Films That Witness Madness

review

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, part 4

This is the final part of a four part review of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST.

A PERSONAL ASIDE

It's amazing just how sheltered our lives have become. Many of us aren't aware of what the crime rates in our own cities and towns are. When something bad happens to us, we find ourselves wondering "why me?" instead of "why not me?". Bad things - cancer, theft, murder, rape - are things that happen to others, after all.

I'm perfectly safe.

Isn't that why 9/11 struck us so hard? I can still remember the feeling of helplessness, of terror, of heartbreak on that September morning. I remember for the first time in my life feeling like I wasn't in control, that someone could wipe me out without notice. I'd been in fights before, especially when I was a kid. I'd been jumped and smacked around but I'd never really felt threatened before that day. From that point on, my world view became a bit more personal. I was no longer able to watch the nightly news and sit passively through the reports of terrorism, genocide and natural disaster. That travesty, that loss of life, was now part of my own personal history. I had awoken from 20-plus years of naivety only to find that this world is indeed a scary place to live.

When my mother passed away from cancer, I was only 13 years old. It was like someone had come along and torn my little world in two. One of my parents was gone and she was never coming back. My daily life was different. She was no longer there to greet me when I came home from school or to help me with my homework. I was suddenly very grown up, cooking my own meals and dealing with the housework. I became very frightened of my own mortality. I wondered if I would one day become sick, wait too long to go to the doctor then find out that I had waited too long for anything to be done. I became very aware of my father's health. I silently monitored his every cough and sniffle. I made a conscious effort to ask my sister how she was feeling every time I saw her, sometimes three or four times a visit, just to settle my nerves about her diabetes. I've never been so scared in my life.

Horror films helped me in many ways. I now had a way to release my fears in a safe, non-confrontational way. Through film, I was able to deal with death and disease and always come out the other side unharmed. It was cathartic even if it was complete bullshit.

I won't survive death. There's no guarantee I'll survive a disease. There's no safety net waiting for me if I slip at the top of the stairs. There is no stunt double waiting to take the blows from me. The bullets that may pierce my skin as I walk down a busy, noisy city street won't be CGI bullets. The man walking behind me might not be a harmless person. The car crash I'm in won't be neatly edited and packaged and I won't be sitting inside a roll cage when the metal meets metal. There will be no man in a red cape swooping in at the final moment to stop my plane from crashing.

One day, I will die.

But I will not live in fear of the moment.

I think we all need a little shelter from the fact of our own eventual demise. Whether you choose to indulge in a goofball comedy or a cannibal flick, film can provide that shelter. CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST makes no attempts to make death a pretty thing. In this film, the people who die often die messily and none of them go quietly but there is something absolutely quieting about the film for me. When the film ends, I'm completely drained. It's akin to an emotional enema. I've simply got nothing left. The first time I saw the film, I cried for several hours.

My reaction is not so extreme these days. Now when I watch CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, I am more impressed by the technique and precision behind it's construction. I am not immune to it's shocks and horrors though. Far from it. I still feel my hair standing on end during the last 10 minutes. But the shocks no longer affect me the same way. The deaths in the jungle, whether they be animal or human, don't fill me with disgust. Only sadness.

For me, watching CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is a re-affirmation of several principles I have tried to live my life by.

Live your life well, respect those around you and always remember that while you can't control the circumstances of your death, you and only you determine how you are remembered once you are gone.

RAPE OF THE SENSES

"Today people want sensationalism. The more you rape their senses, the happier they are."

How true.

Reality television was once respectable. That didn't last long. Talk shows became freak shows, MTV's The Real World became an exercise in manipulation and nature shows became tools for emotional blackmail. Today's reality shows are more shocking and more sexual than ever before. There seems to be an ongoing battle between the major networks with the challenge being who can come up with the most disgusting, most manipulative and most exploitative scenario to hang a show on.

Got a few deformed or mentally challenged children? You can have your own show.

Are you grossly overweight? You can have your own show.

Are you dying from a terminal illness? You can most definitely have your own show.

The line I quoted above is spoken by the television producer as she and Prof. Monroe sit outside the studio building. It strikes him - as it does us - as a bit of a "no duh" observation. It's been that way since the advent of film, worse since the invention of the television. Take a look at a gossip magazine. It used to be enough to print who is dating who or what bands a certain actor is a fan of. Not today. Now people are dissatisfied with anything less than a complete rundown of an actor's sex life, personal flaws and vices. We delight in the lurid tales of late-night trysts and messy divorces, of drug addictions and dark secrets. We want to know all the juicy and not-so-juicy details. Not because we are fans but because, in some small way, we want to know these people are suffering mortals with as many flaws and skeletons in their closets as everyone else.

