Line #17 Main/CannibalFilm


1	[[quoteright:333:[[Film/EatenAlive1980 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cannibaltribe_5359.jpg]]]]
2
3	From the mid 1970s until around the mid 1980s, a slew of chiefly Italian {{Exploitation Film}}s were made that are known as cannibal films, and are considered to form one of the most extreme subgenres of horror cinema. The premise for every film involves civilized, predominantly white protagonists venturing into remote South American/Asian jungles and encountering tribes of dark-skinned human-eaters. The tropes for these films are quite consistent, possibly because most of the films essentially ripped off one of three cannibal films that enjoyed financial success. These tropes include:
4	* [[MightyWhitey The triumph of the white man.]] This triumph can come in the form of successfully escaping the jungle or establishing a positive relationship with the savages, using gizmos and measured hand gestures.
5	* Once contact has been established between the outsiders and the natives, always because the outsiders have been [[CapturedByCannibals captured]] through an act of stupidity, the outsiders are forced to witness an assortment of rituals conducted by the natives, all of which involve blood and something or someone being cut open. The lucky victim is generally not of any specific type; human victims, whether male or female, civilized or savage, have all gone under the spear in these films. These sequences will often also include the protagonist/s suffering humiliating subjugation by the natives.
6	* [[AlikeAndAntitheticalAdversaries The civilized characters can be distinguished from one another, on a purely visual level. The savages are a collective mentality and rarely is one elevated to any position of significance in the film]] (the most notable exception would be Me Me Lai's character in ''Last Cannibal World'').
7	* [[BlackDudeDiesFirst Civilized non-white characters are usually the first to die, and never in a pleasant fashion.]]
8	* Cannibals sympathetic to the protagonists live long enough to get them out of danger before falling prey to their vengeful fellows.
9	* Civilized women are typically sleazy, whiny bimbos who often serve as {{Ms Fanservice}} (cannibal films do not stray far from standard horror). If they do have an attitude, it can be solved with a good slap.
10	* Interracial relations between a native and one of the protagonists. Typically the native is female, but either way the sex is rarely consensual.
11	* Characters played by Ivan Rassimov and Me Me Lai. They appeared in three films in the genre, more than any other actor. Me Me Lai's characters were native women with, um, breast implants.
12	* Sadly, almost every cannibal film made in this period features animal cruelty either from stock footage or, even worse, in scenes created for the film. This aspect of the films both cements their infamy as a subgenre and their notoriety as going further down the path of moral decadence than most other horror films.
13
14	Other common tropes of cannibal films:
15	* AcceptableTargets
16	* BeatStillMyHeart
17	* BloodierAndGorier
18	* BMovie
19	* CapturedByCannibals
20	* ChasedByAngryNatives
21	* DeadGuyOnDisplay
22	* DecapitationPresentation
23	* EnemyToAllLivingThings
24	* ExploitationFilm
25	* ExtremeMeleeRevenge
26	* FantasticRacism
27	* FateWorseThanDeath
28	* GenocideBackfire
29	* {{Gorn}}: Implicit in the genre
30	* GroinAttack
31	* HorrorFilms
32	* HumanSacrifice
33	* MadeOfPlasticine
34	* {{Mayincatec}}: Anthropologist Marvin Harris, and author of the 1977 book: Cannibals and Kings, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. According to Harris, the Aztec economy would not support feeding them as slaves and the columns of prisoners were "marching meat".
35	* NationalGeographicNudity
36	* NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity
37	* {{Revenge}}
38	* RapeAndRevenge
39	* RoaringRampageOfRevenge
40	* TheHunterBecomesTheHunted
41	* TribalCarry
42	* ValuesDissonance
43	* VirginSacrifice
44	* WesternTerrorists
45
46	The most well-known and successful of these films was ''Cannibal Holocaust'' in 1980. It is also infamous for scenes of gratuitous animal death, among other things. Because of the infamy of this movie, cannibal films were among the many horror and exploitation films banned by the UK as VideoNasties.
