The Green Inferno: Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust

            What to say about Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1980)? What to say, at least, that hasn’t already been said? VILE! DEPRAVED! SICKENING! Masterpiece? It is certainly true that no viewer new to the film is ever prepared for what awaits in the following hour and a half. Might it even be appropriate to say that those who have seen it are still unprepared upon their second viewing, or third… or fourth? There must be something truly special about a film that has that power. Whatever else Cannibal Holocaust is, it is a masterpiece.

           

            The premise is astonishingly simple (the best plots are). Four documentary filmmakers head down to the Amazon jungle intent on capturing on camera the fabled cannibal tribes. Of course, they disappear. An anthropologist investigates the disappearance. He makes contact with the tribe and discovers the canisters of film the team shot. As the audience, we then view the footage and discover their fates. And with that comes the self-proclaimed “Most controversial movie ever made!”

            But first, a little background. Contrary to legend, Cannibal Holocaust is not the first of its kind. In fact, by the time it was released in the summer of 1980, the ‘Cannibal Exploitation’ subgenre had been going strong for eight years. The films in this niche were predominantly Italian to start. This makes perfect sense, considering the propensity for the ‘spaghetti’ filmmakers to include an extraordinary amount of brutality in their films. Of the 39 titles on Britain’s famous ‘Video Nasties’ list, 29 hail from Italy!

            The film often deemed to be the first entry in the cannibal canon is Umberto Lenzi’s Man From Deep River (1972) (aka Sacrifice!, Deep River Savages, and Il paeso dell sesso selvaggio). The film centers round a man captured by a tribe in the Amazon who eventually becomes one of them. Dances with Wolves eat your heart out, literally. It is curious that Lenzi’s later works Eaten Alive! (Mangiati Vivi! [1980]) and Cannibal Ferox (Make Them Die Slowly [1981]) are considered to be imitations of Cannibal Holocaust when the director is credited with starting the trend in the first place.

            Indeed, not only was Ruggero Deodato’s incredible work of ‘cinema verité’ not the first cannibal film, it wasn’t even his first. In addition to director Sergio Martino’s adventure opus Mountain of the Cannibal God (La montagna del dio cannibale [1978]), Deodato made his own cannibal adventure with Jungle Holocaust (Last Cannibal World; Ultimo mondo cannibale [1977]). Surprisingly, we find that the infamous Cannibal Holocaust is in fact a follow-up!

            What’s more, the tropes the film follows are well-worn in the genre. There is plenty of jungle, natural native nudity, actual animal slayings, and very gory, brutal violence. None of this is new, all of it tried and true. Even the concept of hand-held documentary footage can be lifted from Deodato’s contemporaries Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, whose films Mondo Cane (1961), Africa Addio (1966), and Goodbye, Uncle Tom (Addio zio Tom [1971]) ushered in a new era of cinematographic realism.

            With all of this pointing towards the film as unoriginal, one must ask “What makes it so special?” To turn a well-worn cultural maxim on its head, ‘Cannibal Holocaust may not be the first, but it certainly is the best’. So, perhaps the more appropriate question is, “Why is Cannibal Holocaust the best of its kind?”

            Ironically, many of the characteristics that make the film so great are also the ones that have made it so controversial. Due to the depictions of violence, Cannibal Holocaust was initially banned in nearly sixty countries, from Great Britain (as a Video Nasty) to its home country of Italy, where it was seized in Milan and the filmmakers arrested for obscenity. The courts, in fact, at first charged director Ruggero Deodato with murder, in the belief that the actors in the film had actually been killed. Deodato was forced to contact them and produce them alive to exonerate himself.

            Even today, while it is not under widespread ban, the work is still heavily censored in many countries. This is mainly to cut out the numerous scenes of violence towards animals, which were not simulated- animals were harmed in the making of this picture. These parts of the film are a main source of controversy, but also necessary to the success of the film (as horrid as that sounds).

            The realism portrayed is unlike any other film in existence. The fallacy of modern ‘found-footage’ films, such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cloverfield (2008) is that they still aspire to the theatricality of Hollywood. This is the very media that Cannibal Holocaust wishes to indict. Just as the TV Executive points out to Dr. Monroe (played with surprising naturalism by Robert Kerman), “Today people want sensationalism!” The onscreen slaughter of animals, especially one rather unlucky yellow-spotted river turtle, plays right into this. ‘You want sensationalism?’ Deodato seems to say, ‘you’ve got it!’ Happy now? This very social condemnation blatantly stands contrary to the label of exploitation given the film by those who decry it.

            But the real service the killings perform for the film is to set a tone for the audience.  We are duly shocked by this sort of snuff film á la National Geographic, and when the axe comes down, so to speak, we are prepared to believe that everything we are seeing is real. It is a magnificent cinematic magic trick. Many aspire to making their films believable, contending it is that holy grail of attributes that ultimately makes a great work of cinema. But few ever achieve it. Why is this, we must wonder?  Perhaps Cannibal Holocaust holds the answer. We cannot handle it. Is it too real? When a film finally convinces us to believe all that we see, we cannot escape the mortality of ourselves. The film challenges us to reconsider what we label ‘entertainment’. Our morality kicks in. Instead of condemning a filmmaker for showing human depravity (rationalizing that it was unnecessary), we finally acquiesce to condemning the evil of humanity itself. When we see the final ten minutes of Cannibal Holocaust, we cannot help but give ourselves over to the images before us. Logic says that is just a movie and it couldn’t have really happened. But on some level, we believe it is. And anything that can make us believe so unquestionably what we are being shown is real can make us reevaluate the standards we so blindly accept in everyday life. Standards of morality, of entertainment, of art.

            That is the power of Cannibal Holocaust.