Cannibal Holocaust.

I’m screening a movie from 1980 in Boston tonight. 

Maybe a weekend ago, after working security for an afterhours where Diplo never ended up performing, we began to discuss with some other movie nerds about the most disturbing movies ever made – and not porno. Maybe it was the mention of Irreversible’s nine minute drawn out rape scene, or Requim for a Dream’s meth driven shock and awe, something got us thinking about it.

Online, I discovered a few lists chronicling what some consider to be the most disturbing. But none of them mentioned the one film which we kept discovering in the comments sections of all these lists, Cannibal Holocaust, and it got me wondering what the fuck this movie, with such an awful title, was all about.

Lucky for us Wikipedia had some background (right or wrong):

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is a controversial exploitation film directed by Ruggero Deodato from a screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici. Filmed in the Amazon Rainforest, the movie tells the story of four documentarians who journey deep into the jungle to filmindigenous tribes… After premiering in Italy, the film was seized by a local magistrate, and Deodato was arrested on obscenity charges. He was later accused of making a snuff film because rumors claimed some actors were killed on camera. Although Deodato was later cleared, the film was banned in Italy, the UK, Australia, and several other countries due to graphic gore, sexual violence, and because six animals were killed on camera.

“Disturbing” does not automatically mean gory, so lets get that out of the way, but based on this description, we may be in for something completely out of line.

I should also add that the version I was able to hunt down has the animal brutality removed, for good reason. Wish us luck.

Update:

Just finished watching this film (if we can call it that). I would rate it a 9.5/10 for being all around fucked up. I would highly recommend you not watch or rent this movie if you do not want to witness how brutal humanity can be. As my friend Star said when I invited her over for the screening, “Once was enough.”