Cannibal Holocaust

1980
Unrated
1h 35m

IMDb RATING

5.8/10

63K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

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Found Footage Horror Jungle Adventure Splatter Horror Adventure Horror

During a rescue mission into the Amazon rainforest, a professor stumbles across lost film shot by a missing documentary crew.During a rescue mission into the Amazon rainforest, a professor stumbles across lost film shot by a missing documentary crew.During a rescue mission into the Amazon rainforest, a professor stumbles across lost film shot by a missing documentary crew.

Director
- Ruggero Deodato
Writers
- Gianfranco Clerici
- Giorgio Stegani
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

5.8/10

63K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

2,583

140

Director
- Ruggero Deodato
Writers
- Gianfranco Clerici
- Giorgio Stegani
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Mark Tomaso
(as Luca Giorgio Barbareschi)

Salvatore Basile

Chaco

Ricardo Fuentes

Carl Gabriel Yorke

Alan Yates
(as Gabriel Yorke)

Paolo Paoloni

3rd Executive

Lionello Pio Di Savoia

2nd Executive
(as Pio Di Savoia)

Luigina Rocchi

Eva Bravo

Adulteress
(uncredited)

Ruggero Deodato

Man Sitting in NYU Campus
(uncredited)

Guillermo

Felipe Ocaña
(uncredited)

Enrico Papa

Pantheon Interviewer
(uncredited)

David Sage

Alan's Father
(uncredited)

Kate Weiman

1st Executive
(uncredited)

Director
- Ruggero Deodato
Writers
- Gianfranco Clerici
- Giorgio Stegani
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Storyline

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Trivia
Ten days after its premiere in Milan, the film was seized by the Italian courts and director Ruggero Deodato was arrested and charged with obscenity. He was later charged with murdering several actors on camera and faced life in prison. The cast had signed contracts requiring them to disappear for a year after shooting to maintain the illusion that they had died. Deodato contacted Luca Barbareschi and told him to contact the three other actors who played the missing film team. When the actors appeared in court, alive and well, the murder charges were dropped.

Goofs
When the Yanomamo guide is given muskrat flesh to eat, he never puts any inside in his mouth. Instead, he opens his mouth a few times near it to give the impression that he is eating.

Quotes
Professor Harold Monroe: I wonder who the real cannibals are.

Crazy credits
The Grindhouse Releasing (USA) and Siren Visual (Australia) DVDs/Blu-rays omit the United Artists Europa logo in favor of a text crawl regarding the film's violent content: "The following motion picture contains intense scenes of extreme violence and cruelty. As distributors of this film, we wish to state with absolute sincerity that by no means do we condone the artistic decisions employed by the makers of this film. However, as firm believers in the constitutional right of free speech, we do not believe in censorship. To quote Thomas Jefferson, 'it behooves every man who values the liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasion of it in the case of others.' Therefore, we are presenting CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST for the first time in its uncut, uncensored original form, with all sequences photographed by the filmmakers, however offensive and repugnant, presented fully intact. What you will see will definitely shock and offend you. Nonetheless, it should be viewed as a disturbing historical document of a bygone era of extreme irresponsibility which no longer exists, and, hopefully, will never exist again. 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' - George Santayana"

Alternate versions
The Grindhouse Releasing re-release, as well as the 2005 DVD, features a scrolling warning before the film from the company stating that the film is uncut and uncensored and while they do not support the "artistic decisions" of the film, they do support free speech. It also plays part of Riz Ortolani's music score in the background.

Connections
Edited into Through Eyes of the Dead (1999)

User reviews661

Review

Featured review

Sympathy for the devil

Cannibal Holocaust was, first and foremost, a disgusting movie with more violence than I have ever seen. Despite this, it is also one of my favorite movies. 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. The focus is still on making the audience ill, but we don't even see any violence until fairly late in the movie, so the emphasis on plot is much stronger. The story told is a deep one, showing the lengths at which people will go for some goal, the example given being fame and fortune. The theme is reflected in parallel story lines through the second half of the movie, as Alan and his crew go to more and more desperate lengths for fame, and the professor struggles against a big media company to suppress the release of their footage. Even in a "meta" sense, we see the theme appear once again in the lengths the director of Cannibal Holocaust itself went, going so far as to kill and butcher four animals on camera.