The jungle in the film is darkly thrilling. The riverside canopies and low mists evoke memories of Aguirre the Wrath of God and Apocalypse Now, films that used their primal environments as pressure cookers for burgeoning insanity. In this jungle, somewhere between warring cannibal tribes, film canisters lie in wait. American filmmakers were documenting the tribes, and then, without a single word, they vanished. Did they drown in the river? Were they pulled away from the campfire by slouching predators? Or were they merely eaten alive by savages? The troubling footage inside those film canisters hold the answer to the mystery of the infamous and outrageous Cannibal Holocaust.
The film's first half is promising; it focuses on Harold Munroe (Robert Kerman), an anthropologist searching the Amazon for any sign of the missing filmmakers. Although his scenes rarely amount to more than travelogue, the innate mystery of the jungle takes hold, and Munroe's a sympathetic, determined fellow, the kind of man willing to skinny-dip his way into tribal acceptance. As he takes off his clothes and joins tribeswomen in the river, director Ruggero Deodato displays a calm reverence for nudity. The naked form is man's natural state, and in the film's primitive surroundings, there's a rapturous quality to the scene, as Munroe baptizes himself in the river among joyful, chittering natives.
However, Munroe inevitably tracks down the film canisters, and the promising story, which suggests a more thoughtful, almost spiritual look at the state of nature, gives way to violence. The reveal of how the film crew actually died will come as a surprise to few, but what frustrates isn't the predictability of the story's surprises, but that those surprises are so poorly developed. Yes, the documentary crew met their end thanks to a streak of Ugly Americanism and cruelty, but there's no lead-in. Almost immediately upon their arrival, the youthful four-person crew indulges in the worst possible sins of humanity. They pillage, they rape, they murder, and, weirdly, they smile through it all.
Cannibal Holocaust wants to equivocate, to suggest that the "civilized" vistors are just as ruthless and violent as the (fictionalized) tribespeople. Toward the end of the film, Munroe distantly ponders, "I wonder who the real cannibals are?" The problem is that the film crew plunges so readily into volatile behavior that their actions speak less to some sort of universal bedrock savagery than the dramatic needs of this specific story. The film would feel more convincing as a judgment if the crew slowly declined into moral disrepair. The viewers would be more likely to identify and empathize and witness the downward steps civilized people could take. A descent would make clearer our own connection to the state of nature and witness how social norms break down. Instead, the crew come across as psychopaths, which makes it too easy to wave one's hands and say, "That's not us."
Deodato's pursuit of the state of nature also extends to his on-screen murder of animals. Ironically, the longest scene of violence in a movie filled with cannibalism and sexual violation is the film crew's murder of a turtle. They hack the neck with a machete, rip apart the shell, fleshy lining pulling apart. They dip their hands into the gristle and guts, turning it over, white and grey on red, and after enough time, the scene ceases to feel like a depiction of primal necessity. It becomes a studied effort in envelope-pushing, excess masked by the presumption of profundity. This extends to the final quarter of the film, where scenes of unrelieved cruelty occasionally cut away to theater-goers squirming in their seats, as though this context absolves the gruesomeness on display.
Context seems to be everything, it seems, as Cannibal Holocaust is as much about the legacy as the film as the story itself. Deodato's found-footage conceit was the first of its kind in the horror genre, a masterstroke that provides the film with structure and novelty and a rugged realism. That realism resulted in Italian authorities arresting him on obscenity charges. He eventually convinced them he was not a murderer by inviting the cast into the courtroom. These side-stories grant Cannibal Holocaust undeniable notoriety, a forceful insistence. The film is unavoidable for committed horror fans, who seek it out like a classical hero in search of the next threshold guardian. Is the film worth viewing? At this point, it's too totemic to ignore.
I do resist the idea that it's a good film, as far as the word good is useful, because I believe a film should not be dishonest, and Cannibal Holocaust feels dishonest, a lurid exploitation film wearing an easy mask of social critique. Munroe reveals the final reels of footage, in all their dubious glory, only as a way to prevent studio heads from airing the footage as a crass documentary. This, he claims, should shame you, and the implication is that Deodato wants to castigate those who would thrill in such perversity, even as he eagerly creates cannibal tribes, extended rape scenes, and genuine animal deaths. There are terrible events out there that the media shamelessly sensationalizes, and this film can't wait to show you how crazy they are.
RATING: C+
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