Cannibal Holocaust Is Famous For The Wrong Reason

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Things like this happen all the time in the jungle. It's survival OF THE FITTEST.

[00:00:04]>> [music] >> CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, ONE OF those horror films where the legacy is bigger than the actual movie. Released in 1980 and directed by Ruggero Deodato, Cannibal Holocaust follows an anthropologist who heads into the Amazon rainforest to investigate the disappearance of a documentary film crew. What he finds is their lost footage and that footage reveals exactly what happened to them.

[00:00:34]The whole thing is built around this idea of recovered material, media exploitation, and the line between documenting horror and creating it. And right away, I'll give the movie this.

[00:00:46]The setup is strong. It's a clever structure. You've got the rescue mission, the missing crew, the tapes being brought back, and then the audience slowly discovering that the so-called civilized people are every bit as monstrous as the people they came to film.

[00:01:02]>> [snorts] [laughter] >> That's the thing with Cannibal Holocaust. It sounds like a smart, savage, mean-spirited horror film with something to say, and at times you can see why people still talk about it. But for me, this is one of those cases where I respect what it influenced a lot more than I actually enjoy the film itself.

[00:01:23]Oh, good lord. A huge reason this film has stayed alive for so long is its censorship history, especially here in the UK. This is one of the movies most tied to the whole video nasty era. In the early 1980s, it became one of the titles swept up in the moral outrage around violent home video releases. And the classification board's own history of the video recordings act specifically names Cannibal Holocaust as one of the films that helped fuel that public and political concern. And in Britain, the film's problems didn't just vanish with time. According to the BBFC and BFI, it wasn't officially submitted in the UK until 2001. And even then, it lost nearly 6 minutes. Later releases were still cut because UK law does not allow the distribution of certain real animal cruelty footage. The 2022 listing still notes a compulsory cut to unsimulated animal cruelty under the Cinematograph Films Animals Act 1937. TRY TO STAY THERE FOR THE last shot. I don't even know where we are now. And that right there tells you everything about this film's reputation. This isn't just a case of people in the '80s overreacting to gore. The movie carried legal and censorship problems for decades because some of the material really did cross a line. That history gave the film an aura. It became this forbidden object, the movie you weren't supposed to see, the one that built its own legend just by being hard to access. I think that legend has done more heavy lifting for this film than the film itself ever has.

[00:03:00]Now, this is where I'll give the movie credit. Even though people still debate whether Cannibal Holocaust is fully a found footage film in the modern sense, it is clearly one of the major foundations of that style. BFI has called it one of the earliest examples of the format and also one of the foundational found footage horrors. Even the Guardian described it as a film that helped create the genre.

[00:03:25]>> The difficult doesn't exist, and the impossible takes just a little more time. And you can see it. The rough camera work, the recovered reels, the idea that what you're watching is material discovered after people vanished. That language of horror became massive later. Without films like this pushing that realism, you probably don't get the same road to things like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and all the rest in quite the same way. So, yes, I'll always respect Cannibal Holocaust for that. But influence alone doesn't make something great. Because there are loads of films that changed horror and I still don't want to sit through them again. We've been walking for 6 days in this primordial Amazon rainforest. Then you've got the court controversy and the whole snuff film reputation. BFI notes that Deodato was accused of making a snuff film and the Guardian says he was put on trial in Italy on suspicion of murdering his actors before disproving that by bringing one of them to court.

[00:04:24]The same Guardian piece also notes he was fined for animal cruelty. That's a huge reason the film's legend exploded.

[00:04:31]People didn't just think it was disturbing. For a while, people talked about it like it might be real. And the story around the cast supposedly disappearing only fed that myth even more. Whether you look at it as a marketing stunt, a rumor, or part of the release mythology that made the film feel even more dangerous than it already was, the core fact is that the realism was convincing enough to create legal panic and moral panic at the same time.

[00:04:56]That's an incredible piece of horror history. But again, horror history and great cinema are not always the same thing. Look, there's a caiman. Get out of THE WATER.

