the innocent citizens of the world never be corrupted with their viewing, or so they think. While many conservative people side with banning of films, others in support of free speech find it repulsive and a major violation of the first amendment. While the medium of film is the same in any reel, the content and the frames, all tell a different and very unique story.

Films, right out the gate, were challenged with censorship issues as early as the late 1800’s. The State of Michigan, in 1897, made it illegal to have any distribution of films with prize fighting in it. This was to prevent people from not going to the actual events themselves and also served as the very first censorship of film. From that point on, censorship in American film would grow in relevance to become a normal part of the post production process.

Fast forward to the years of exploitation horror arising in the late 1970’s. More and more films were banned by the censorship boards stirring up minor controversy over a film and then, ironically, attracting an underground and curious audience. This kind of film culture was most primarily focused in Italy and with Cannibal Jungle films. The craze of cannibal films started with director Umberto Lenzi’s Man From the Deep River (1972) which would be released in New York as Sacrifice! and was a 42nd street hit. The theme of these 70’s film had a lot to do with fear of the unusual and foreign with these Cannibals almost exclusively being mysterious jungle tribes. Ruth Perlmutter writes in the Georgia Review that people, “watch a grotesque world of ‘unspeakable practices’ and ‘unnameable acts’ and sense that we the spectators are the real grotesques, the true anomalies.” This gross and disturbing feeling became all the rave for the 70’s horror junkie not only in Italy but all across the globe. In America, directors such as Herschell Gordon Lewis made exploitation gore films such as A Taste of Blood (1967), The Wizard of Gore (1970), and The Gore Gore Girls (1972) for the audiences seeking that very same feeling. The exploitation craze of the 70’s was real and alive and nothing had ever caused such a moral stir in the film industry. However, no film could match the controversy in censorship than Ruggero Deodato’s 1979 film, Cannibal Holocaust. A film that, upon its release, shocked the film industry into utter silence… that brought out the worst and most roaring backlash of censorship and legal pursuits of any major motion picture ever made.

Ruggero Deodato’s intention was in no way to make an exploitation horror. While it was something he was good at, Cannibal Holocaust was the deepest conceptual film of his career. Professor in the Department of Language, Literature and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Mikita Brottman wrote a study on offensive films entitled simply “Offensive Films”. She explores Cannibal Holocaust explaining that it was “the merging and fusion of two fascinating cult cycles in the history of offensive films. Cannibal Holocaust was the first “cannibal mondo” film, standing at the crossroads of the cannibal cycle of the late 1970’s and the early 1980’s and that other celebrated Italian cinematic tradition, the mondo movie” While Cannibal films were often times frowned upon by critics, according to Brottman, Mondo cinema typically included social critique that played well with film goers and would make for an interesting mix in this bizarre exploitation flick. Originally, Deodato had no interest in making another cannibal film. He had previously directed 1977’s Last Cannibal World which received great box office results according to Deodato, however he was ready to move on despite the success of the film. Later, a sales team with potential funding from Japan and Germany approached Deodato in an attempt to get him to film another Cannibal film. They saw the potential revenue due to the past results of Last Cannibal World, especially with the Asian and European box offices sporting high profits. While at first he was unsure, when he saw the major volunteer funding being brought forward, he jumped on board. “They said to me, here is the cash, go make another cannibal film!” Before the creation of the screenplay alongside writer Gianfranco Clerici, Deodato took notice to some intriguing Italian Media Reports. These reports covered the acts of the Red Brigades terrorism. However, Deodato felt something was off about these reports and their genuine journalistic integrity. The Red Brigade terrorist group was a part of a left wing Marxist-Leninist group who were attempting to force Italy to leave the NATO alliance during the early 1970’s. By 1974, the group had committed their first murder and was then considered a totally covert terrorist organization. The group is most infamous for their capture and execution of the Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, in the year of 1978. Much of this group’s violent activities were filmed and shown on many media networks to keep people informed.

However, Deodato felt that these acts of violence were partly staged and over the top in order to gain viewership for the news sources showing them. He was deeply disturbed to think something so horrid could be done simply to make more interesting content. The idea struck such an emotional chord with Deodato that he decided to express the only way he could, his filmmaking. “The film was an attack on the journalism, that disgusting side of journalism that deserved to be unveiled” Deodato explained. This would act as the ‘mondo’ side of his Cannibal film that would play off well with critics later on.

