What you have in Cannibal Holocaust is a story about a group of people from NYU that go to document a culture of cannibals and never come back. Not that the story matters. Having watched I think three cannibal movies now (this is three more than the average healthy adult's lifetime recommended dosage), it has become clear to me that they are nothing more than exhibitions of movie violence and sickness. And in that area, the movie succeeds brilliantly. It is so tasteless and so disgusting that it's amazing that things like this ever get made.
And not just for the animal mutilations or the feces flinging (yeah that really happens in this movie. It's not just a t-shirt for smartass teenagers) or the orgies of misogynistic violence, but of course there are tons of naked natives in the movie, many of them obviously underage. But I guess that is just not a concern in whatever country the movie was distributed from.
I am guessing we are meant to be impressed by the feeding scenes, since logic would lead you to believe that that is what a cannibal film centers on. If so, maybe that explains why all the natives must smear their food all over their faces before they eat it, although I am at a loss to explain why women are regularly mutilated, dismembered, fornicated with and THEN eaten.
It becomes clear early on that surely someone in the group of NYU people must snap, unable to take what they're seeing anymore, and of course it does happen.
One guy, since the natives 'distrust' them (maybe it was all that shooting?) decides to strip naked to "become like them." Evidently this man has never seen the whiteness of his naked self before, but the island girls don't seem to mind. As soon as this awkward white guy strips off his khakis a whole group of naked girls run up to him and start grab-assing for a little while. Hey, maybe cannibals aren't so bad after all
Oh, but minutes later, the group are forced to eat human, as is to be expected. The natives gleefully shove entrails in their faces as they inexplicably turn into savages for the purpose of this bizarre plot. Why the instant and total descent into barbarism? I have no idea, the movie isn't intelligent enough to explain such a thing, all it knows how to do is show you something that you would be much better off never seeing.
A giant turtle is torn apart alive with bare hands while the cameraman zooms in for an extreme close-up so as not to miss a single revolting detail, a monkey gets its face cut off, a backwoods amputation is cauterized with a hot machete and, when the poor amputee immediately dies, the rest of the crew forget seconds later, laughing and joking in the subsequent footage.
This is, of course, all documentary footage that they're watching of a past film crew. It seems that these mental giants went into the village and started screaming and shooting their guns and burning the village, and then wondered why they were massacred. It is not exactly a massive intellectual surge when one of the new crew says "these people probably think WE'RE the savages!"
Yeah, what tipped you off? The burning of their village or the fornicating in the ashes?
Clearly this is meant to be the movie's thinly disguised message. White people are savages at least as much as the people that we think of as savages. Oh and in case you didn't happen to catch that message when it smacked you in the head numerous times like a ton of bricks, at one point the "civilized" people grab one of the native girls and rape her, trying to show her the errors of her ways. Clever.
These people are nothing like any manner of civilized people, they are absolute degenerates and should be imprisoned. They even shout for joy when they find a woman impaled on a pole. What the hell is this garbage?
But in watching a movie like this, it seems to me that it is the people that would make and distribute something like this that are the savages.
At least horror movies are FUN, even bad ones. And this is not a bad horror movie. It's not a horror movie at all, I don't know what you would call it, but it is truly horrible.
A mother gives birth to an infant in the movie, for example. The baby is taken away from it's mother, drenched in blood and then buried in the mud while the mother is beaten to death with rocks.
There is a point in the movie where the utterly talentless writer, evidently unaware of how breathtakingly obvious his story is, has one of his characters spoon-feed you the real meaning of the movie:
"Today people want sensationalism. The more you rape their senses, the happier they are."
This sentence betrays a staggering lack of understanding of film-going audiences, but at least it is a flawless description of the thought behind the movie. Too bad you have to watch it to learn that you should never have watched it
And not just for the animal mutilations or the feces flinging (yeah that really happens in this movie. It's not just a t-shirt for smartass teenagers) or the orgies of misogynistic violence, but of course there are tons of naked natives in the movie, many of them obviously underage. But I guess that is just not a concern in whatever country the movie was distributed from.
I am guessing we are meant to be impressed by the feeding scenes, since logic would lead you to believe that that is what a cannibal film centers on. If so, maybe that explains why all the natives must smear their food all over their faces before they eat it, although I am at a loss to explain why women are regularly mutilated, dismembered, fornicated with and THEN eaten.
It becomes clear early on that surely someone in the group of NYU people must snap, unable to take what they're seeing anymore, and of course it does happen.
One guy, since the natives 'distrust' them (maybe it was all that shooting?) decides to strip naked to "become like them." Evidently this man has never seen the whiteness of his naked self before, but the island girls don't seem to mind. As soon as this awkward white guy strips off his khakis a whole group of naked girls run up to him and start grab-assing for a little while. Hey, maybe cannibals aren't so bad after all
Oh, but minutes later, the group are forced to eat human, as is to be expected. The natives gleefully shove entrails in their faces as they inexplicably turn into savages for the purpose of this bizarre plot. Why the instant and total descent into barbarism? I have no idea, the movie isn't intelligent enough to explain such a thing, all it knows how to do is show you something that you would be much better off never seeing.
A giant turtle is torn apart alive with bare hands while the cameraman zooms in for an extreme close-up so as not to miss a single revolting detail, a monkey gets its face cut off, a backwoods amputation is cauterized with a hot machete and, when the poor amputee immediately dies, the rest of the crew forget seconds later, laughing and joking in the subsequent footage.
This is, of course, all documentary footage that they're watching of a past film crew. It seems that these mental giants went into the village and started screaming and shooting their guns and burning the village, and then wondered why they were massacred. It is not exactly a massive intellectual surge when one of the new crew says "these people probably think WE'RE the savages!"
Yeah, what tipped you off? The burning of their village or the fornicating in the ashes?
Clearly this is meant to be the movie's thinly disguised message. White people are savages at least as much as the people that we think of as savages. Oh and in case you didn't happen to catch that message when it smacked you in the head numerous times like a ton of bricks, at one point the "civilized" people grab one of the native girls and rape her, trying to show her the errors of her ways. Clever.
These people are nothing like any manner of civilized people, they are absolute degenerates and should be imprisoned. They even shout for joy when they find a woman impaled on a pole. What the hell is this garbage?
But in watching a movie like this, it seems to me that it is the people that would make and distribute something like this that are the savages.
At least horror movies are FUN, even bad ones. And this is not a bad horror movie. It's not a horror movie at all, I don't know what you would call it, but it is truly horrible.
A mother gives birth to an infant in the movie, for example. The baby is taken away from it's mother, drenched in blood and then buried in the mud while the mother is beaten to death with rocks.
There is a point in the movie where the utterly talentless writer, evidently unaware of how breathtakingly obvious his story is, has one of his characters spoon-feed you the real meaning of the movie:
"Today people want sensationalism. The more you rape their senses, the happier they are."
This sentence betrays a staggering lack of understanding of film-going audiences, but at least it is a flawless description of the thought behind the movie. Too bad you have to watch it to learn that you should never have watched it