[00:05:05]>> NO, NO, FORGET ABOUT ME. FILM IT. This is where I know some horror fans will disagree with me, but I'm being honest.

[00:05:11]I don't think Cannibal Holocaust is a great movie. Important movie? Yes.

[00:05:16]Influential movie? Absolutely. A notorious movie? More than almost any other. A great movie? Not for me. Once you strip away the controversies, what are you left with? A film that is nasty for the sake of it. A film that leans so heavily on shock, cruelty, and reputation that it nearly swallows whatever point it thinks it's making.

[00:05:35]And that's always been my issue with it.

[00:05:37]Pretty powerful stuff, huh? People will say it's a critique of media sensationalism and I get it. You can see that in the setup. You can see what it's trying to do with the documentary crew becoming the real monsters. You can see the commentary on exploitation and the hunger for shocking images. But the problem is that the movie becomes the exact thing it wants to criticize. It wants to condemn sensationalism while completely drowning itself in sensationalism. It wants to expose exploitation while feeling exploitative itself. It wants to challenge the audience, but too often it just feels like it's poking you in the eye and then pretending that counts as depth. That's why I've never been able to fully buy into the masterpiece argument.

[00:06:21]>> [music] >> If I want this type of jungle horror, this type of savage modern exploitation, I'd rather watch The Green Inferno. Now, I know The Green Inferno has its critics as well and I'm not pretending that film is some untouchable classic. But for me, it proves the point. You can make something clearly influenced by Cannibal Holocaust. You can keep the brutality.

[00:06:44]You can keep the discomfort. You can keep the grim humor and the ugliness and still make something that feels more watchable. That's the key difference.

[00:06:52]With Cannibal Holocaust, I mostly feel the film's legend pressing down on me.

[00:06:56]With something like The Green Inferno, I at least feel like I'm watching a filmmaker having a proper go at turning that influence into a modern horror experience.

[00:07:09]>> [screaming] >> So, yes, I'll give Cannibal Holocaust its credit for influence. But as an actual viewing experience, I think later films have beaten it. For me, the reason Cannibal Holocaust is still in the horror zeitgeist comes down to one thing, notoriety. It stays alive because it was banned, whispered about, argued over, cut to pieces, defended, attacked, mythologized, and passed around as this cursed object from horror's past. That kind of reputation is powerful. It gives a film a second life, sometimes even a bigger life than the film deserves. And I think that's exactly what happened here.

[00:07:47]>> Why didn't they print the whole thing?

[00:07:48]The negative needed special treatment.

[00:07:50]>> So, when it comes to Cannibal Holocaust, I appreciate the influence. I respect what it did for the found footage style.

[00:07:57]I understand why it matters in horror history. I understand why the censorship story, especially in the UK, made it even more legendary. But I don't think it's a great movie. I think it's nasty for the sake of it. I think its notoriety carried it far further than its quality ever could. And I think that if you took away the bans, the animal cruelty controversy, the court case stories, the missing cast mythology, and the whole forbidden fruit reputation, a lot fewer people would still be calling this one a classic.

[00:08:27]>> What seemed to be unthinkable undertakings yesterday are history today. Cannibal Holocaust is a film you study more than you enjoy. A film you acknowledge more than you admire. A film I'll always recognize as influential, but also one where I draw a very hard line. Because influence and quality are not the same thing. And with Cannibal Holocaust, the influence is the real heavy lifter.

[00:08:49]>> I can't understand the reason for such cruelty.

[00:08:52]Do you see Cannibal Holocaust as an essential horror classic? Or do you think its reputation is doing most of the work? And what other notorious horror films do you respect more than you actually like?

[00:09:05]I'll be right back.

[00:09:07]What are you waiting for, huh?

[00:09:10]Coming to get you, Barbara. Ever play skin the cat?

[00:09:18]>> [screaming] >> Someone's in THE BACK.

[00:09:20]SEE?

[00:09:22]TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE, JOHN.

[00:09:24]WHAT MAN'S got no heart?