The plot of Cannibal Holocaust, or originally known as the “Green Inferno”, was to show four documentary filmmakers who went into the Amazonian Jungle to shoot footage of the cruel traditions of a cannibalistic tribe. The crew stages many scenes in the jungle to make it seem more engaging and abuse and terrorize the natives as a result. On vengeful terms, Deodato has the crew killed and eaten by the cannibals at the end of the film to make his point on the fate this type of reporting deserves.

They filmed the movie in the Amazonian Rainforest of Columbia and used real local natives for filming. Deodato states that, “I don’t make pretend huts with straw roofs- I go to their actual villages” as this style of realism is extremely important to Deodato and his religious commitment to what he calls, “Rosellini Realism.” The film included many of the local wildlife being killed by the documentary crew. However, instead of staging these animal killings, Deodato had them actually killed on camera by the actors. This brutality is clear in the film and is incredibly hard to watch for some. Actor Carl Yorke recalled that, “we had people throwing up on set” during the shooting of the scenes. During the execution of a squirrel monkey, one actor broke down and began to cry after killing it and then had to redo the take killing another monkey in the process. The film included an animal death count of seven, and played a major role in the films global banning later on.

Deodato later expressed that he did not intend to kill any animals originally but was pressured by the producers to do so. The producers supposedly claimed that the animal killings would play off really well in the asian market. Deodato remarked that, “I tried to limit myself in what we did therefore, I tried to use only little animals and to not put them through to much.” Another major factor that was integrated later were the human deaths on screen. While no actual people were killed during the filming of the picture, Deodato had the actors who were killed in the picture not participate in any work for the following year to support the film’s illusion. so that people would think the footage was real. The film used a “found footage” approach to shooting and was the first of its kind to do so. This realism made the film even more shocking to audience members who had never seen such a type of filmmaking before. The extreme imagery, such as a woman impaled by a pole through her crotch and out of her mouth, caused a large wave of concern. The film was advertised as snuff film, its trailers claiming that, “The men you will see eaten alive, are the same men who filmed these incredibly sequences” and “You won’t believe what you’re seeing ACTUALLY happened!” It was a major success with screening representatives. as the budget of the film at 180 million lire was surpassed with an astounding 800 million lire purchase for the European rights to the film.

February 20, 1980, was the opening night of Cannibal Holocaust in a local theater of Milan, Italy. The film screens and the audience are generally pleased with the result. While terrifying, people understood the powerful message Deodato was trying to convey resulting in positive reviews from Italian film magazines and critics alike . “Everyone wanted it when they saw it” Deodato claimed in reference to the many potential distributors who were present that night at the screening. However, Brottman speculates that, “Critics were not slow to pick up on the way Deodato appropriated the Italian mondo tradition and, while pretending to denounce it, made a film that was, in its way, even more gruesome, exploitive, and scandalous” nonetheless reviews agreed the film did what it set out to do, shock the audience. “As reviewer Jean-Louis Cros (1981) put it, “The title alone is enough to stop one in one’s tracks”” Richard Lelande writer for Image et Son would later state that he was shocked by the film in which people are “rounded up,... mutilated, decapitated, flayed, degraded” However, another master of film, Sergio Leone, famous for his spaghetti westerns wrote Deodato a very foreboding letter.

“Dear Ruggero, What a movie! The second part is a masterpiece of cinematographic realism, but everything seems too real that I think you will get in trouble with all the world” -Sergio Leone.

Leone’s insight came true after a complaint to the local magistrate caused every copy of Cannibal Holocaust to be immediately pulled from theaters not even two weeks after its premier. Not only that, but Deodato was arrested and charged with obscenity. It was quickly banned in nearly 50 countries and was only viewable through underground video sources. “It was given an alternative name in order to sell it,” explains Deodato, “they called it Jungle Holocaust.” The film was targeted primarily by moral and animal rights activists due to the obscenity and live animal killings displayed in the film. Despite its limited run, the film still made $21 million against E.T. which made $30 million during its opening weekend in Japan where the film was a smash hit.

