Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

The original purpose of the Video Nasties list drawn up in the UK in the 1980s was to assuage media driven hysteria originating from movies in the unregulated video market and with explicit and exploitative depictions of gore and/or sex and which, as a result, were seen as a threat to public morality. These days it all seems ever so shrug-worthy as, stripped of the hysteria, most Video Nasties invariably fail to have any effect on the viewer and are revealed to be the bad films they are. 'Cannibal Holocaust' bucks this trend in a major way in both having an intelligent point to express about humanity's savagery (as relevant then as much as now) and doing so in a manner which, despite some patchy acting and directing, retains the power to challenge and shock even the more jaded modern film buff, i.e. me.

The plot of the movie sees Professor Monroe travel into the South American jungle to find out what happened to a group of three documentary film makers who have gone missing. He eventually finds a primitive tribe who seem to have the documentary crew's lost film reels and through befriending the tribe manages to retrieve them. Back in the city the film-reels are shown to some executives and the full horrors of the expedition are revealed. So far, so typical exploitation Video Nasty…but both the realistic depiction of some of the horrors via the found footage format (which this movie basically started and which would go onto to spawn the likes of 'The Blair Witch Project' (1999) and 'Cloverfield' (2008)) are so well done that there is a story that upon finishing the film and returning to Italy the director was suspected of actually killing the actors in the film and had to track them down to prove that it was not a snuff film. Apocryphal or not, the story captures the mood of the film and, indeed, the animal cruelty scenes are actually real and may sincerely disturb some viewers.

However, the violence is not for no good reason. The movie is not about entertainment in any respect and instead sets out to provoke the audience into looking at society with a critical eye as well casting the same critical eye on our own dirty reflections. The film does this by playing with the sympathies of the audience and showing that rather than the cannibals being the primitive savages we imagine them to be at the outset, the "civilized" film-makers and executives are equally, if not more, barbaric and heartless. Furthermore, the film avoids the trap of heavy-handed moralizing and instead shows the sickness and brutality inherent in us all. Heavy stuff, and really not for those of a nervous disposition or those who delight in typical video nasty splatter-fest romps.