The Italian cannibal exploitation film craze arguably peaked with “Cannibal Holocaust”. This is a very harsh and disturbing movie that was banned in many countries and the director (Ruggero Deodato) was even tried for murder after the movie was wrongly accused of being a snuff film. The movie does however feature real violence involving animals.

During a rescue mission in the Amazon rainforest, Professor Monroe (Robert Kerman) finds the footage shot by a group of documentary filmmakers. The filmmakers had been murdered and eaten by the tribespeople. The content of those reels may be more horrifying than anything you could possibly imagine.

“Cannibal Holocaust” used real indigenous tribespeople, again helping it to blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction. The acting in this film is generally really bad and most of the people are just there to be killed in gruesome ways. We see people get bashed repeatedly in the head with stones and there is also a lot of sexual violence. If you’re an animal lover, you’re going to despise some of the scenes where people torture and kill real animals. The turtle sequence is especially graphic as it is decapitated before being ripped open. Most of the people die in really gory fashion but when some of the tribespeople get shot near the start of the film, there is no blood.

This is a weird movie because only parts of it are done in a documentary style so you know you’re not watching a real documentary. Much of the violence is very graphic but the shootout near the start has no gore. All this is immersion breaking. Also, I really did not feel comfortable with the graphic depiction of animal violence. There’s also a sequence in the middle where they show actual executions from Nigeria (these were not shot for “Cannibal Holocaust”). There are some interesting ideas but the movie is just an unpleasant mess.