About a year after the release of the film an italian magazine called, Foto, raised an interesting suggestion. Due to the actors involved in the films sudden disappearance after the film’s release, the magazine proposed that Cannibal Holocaust was in fact actually a snuff film. That the people killed the movie had actually been killed. Following the publication of the Foto article the list of charges against Deodato and his film were then amended to include murder. Deodato went to court and testified against this ridiculous claim. The courts examined much of the film and, in their eyes, the evidence stacked up against Deodato fairly well. The actually animal killings, the extreme realism of the infamous impaled woman scene, and the mysterious disappearances of the actors caused reason to believe these people were actually dead. The film was advertised as a snuff film all this time, could they really have been truthful in advertising the death of people on film? Deodato, who of course knew this was false, tried to explain to the courts that as a part of the film the actors who were killed signed contracts with the production and made sure that they would not appear in any form of media for a year after the film’s release. The courts were unsure of this claim, and so Deodato had the leads of the film come out of hiding and

appear on an Italian television talk show. Furthermore, Deodato went into detail onto the impalement scene. He explained that a bicycle seat was put on the end of an iron pole on which she sat. She simply held a short length of balsa wood in her mouth and looked upwards thus causing the effect of impalement. He showed off pictures of the actress interacting with other cast and crew on the set in makeup as well to the court. After this evidence was brought forth, the murder charges were immediately dropped. However, this did not stop any sort of ban on Cannibal Holocaust. The ban remained due primarily to the genuine animal slayings which were currently being cited towards animal cruelty laws that were strongly infringed upon by the film. While there was no law against specifically what actually happened in the filming process, according to Deodato, “there was a small public safety law from the past that stated you could not introduce spanish bullfighting in Italy- it was not allowed so they linked this law to the animal killings in the film.” Deodato, Franco Palaggi, Gianfranco Clerici, and a United Artists Europa representative all were then given four month suspension sentences after their conviction for obscenity and violence.

Deodato had enough. Just like the Italian media he had been so frustrated at, it seemed as though the truth had been hidden once again. His film, trying to attack those hiding false journalism had been banned. His message no longer public, Deodato had to get his film unbanned. For three years he slaved away trying to get his picture public again. Finally, in 1984, the courts ruled in his favor after the substantial amount of evidence in regards to the human deaths being false and animal deaths not truly infringing upon updated animal cruelty laws.. Cannibal Holocaust was given a VM18 rating and was available for video rental. However, this only proved to be a success locally. Many countries held their ban on the film much longer than others. In fact, the film was only recently released in the United Kingdom in 2001 and in Australia in 2005. The movie was available again, and even though some countries, such as New Zealand, had certain scenes and sequences banned, the film was nonetheless available once more. The message of false reporting and journalistic integrity could continue through Deodato’s cruel imagery and he could rest easy.

When the film was initially released it was nearly impossible to find it in America. The film was foreign, banned in most countries, and no new prints were being made. By 1984 the film had finally reached the U.S.A. and went under inspection by the MPAA for its censorship review. The film was cut down and a substantial amount of the film was lost in doing so. The MPAA made the films American Rating an “X” which did not help accessibility either and killed any chance at good box office results. “The X Rating for the film Cannibal Holocaust has been sustained by the Classification and Rating Appeals Board of the Motion Picture Association of America after a hearing yesterday” explains a Variety article. The statement was passed by Laurence Joachim of Trans-Continental Film Corporation and Child Psychiatrist Dr. George Leib. The classification and Rating Administration was represented by its chairman, Richard D Heffner. After the censorship had been complete, the film, in a very heavily cut form, began its incredibly short run. The film had limited screenings across the nation but primarily in New York where part of the film took place. While Cannibal Holocaust had a generally positive reception, it did not come without its critics. While the limited audience praised the film for its great criticism on media reporting, others said the film was incredibly hypocritical. The fact that Deodato had actually killed animals in his film in order to raise the shock value, in a way, made his film exactly what he was fighting against. The staging of these animal deaths for shock made his film, in a way, no better than the Italian Redbridge Terrorism coverage. One reviewer states that Cannibal Holocaust is a “product of overkill in the domain of horror, would merit no more than an accusing silence, were it not for the enormous hypocrisy of its director” Attacked for this hypocrital cruelty, Deodato in past years has vocalized some of his regrets. “I was stupid to introduce Animals,” claims Deodato. Others saw this as a tragic irony that only made the film more powerful in its emotional brutality. Brottman sees the film as “a film of restoration and redistribution rather than a film of chaos and destruction” despite these facts and supports the film in its brutality.