I often wonder how long it will be until we begin to see the pictures of shattered bodies and disembodied limbs strewn around the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Maybe in another ten years when people stop being affected by the images of the smoking Towers. It used to be that the film of Kennedy being assassinated was kept from public view. Now it is instantly recognizable. It pops up on television shows and in big budget movies, slowed down, sped up, enlarged, over-dubbed, played in slow motion and played in reverse. I remember seeing that footage on television for the first time when I was a child. I was utterly shocked and repulsed. Though I was not alive when Kennedy died - I wasn't born until 1979 - I was well enough aware of who John F. Kennedy was to know that he was a man deserving of respect. Now, the footage of his death is so commonly used and displayed that the shock has been all but eliminated. The final moments of a President of the United States of America has been reduced to stock footage.

The crudely dismissive comments made by the television producer are indicative of our modern media. That is one of the problems with having a 24-hour news cycle. How do you keep people tuning in? With so many news avenues available both online and off, what can you do to ensure an audience?

Give them blood. Give them misery. Give them horrors and terrors and tragedies and outrage.

It's just that simple.

But the final line of this interlude, spoken by Prof. Monroe, reveals the immorality behind the media's practices and our own blood lust.

"Would you like people to make money off your misery?"

SOCIAL SURGERY AND A FINAL WARNING

When we return to the jungle, we see Alan and crew taking a bit of a break. They are shooting simple B-roll footage, Faye putting the spin on their earlier encounter with the Yacumo - she refers to their savagery as "establishing... diplomatic relations" with them. We see Mark enjoying a quick shave as an old woman dies nearby. As Faye chokes over her lines, gagging from the sight and smell of the rotting woman, Alan grabs the mic. What he says will ultimately come true for them in a few short hours.

"In the jungle, nothing goes to waste. Nature recycles everything".

The crew next stumble upon a gruesome scene. Several of the tribeswomen have bound a woman by her wrists. Alan describes what we are about to see as a necessary procedure, a kind of "social surgery". In order to eliminate illness from the tribe, any diseased or sick member is killed. Simple enough, except that Deodato decides to have the sick woman be heavily pregnant. In a moment of childish shock mongering, the women pull the fetus from the woman's womb - the act, though not the total outcome, would be replayed in Joe D'Amato's ANTHROPOPHAGUS a year later. One of the women buries the fetus in the mud while the others beat the bound woman to death with stones. Survival of the tribe is of greater concern than the survival of a single woman and her unborn child.

Following this disgusting display, we find Alan and crew resting in the jungle. Alan briefly discusses their arguments. The crew wants to turn back but Alan, as usual, has other plans. He wants to press on. He says that what convinced them to press on is the "chance to become famous".

Nothing else matters to him and, as a result, they continue on to their doom.

Deodato takes us out of the jungle at this point and back to New York where Prof. Monroe is firmly stating to the television producers his intentions to walk away from the documentary. Realizing the travesty they want to distribute, he declares that he wants nothing to do with it. The female producer simply can't believe that Monroe would want the company to shelve the footage. "Yes, yes, we all know what Alan was like", she says, "He over-did it as usual but what you saw was a rough cut". In other words, it has yet to be sanitized and re-focused. Alan and his crew have yet to be made into heroes by the editors.

Prof. Monroe doesn't care about "the most sensational documentary to come along in years", only the truth and he is all too aware of the horrors yet to come. He is the only one to have seen the remaining footage. His statement, that they have not yet seen the stuff that their "editors didn't even have the stomach to put together", is their final warning of the graphic horrors they are about to behold. It's our final warning, as well. For the next ten minutes, we will be placed squarely in hell with nary an edit between us and the horrible fates of the film crew.

THE FINAL REELS

As the television producers and Prof. Monroe settle in, the final reels begin.

The crew captures a young girl. Alan remarks that they have finally caught a member of the Yanomamo tribe. As the young girl fights her way out of Mark's stranglehold, we hear Alan say that they "have to be careful because these people are known for their cruelty". We know that the people they are speaking of are the same people we saw at the very beginning of the film. We have seen with Prof. Monroe who these people are and what they are capable of. From our previous experience, we can guess the ramifications of their actions.