47
48	Not to be confused with CannibalTribe, the general trope about savage tribes which kill and eat outsiders.
49	-----
50	!!Examples
51	* ''The Man From Deep River'' 1972 -- was the first Italian cannibal film and introduced the notions of white people being trapped in cannibal territory, exotic rituals, white-native sex and Me Me Lai and Ivan Rassimov.
52	* ''Last Cannibal World'' 1977 -- four plane passengers are stranded in a jungle, the brown-skinned members of the group die quickly, the main character is stripped, fondled and urinated on and watches the natives kill first one of their own using bull ants and then a crocodile. He escapes using Me Me Lai, who helps him survive before being eaten by the pursuing tribe.
53	* ''Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals'' 1977
54	* ''Film/TheMountainOfTheCannibalGod'' 1978
55	* ''Papaya, Love Goddess of the Cannibals'' 1978
56	* ''Primitives'' 1979
57	* ''Film/CannibalHolocaust'', 1980 -- Upon the film's release, the director and producer Ruggero Deodato was arrested on the charge that they had had several of the actors [[SnuffFilm murdered for the camera.]] Their names were cleared when they arranged for the "dead" actors to appear together on television. It has been suggested that ''The Blair Witch Project'' and ''The Last Broadcast'' appropriated their {{mockumentary}} style from ''Cannibal Holocaust''.
58	* ''Film/{{Eaten Alive\|1980}}!''[[note]]also known as ''Mangiati vivi''[[/note]]1980 - Not to be confused with [[Film/EatenAlive1976 the 1976 film of the same name]]. Here, a woman searches for her missing sister who has disappeared in the jungles of Sri Lanka. She and an expatriate guide encounter a cult and a group of flesh-hungry natives. It is loosely based on the Jonestown massacre, which happened just three years before the movie's making.
59	* ''Film/ZombieHolocaust'' 1980
60	* ''White Cannibal Queen'' 1980
61	* ''The Devil Hunter'' 1980
62	* ''Film/CannibalFerox'', 1981 -- The natives capture two men who previously exploited them, along with three college students who have fallen in with them. The natives humiliate and kill all but one of them in slow, ritualistic fashion, hence the official & alternative movie title: ''Make Them Die Slowly''.
63	* ''Cannibal Terror'' 1981
64	* ''Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story'' 1985 -- Despite the title, no it's not a LifetimeMovieOfTheWeek. Also an example of BasedOnAGreatBigLie, as the movie claims itself to be a true story.
65	* ''Cannibal Ferox 2: Massacre in Dinosaur Valley'' 1985
66	* ''The Green Inferno'' 1988 -- By that time, film director Antonio Climati was considered to have put an end to the genre in 1988 with the film ''Natura Contro'', which is also known as an unofficial sequel to Cannibal Holocaust.
67	* ''Film/CannibalWomenInTheAvocadoJungleOfDeath'', 1989, is a satire of this kind of film that is better than it sounds. It [[MoralGuardians had to be]] billed as ''Piranha Women etc etc'' in the UK to avoid association with the genre (since cannibal films in general were immediately labeled as VideoNasties even when they didn't get as disturbing as ''Cannibal Holocaust'').
68	* In 2003, director Bruno Mattei directed and created two straight-to-video release cannibal films, ''Cannibal Ferox 3: Land of Death'' and ''Cannibal Holocaust 2: The Beginning'' a.k.a. ''Mondo Cannibale'', said to be the official sequel to the original ''Cannibal Holocaust''. Both films are a mix of ''Cannibal Ferox, Cannibal Holocaust, Predator'', plus every other cannibal film from the 70s & 80s imaginable thrown into not one but two giant blenders.
69	* ''Welcome to the Jungle'', a GenreThrowback (though nowhere near as extreme as the pictures it is referencing) and [[FoundFootageFilms Found Footage Film]] released in 2007.
70	* ''Film/TheGreenInferno'', an much more faithful Genre Throwback (just look at the title!) by Creator/EliRoth. Features a tribe never filmed before, whose introduction to movies was Cannibal Holocaust - they agreed to filming after deciding that it was the funniest thing they had ever seen.
71	* ''Film/MasterOfTheWorld1983'' is an interesting example in that it foregoes the usual jungle setting for Pleistocene Europe.
72

Context Main / CannibalFilm