07

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Dear lord, I just read on imdb that someone is doing a remake of this film set to come out in 2009, I hope that's not true. This is the kind of movie that shouldn't have even been made one time, much less two.

Hmmmm... how do I even begin to talk about the showcase of unbelievable distaste that is Cannibal Holocaust? How about I start by saying that this movie is not for the faint of heart. Or for the average of heart. Or for anybody with a heart at all. It's basically just a lot of incredibly gross images loosely strung together and shown all in a row. No, wait, that makes it sound kind of cool. This movie is NOT COOL.

First of all, there are about 18 gang rape scenes in it. It seems as if every time director Ruggero Deodato was at a loss for what to do next, he would say (in Italian mind you) "Eh, let's throw in another gang rape scene to spice things up!" Secondly, they kill lots of animals in this film. That's one big downside to low-budget horror cinema before animal rights laws: when they kill animals on film, they actually kill animals. One of my favorite classic horror films is I Drink Your Blood (1970). Sadly they kill one chicken, one goat, and a whole mess of rats throughout the movie, but at least it's integral to the plot! In Cannibal Holocaust they kill animals just for the gross-out factor. There's one particularly ill scene where they kill a sea turtle, chop off its head and flailing limbs, crack open its shell and gut it. In another scene they stab a muskrat through the throat and then skin it and gut it. There's a simple rule that I like to follow while watching scary movies: fake blood and guts = funny! Real blood and guts = not so funny. Gang rape also errs on the not so funny side with me, ere go my distaste for fellow gross out film from the disco era I Spit on Your Grave (1978).

So now you're probably wondering, "What the hell kind of plot could bring about all this raping and animal slaughter?" Well it's kind of a Blair Witch documentary-style dealy with a frame story: A crew of filmmakers head into the Amazon to find a cannibalistic tribe, and (surprise!) they never return. Another crew heads out and finds their bodies as well as all their footage. They bring the footage back to New York where a bunch of stuffy old men watch it and discuss its grossness. They discover that the cannibals are not really bad guys at all, the real villains are the now-extinct filmmakers who burned down huts, raped girls, and shot people all for the sake of good cinema. Thus we learn the valuable life lesson that white "civilized" people are always the bad guys.

Oddly enough, I'm happy I watched this film because it brought me that much closer to fulfilling my goal of watching every single film of note in the whole western horror canon. But you shouldn't watch it. Leave this movie alone.