They begin to rape the girl, one at a time. Faye disapproves but not necessarily of the rape. Rather, she screams about them filming it. "We can't use this!", she screams. It's only when Alan takes his turn that Faye makes any attempts to stop the rape. Once the rape has been completed, we cut back to the screening room for a reel change. We aren't made aware of the fate of the raped girl but through a quick cut, we are made aware that they were being watched the whole time.

When we return to the jungle, we find our crew has stumbled upon a horrific sight. A young girl, quite possibly the same one we just saw raped, has been piked, the length of wood penetrating her vagina and exiting through her mouth. As Mark and Jack swirl around with their cameras, an excited Alan eyes up the sight with a smile on his face. He has to be reminded that he is on camera - "Watch it, Alan, I'm filming" - and then immediately launches into fake disgust. "I can't understand the reason for such cruelty", he says before remarking about the "almost profound respect these primitives have for virginity". Alan shakes his head in false disbelief but it's Faye who seems to have a firm grasp on the reality of the situation. The look she gives Alan before the cut says it all.

Some people have speculated that the girl on the pike is not only the girl who was raped by the crew but that Alan and company were the ones responsible for her fate. The film gives no evidence for this and it seems hardly likely given the way they discover the girl's body and the reactions of the filmmakers at the scene.

The next series of scenes details the demise of the filmmakers. Realizing they are surrounded, with tribal warriors pouring out of the thick jungle and spears flying through the air, we can hear someone scream "Keep rolling! We're gonna get an Oscar for this!". Jack is speared and Alan, in his only moment of empathy during the entire picture, shoots Jack dead. The filmmakers scramble away. The film pops and cracks.

Mark is now filming through the trees as the tribe castrates and disembowels Jack's corpse. The cannibals almost immediately begin feasting, hoisting their moist treasures in the air in celebration. The impulse to film has completely overtaken the impulse to survive.

When we cut away to Alan, Faye and Mark in the woods, Alan recognizes that they probably aided in their own demise by stopping to film Jack being devoured. The cannibals rush them again and take Faye. For the first time, we see Alan beginning to panic. The film pops and cracks.

Once again, we are watching the cannibals through the trees. They strip Faye of her clothes and one of the men rapes her. They carry her to a small clearing before raping her again. Once the rape is over, the women beat her to death with sticks. As they beat her lifeless body, Ortolani's lush score begins to play, shifting the entire tone with it. The sudden reversal of the score from the beautiful ballad back to the disturbing synth score provides the typical jump-cut shock when the natives suddenly lift her disembodied head high in the air.

The camera whirls. In a flash, we are overtaken by the cannibals. Spears are jabbed directly at us. The camera tilts and falls. The final image from the Green Inferno is the bloodied face of Alan, his eyes slowly closing as he is beaten around the head.

The film pops, cracks and stops.

The lights come on in the screening room. It is silent. One of the producers gets up and leaves. Another makes his way to a telephone. He tells the projectionist to burn the film. For once, decency and responsibility win out. Prof. Monroe wanders outside. He is framed from below, the skyscrapers looming large behind him. He lights his pipe. His voice-over is the last line of dialog we hear in the picture.

"I wonder who the real cannibals are?"

The answer is simple and obvious.

WE ARE.

Each and every one of us.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Unlike many of the so-called Video Nasties and hardcore horrors of days long past, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST deserves it's reputation. It's a tough film but an important one. It not only perfectly encapsulates the artistic environment it was made in but critiques it as well. CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST strikes so hard because it lays bare all the conventions and manipulations of the medium. It is the purest example of exploitation cinema. It knows what it's doing and shows you the rules of the game every step of the way.

In spite of all the stage blood, faked rape, real animal slaughter and misanthropy, it remains a beautiful picture. It is expertly filmed and genuinely visually exciting. I've spent many years watching films and television shows set in the jungle but have never actually felt like I was there before I saw CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. The authenticity of the setting is conveyed magnificently. You can smell the humidity in the air. The sense of claustrophobia the film creates is disarming. If you feel like you need a shower once it's over, I wouldn't be surprised.

I've struggled with CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST for many years. It is a film I genuinely love and that fact bothers me a great deal. Because this isn't a film you, me or anyone else should love. As much as it repulses me at times and as much as it makes me want to curl up in a ball and shake for hours, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST remains for me an absolute perfect film and a true testament to the power of cinema. Those people who view horror cinema as a lesser art form or as a cheap, pathetic entertainment for the mentally challenged would do well to watch this film.

It might go a long way toward changing their minds.

If they could stomach it, that is.

Essential viewing.

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