Kyra Hall
A horror movie has been deemed so disturbing that it was allegedly banned in 50 countries and the director was arrested.
To this day, ’80s horror movies are up there with some of the best in the genre.
Whether it’s the less-than-polished look or the absurd storylines that make them even more appealing to modern audiences than horrors more recently released, they remain revered by the masses.
Movies like The Shining (1980) and The Poltergeist (1982) still have the same scare factor today, and, with an added hint of nostalgia, they have become cult classics.
But there is one gruesome ’80s horror that you might not have seen, with an even more disturbing backstory.
This blood-curdling movie certainly left a huge impact on viewers.
One horror fan said: “This is such a sick and twisted, wrong film. There is nothing morally salvageable about this repulsive affair.”
Another writes: “It’s not even an easy recommendation for horror fans in general. It has an uncanny ability to make the whole thing seem surprisingly real.”
A third says: “The images are still embedded in my memory even though I watched this maybe six years ago.”
“This is true horror,” a fourth adds.
The Italian director of the infamous movie, Ruggero Deodato, revolutionized film. His disturbing horror has been credited with being the first found-footage film and has since paved the way for many others, including the iconic The Blair Witch Project.
While certainly a trail-blazer, the film was almost instantly a controversial one.
It’s about a documentary team who head to the Amazon rainforest to search for a cannibal tribe. The crew, however, is eventually reported missing and a rescue team is sent to find out what happened.
Viewers witness the gruesome end of the missing crew through found footage.
Variety reports that the 1980 movie was allegedly banned in 50 countries due to its graphic depictions of violence.
Less than two weeks after the disturbing film premiered in Milan, it was seized by local magistrates and Deodato was charged with obscenity and murder after an article alleged that some of the film’s deaths were real.
Deodato had hired mostly unknown actors in his movie, and their contracts reportedly stated that they could not do any publicity for the film in order to keep up the pretense that the found-footage, and the deaths in that footage, were real.
The film was used as evidence in court against the director in the criminal proceedings.
Deodato was forced to produce his actors in court to get the murder charges dropped, The Guardian reports.
Professional opinions about the film are no less unsettled.
For Collider, Chase Hutchinson says: “The film is, to put it bluntly, one of the most intentionally distasteful and violent experiences one could ever watch. It also remains one of the genre’s most enduring, for better and worse, after all these years.”
The Guardian’s Steve Rose writes: “Whatever its sins, Cannibal Holocaust’s influence has been acknowledged by directors from Oliver Stone to Quentin Tarantino, and across the horror world. Deodato is proud his film created the ‘found footage’ genre. The fact that Cannibal Holocaust’s content has been less imitated than its style can only be good news for humanity, censorship panels, the ecosystem and avant-garde cuisine.”
Deodato dedicated three years to overturning the ban on his movie, which was eventually lifted in some countries in 1984, albeit for a version of the film with certain scenes cut.
Although the human deaths in the movie were not real, the animal ones were.
A coatimundi, a turtle, a spider, a snake, two squirrel monkeys, and a pig were all killed on screen and this remains a horrifying detail that scars viewers across the globe.
On the death of animals in the filming process, Deodato told The Guardian: “The death of the animals, although unbearable – especially in a present-day urban mindset – always happened in order to feed the film’s characters or the crew, both in the story and in reality.”
In an interview with Starburst Magazine about the infamous movie, Cannibal Holocaust, he said: “So many things have happened in the world, and yet my film is still a figure of controversy. But I like that.”
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