Primitive savagery meets the brutality of the modern world in Ruggero Deodato’s timeless slice of visceral horror – Cannibal Holocaust, a film so violent and depraved that the director was charged with killing his own cast!
Anthropologist Harold Munroe is hellbound as he travels into the green inferno of South America’s rainforest in an attempt to find a documentary crew lost months before. Instead of survivors he discovers a world of cannibalistic excess beyond his wildest imaginings but when he returns home and screens the footage left behind by the eviscerated filmmakers, chaos erupts as the screen is filled with some of most disturbing images ever committed to celluloid. —Shameless Screen Entertainment
Growing up in Rome’s Parioli region, home to many of Italian cinema’s most notable figures of the 1950s, Ruggero Deodato naturally found an interest in cinema, as his friendship with the son of director Roberto Rossellini led to an assistant director job on Il Generale della Rovere in 1959. Over the next eight years, Deodato’s talents led him to assist on more than 40 films for such luminaries as Mauro Bolognini, Riccardo Freda, and Joseph Losey, and in 1968 he was rewarded with his first official film as director, Fenomenal e il Tesoro di Tutankamen (earlier, he had completed the direction of Antonio Margheriti’s 1964 film Ursus il Terrore dei Kirghisi but his contributions were uncredited). Deodato dabbled in many different genres over his lengthy career, from romantic dramas (L’Ultimo Sapore dell’Aria) to violent police thrillers (Uomini si Nasce, Poliziotti si Muore) to disaster epics (Concorde Affair ‘79), but it is in the realm of ultraviolent horror that he is best known. Creator… read more
Took me three tries to make it the whole way through this one. Extremely disturbing.
Animal killings aside, Cannibal Holocaust works because of how extreme the subject matter becomes. You CAN believe a bunch of disdainful documentarians would waltz into the Amazon and willingly exploit the indigenous population for the sake of sensationalism. The film's message is forced but Riz Ortolani's haunting score and Sergio D'Offizi masterful photography make the horror of this picture truly stand-out.
I found this film to be extremely powerful and haunting. This film was and still is extremely controversial mainly due to the legitimate killings of live animals on-screen. The remainder of the violence… read review
The notorious cult classic masterwork of the short-lived “cannibal” sub-genre of 70s Italian exploitation films actually lives up to its shocking reputation – it works both as a disturbing and surreal… read review