What the MPAA did not understand by sustaining the X Rating, is that when someone says someone can’t watch something, their only desire becomes to try and watch it. With time, despite being so hard to attain through mainstream sources, underground screenings of the film began to sprout across the country. One local theater in New York was actually able to attain a reel of the original film for a week long run before being pulled. With this rising buzz, United Artists, an independent film distributor, became interested in picking up the film for the american market. They began the process but then shut down due to the censorships in Italy. Variety Magazine touched on this issue by stating that, “Cannibal Holocaust a United Artists pickup was convicted of violating penal code on two separate counts- obscenity and violence.” The content included in the film was clearly not playing off too well on the cushy American film goer as suggested by the constant failed attempts to get it shown. Even the American actors of the film itself said that the making of the picture was as equal of a horror as it is to watch. “The level of cruelty onset was unknown to me.” Carl Yorke explained, “us westerners were quite startled.” Adult Film star, Robert Kerman, another american actor who worked on the film hated the film for its cruelty. He claimed that Cannibal Holocaust was “worse than any pornography that I’ve ever been apart of.” Even Variety put in a word in a 1985 article condemning the film for “Deodato’s inclusion of much extraneous gore effects and nudity, as well as the genre’s usual (and disgusting) killing of animals on camera” However, this bad buzz only attracted American film goers more than ever, and while many were repulsed by the images in the film, nobody could look away.

Over time, a cult following for the movie arose and finally appreciated what Deodato was trying to say upon the film’s initial release. While most agree the animal killings were too much, people really enjoy the film. The attack on staged and exaggerated media reports was a problem and the subtle tones set in the film were more appreciated by fans. It also brought in a large influence into the horror industry upon resurfacing as a cult classic. The film’s utilization of found footage with a handheld camera would inspire decades of filmmakers in America with films such as The Blair Witch Project (1999), Paranormal Activity (2007), and Cloverfield (2008). The movie’s impact is still heard to this day as many filmmakers, such as Eli Roth, take great influence from it in their own work.

Critics rave that the picture is “The most shocking, disturbing, and amazing horror film I have ever seen,” and that it is “the Citizen Kane of cannibal films.” While the movie was still able to be seen, no major American distributor had picked up the seemingly untouchable film. However, independent DVD distributor, Grindhouse Releasing, who specialize in exploitation cult pictures saw lots of potential in Deodato’s cannibal film and decided to pick it up. Since then, many versions and sets of the movie have been distributed not only all across America, but the entire globe. The film is now a cult phenomenon in America and has an extremely large and growing fanbase. Robert Kerman says that he often gets asked for autographs for his work in the film from fans and that he “finds it disturbing” that people thinks it's so great and that he “can’t figure out why it's become such a classic”. What Kerman doesn’t understand is the reason the film made the impact it did. Ruggero Deodato pushed the boundaries on how a film can be made by pioneering the found footage style shooting. He brought audiences into a whole new level of surrealism in violence by blurring the lines with actual killings and staged ones. Deodato simply made an innovative and unique horror film that broke the social normality and morality thus causing a stir that got people interested. Brottman argues that “Cannibal Holocaust is not the mutilation of animals, nor exploitative cruelty. This film is about,... the improper narrative. Yate’s Expedition is not only a narrative but a libel, in the original sense of the term: a libel not just against foreigners, but against humankind in general”

The impact that Cannibal Holocaust had on the people who saw it and who see it today will remain as powerful as it did. It is shocking and hard hitting. It is provocative and graphic. It is something that makes you feel as though you should not be watching it. Composer of the film Ritz Ortolani says, “It is a film that is still modern, it has not dated and is still valid.” Robert Kerman claims the film was the biggest blow to the death of the Italian film industry and the replacement of imported American films taking over their movie theaters. The film, morally just or not, certainly sends a message on the malevolent undertones of the modern day media and their desperation for viewerships. How far will humans go for success? How cruel can a human become? Or as the last line of the film ponders… “I wonder who the real cannibals are?” Cannibal Holocaust changed the way movies were made and how they were supervised. It changed the way censorship boards would approach violence in film. Most importantly, it dug a grave for the popularity of falsely advertised snuff films. The idea that these people had actually died, that animals were actually killed, the actors going into hiding, the snuff film advertising, all of it would soon plummet into the dark corner of a film textbook and nowhere else. The idea of snuff filmmaking was never incredibly popular in America and this movie would solidify the genre as untouchable. Will a film ever make such an impact the way that this one did? Will another film ever shock and repulse audiences to this extent again in our seemingly sensitized cinematic future?

Maybe…

...I’m working on it.