The Legacy of "Cannibal Holocaust"
Media / 3/10/2008 6:18:12 PM
Welcome new guest writer, Michael Penkas, to our Killer-works fold! Michael calls formerly from Detroit and currently haunts Chicago, spending many hours crafting delightfully twisted stories to tell at Twilight Tales. (I've especially enjoyed his bits about homicidal lingerie and ant sized aliens.) He's decided to jump into the deep end here at Killer-works and introduce our readers to an "extreme" horror classic. I may have said this about many of our features, but believe me when I say, this film is not for the faint of heart (not even for some seasoned horror buffs!)
Four
filmmakers go into the Amazon rain forest in search of a cannibal
tribe. They are never seen again. Six months later, their footage is
recovered. If it sounds familiar, keep in mind that
Cannibal Holocaust
predates The Blair Witch Project by twenty years. The whole
"found footage horror" sub-genre (which includes
Behind
the Mask, Last Broadcast, The Blair Witch Project,
Cloverfield, and Diary of the Dead) started with this
1980 cult classic.
What the format allows is a bird's eye view of human depravity. A
simple laundry list of atrocities will give you an idea: castration,
firing squad executions, rapes, abortion, cannibalism, amputations,
the iconic impalement scene and several (by all accounts, real)
animal mutilations. The Italian government was allegedly fooled by
the realism of the footage and actually put the director on trial
for murder.
The question I keep asking myself isn't why someone would make this
movie (money); but rather why I watched it. I first saw it during a
midnight screening at an art house theater. Halfway through the
movie, I began to wonder about the audience around me. What drove
each of us to spend a Saturday night watching a movie like
Cannibal Holocaust? The director's motive was as clear as that
of any drug dealer: to provide the product that customers demand.
But why the demand? In the end, the audience members are revealed as
being the true monsters with our unexplainable need to view human
misery.
For nearly thirty years, Cannibal Holocaust has stood as a
gold standard for disturbing cinema. The more polished Hollywood
horror shows haven't even come close to its brutality or ability to
generate self-loathing in an audience for watching it. However,
after viewing recent box-office successful films like Saw and
Hostel, director Ruggero Deodato has stated that he
feels mainstream audiences may be ready for a big-budget re-make.
There seems little reason to update the story for this decade,
however, since the original does such a splendid job of delivering
"what the audience wants", while at the same time forcing that same
audience to ask why they want it. Approach with caution!
Michael Penkas
Jill's p.s. Now you can buy a copy of "Cannibal Holocaust" without ANYONE knowing, here at our Killer-works Store . And apparently, Gianfranco Clerici (writer of Cannibal Holocaust) is currently in production writing the re-make, slated for release in 2009! Be interesting to see if the same controversy will surround version II...
p.p.s. You can reach Michael here at our Killer-works email. Drop him a line - I'm sure he'll be thrilled to hear how damaged your psyche is after watching Cannibal Holocaust!!! heh heh
