“Before Paranormal Activity, before The Blair Witch Project…There was Cannibal Holocaust!”

Labeled as “The Most Controversial Movie Ever Made” comes the godfather of found footage films, 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust.  Written by Gianfranco Clerici, and directed by the infamous Ruggero Deodato, the film has been banned in many countries and has been surrounded in controversy for over 30 years.

THE PLOT

Two months have passed since a young and naive film crew has disappeared deep into the jungles of South America to document the existence of cannibal tribes.  In order to solve the mystery, a NYC university has assigned anthropologist Professor Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman) to travel to the jungle to figure out what has happened.  With the aid of a Venezuelan guide and a local tribesman, who has been captured and wrongly suspected to be a cannibal, the professor travels deep into the “Green Inferno” in the hopes of finding some sort of evidence of the missing film crew.  Eventually they encounter the feared and mysterious Yamamomo tribe.  Once he has established a sort of peace with the tribe, he stumbles across the camera equipment and a pile of film canisters that contain all of the footage shot by the missing film crew.

Once he returns to NY, Professor Monroe presents his findings to the University board.  They decide that they want to try to cash in on these discoveries by having Monroe review the footage and prepare it for a documentary on the film crew that vanished.  As he begins to review the films, he quickly discovers that more went on in that jungle than just a simple “observe and document” series of events.  In order to prevent this footage from being revealed to the public, Monroe must show it to the board executives, hoping that they will think twice about it.  What they view is some of the most disturbing and shocking footage they’ve ever seen!

SHOULD YOU SEE IT?

This movie is one of the most controversial and infamous films ever made.  In fact, the director himself almost faced life in prison when it was released, because the Italian courts thought they were viewing actual footage of murders.  He had to physically produce the actors themselves in order to clear himself of the charges.  To top it all off, some of the biggest controversy comes with the fact that several animals were actually killed on camera.  Compared to some of the present day horror films, some may find this film rather tame, but for its time, Cannibal Holocaust was pretty hardcore!  The special effects are great, and the gore is very convincing.  It is the first of its kind and, without a doubt, the trailblazer of the found footage genre of horror!