CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST
TAG LINE : EATEN ALIVE! THE ULTIMATE TERROR MOVIE!
RELEASED BY GO VIDEO
CATORGRY NUMBER : GO 121
RUNTIME : 85 MINUTES 14 SECONDS
AKA : CANNIBAL MASSAKER, HOLOCAUSTO CANNIBAL AND NACKT UND ZERFLEISCHT
DIRECTOR : RUGGERO DEADATO
COUNTRY : ITALY
YEAR : 1979
STARRING : ROBERT KERMAN, FRANCESCA CIARDI, PERRY PIRKANEN, SALVORTE BASILE AND RICHARDO FUENTES.
REVIEW
Another infamous cannibal nasty, this time directed by Ruggero Deodato, who was to make the also notorious House on the Edge of the Park the following year. Surprisingly, for once John Morghen doesn’t crop up in here. Although harrowing and violent like Ferox, this is actually a very well executed film, and the plot was copied by the makers of The Blair Witch Project.
The story involves a documentary team of three guys and one young woman, who go to the South American jungle to search for evidence of real cannibals. After a while, when they fail to report back, a US rescue party is sent to the jungle in order to search for them. Once in the jungle, the rescue team meet up with a tribe called the Tree-People, with whose help, they discover the grisly remains of the first team and some rolls of film that they shot.
Back in the US, as the reels of film are played back, we get to see what happened to the first group in pretty horrific detail. The group consists of Jack, Mark, Alan and Faye, who enter the jungle with a guide. As with Ferox, there are some pretty nasty scenes of animal carnage, as a musk rat has a blade thrust through it, and later on, a giant turtle is hoisted out of the river, pulled to pieces, and eaten. There is an early scene, where a young native girl is punished for adultery by being thrown down naked on the mud with her legs-spread, as a guy with a sharp stone hammers away at her nether regions until there is blood everywhere.
A bit later, they come across a tribal village, where they set fire to some native huts, with women and children still inside, before capturing and raping a young native girl. There is also an intriguing scene, where the group stumble across a woman, impaled on a stake from her arse to her mouth. Suddenly, they are ambushed by the tribe, as Jack is killed by a spear and the tribe feast on his intestines. The girl, Faye, is captured, raped and killed, and the two guys are also killed, one having his knob sawn off, in the last few frames of the film.
Overall, pretty powerful stuff. Although not for the squeamish, very well executed none-the-less.
WRITTEN BY TONY FRIZZELL
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