Cannibal Holocaust / YMMV

Accidental Aesop: The story is easy to interpret as a satire on sensationalistic media, particularly the mondo genre, despite Deodato's insistence that it was only ever intended as a mindless exploitation flick.
Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Mark's father, was his assessment of his son truth? Or a reflection of his feelings on his sons profession? Or was it the words of a grieving father angered about having a camera thrown in his face with no regard for his loss and just said what he felt they were hoping he would say in the name of sensationalism?
- Faye is sometimes seen as more moral than the other three, mainly for how she's the only one who seems genuinely disturbed by their actions. Notably she tries to stop the men gang raping the native girl and although she says because they're wasting film for what's likely unusable footage, she sounds horrified and does her best to stop Alan. But then again, she didn't seem bothered by killing a whole group of people by setting the hut they were in on fire, so it's up in the air how moral she actually is.
Awesome Moments: As gruesome as the climax is, it's definitely satisfying to see the natives finally fight back against the film crew. After they kill Jack, the others lose all of their supplies, including their guns. It wasn't a matter of if but when the natives would finally put them down.
Awesome Music: It has a very surreal and disturbing effect when underscoring the horrors onscreen, but the main theme by Riz Ortolani is quite beautiful out of context. It later showed up in Euphoria out of all places.
Bile Fascination: Given its reputation as one of the most disturbing films ever made, due to its grotesque violence and real life animal cruelty, it has inevitably resulted in many people watching the movie just to see how graphic and brutal it really is.
Broken Base: This film has a seriously divided reception among cinephiles (for pretty obvious reasons). It is either:
- A highly disturbing but insightful and eye-opening commentary on the topic of media sensationalism and Western imperialism.
- A trashy and hypocritical Exploitation Film that is not saved by horrendously bad acting and gratuitous scenes of very real animal cruelty. It doesn't help that Word of God insists that it is this.
Catharsis Factor: After seeing Alan Yates and his crew committing all the horrible atrocities for their documentary, watching the natives slaughter them in the most brutal way imaginable in retaliation is arguably the best thing about this movie.
Complete Monster: Alan Yates is a traveling filmmaker with a sadistic streak. Not above staging events for his documentaries, Yates and his crew embark to South America in search of cannibalistic indigenous tribes. When Jack wounds a Yacumo man, they follow him to his village. Once there, Yates forces the tribe into a single hut and sets it ablaze. Locating the Yanomamo, or Tree People, Yates and his crew take advantage of the fact that the tribe wouldn't attack them lest provoked by partaking in filming themselves gang-raping a helpless Yanamomo woman. When they later learn that she had been impaled—crotch-first— as punishment by the natives, Yates—unfazed by the sight before him—is thrilled by what he had done (and it's even implied that it was the filmmakers rather than the Yanomamo who actually killed her). He also has no qualms with sacrificing his own crew when it suits him as he shoots Jack so that he could film the vengeful tribe desecrating his body. Xenophobic, sociopathic, deceitful and desiring fame above all else, Monroe puts it best when he wonders who were the real cannibals.
Death of the Author: In the decades following its release, Deodato claimed that the film was never intended as a commentary on anything and that he just wanted to make a cheap exploitation flick about cannibalism. This hasn't stopped many academics from interpreting it as a statement on the subjects of media sensationalism and Western imperialism.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Cannibal Holocaust is known for criticizing sensationalism while being highly sensationalistic.
Fetish Retardant: Alan and Faye having sex is rendered creepy rather than sexy because a) they're being filmed by a lecherous Jack, and b) it happens right after they've killed a group of people by trapping them in a burning hut.
Fridge Horror:
- As Faye points out, there's no way they could use the footage of gang raping the native girl in any sense, and indeed the editors didn't include that reel in their rough cut. Presumably the men were intending to keep that for their own private use...
- Just how many more atrocities did Alan and his crew commit on their previous documentaries?
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: This was the second highest-grossing film of 1983 in Japan after E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Harsher in Hindsight: Life Imitates Art for the end of the film. The executives order Alan's footage burned, hoping no one will ever see it. The film itself was pulled from theatres and banned within just ten days - although it ended up becoming a Cult Classic and having more staying power in the end.
Karmic Overkill: Faye is the least evil of the four filmmakers, including trying to stop the men gang raping a defenceless native girl. When karma comes down on the four of them, her fate is particularly brutal - being stripped naked and horrifically gang raped by the entire tribe before getting beaten to death. That particular scene is drawn out, making it seem like overkill.
Moral Event Horizon: Yates and his crew cross this line when they herd a group of natives into a hut and set it on fire so they can get shocking footage for their documentary. And the final straw that earns them their fate is when they rape a native Yanomamo woman.
Narm: The opening scene where the natives are being shot to death is no doubt intended to be serious, but it just looks silly.
Nausea Fuel:
- Alan Yates and his crew being devoured by the cannibals.
- The scene where the turtle is killed and has its shell taken off also counts. And no special effects were used for that. The actor was forced to actually do that and broke down crying over it.
No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: The controversy surrounding the film's graphic content did wonders for its ticket sales - managing to gross $2 million in the ten days before it was pulled from domestic cinemas. Word of God is that, through its various re-releases, the film has netted over $200 million!
Overshadowed by Controversy: Nowadays, this movie is remembered for two things: the director being arrested on suspicion that the film contained scenes of actual human death, and the scenes where animals are killed, which were filmed by actually killing real animals.
Signature Scene:
- The crew members decapitating and evisceration a large turtle is often regarded as the most horrifying scene in the whole film (which is a saying a LOT).
- The impalement scene, to the point that it was even used as the front cover for some releases.
Special Effect Failure: Faye's decapitated head is clearly a mannequin's head (the wig even falls off).
Squick: Too many moments to count. We got graphic on-screen gang rapes, a coati having a knife jammed in its torso, a woman impaled onto a spike through her anus, one of the crew members having his penis cut off and is literally torn apart by the cannibals, and the aforementioned turtle dismemberment.
Tear Jerker: For many people, the Turtle scene, the sad music doesn't help, and the fact that it was a real turtle being killed made matters worse.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: A major contributor to the film's divisive reception is the distinct lack of likeable characters (except for Dr. Monroe) and the fact that most of them get killed off in particularly gruesome ways. As Dr. Monroe so eloquently puts it: "I wonder who the real cannibals are." Then again, it is clearly intentional on Ruggero Deodato's part.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Yanomami tribesmen had every right to be upset with Yates and his crew, but they still don't exactly come off much better than any of them in spite of the film's attempts to portray the tribesmen in a sympathetic light, due to the fact that they themselves commit similarly heinous acts of rape and torture. At best, they can be seen as A Lighter Shade of Black compared to the documentary team.
Vindicated by History: Much of the social commentary put forth by the film is more relevant now than when it was made, and the stomach-turning gore effects have aged surprisingly well— the authentic animal cruelty notwithstanding.
Visual Effects of Awesome: You know that a horror movie had great special effects when for a long time, people thought that the onscreen human deaths were real — including authorities who arrested the director over them!
What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Despite Word of God insisting that the film was only ever intended to be a story about cannibalism, it is frequently interpreted as a commentary on Western imperialism and media sensationalism.

YMMV / Cannibal Holocaust

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