Spencer Stoller
In 1980, Ruggero Deodato released Cannibal Holocaust, a film that represents the height of Italian cannibal exploitation cinema. The movie became notorious for showcasing real animal deaths and graphic physical and sexual violence, and for its documentary and found footage aesthetics, which fueled rumors that the actors had been murdered. The film was confiscated by Italian authorities upon release and Deodato was subsequently put on trial for obscenity. It was banned from distribution in several countries, lumped in with “video nasties,” a term formerly used in the UK to describe lowbrow horror, typically distributed on VHS. Despite its notoriety, the film contains a structurally complex critique of colonialism and the consumption of violence in film and television. It asks its viewers to reconsider the trope of the civilized versus savage dichotomy as fictional Western filmmakers manufacture atrocities and abuse Indigenous people to produce sensationalized footage: Deodato’s production involved a great deal of exploitation, including the killing of animals and unsafe treatment of cast members, particularly the unpaid Indigenous extras. Cannibal Holocaust must be understood simultaneously, then, as a product of Italian exploitation cinema and of the demand for brutality onscreen, a critique of Western media and colonial violence, an experiment in documentary realism and audience manipulation, and an ethically compromised production that replicates the violence it condemns.
