Cannibal Holocaust

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST

Directed by Ruggero Deodato

(Grindhouse)

Simply put, Cannibal Holocaust is a vile movie. It would be more accurate, though, to say that Cannibal Holocaust is repellent, nauseating, obscene, barbarous, revolting and inhuman. It's an exercise in nihilistic depravity.

But I don't mean that in a bad way. If you choose to watch a movie called Cannibal Holocaust, you'd have to be pretty goddamn stupid to expect fine family entertainment. It was a film designed to be shocking, and it's awfully successful. Italian filmmakers have always outdone Americans when it comes to splattering disgusting images across the screen-and this one outdoes them all.

Deodato's 1980 film contains, among other things, genital mutilation, decapitation, evisceration, impalement, innards-nibbling, gang rape and numerous examples of (real) animal cruelty.

Yet these things fit into a plot that's more interesting, complex-even surprising-than what you'd find in most gore films. It ain't La Strada, no-the acting's awful and the soundtrack's cheesy-but it's still effective.

A crew of four young documentary filmmakers heads into the Amazon jungle in search of a primitive tribe. When they don't return, a recon team is sent to find them.

The search party learns that the first team met an unpleasant end, but they also find several canisters of film shot before everything went south.

The movie's second half consists mostly of this raw, unedited 16 mm footage, which reveals in ugly detail what happened.

Sound familiar? Much has been made of the fact that Cannibal Holocaust was a clear inspiration for The Blair Witch Project.

In at least one way, Cannibal Holocaust outdid Blair Witch. Not only did it immediately become one of the most-banned films in history-the filmmakers were even brought to trial by authorities who were convinced they were watching a snuff film. I must say, seeing it now, it's hard to imagine how anyone could believe this was real, but people are silly sometimes. (Though for animal lovers, this is most certainly a snuff film. Monkeys are decapitated, muskrats have their throats cut, and tortoises have their heads bashed in. It's all mighty unpleasant.)

Of course bannings, trials and unimaginable gore add up to "cult hit," and Grindhouse's two-disc 25th Anniversary edition has not only a poster, commentary tracks, several long featurettes and more, but viewers even have the option of watching an "animal cruelty-free" version, in which only humans are tortured and mutilated.

More importantly, up to this point virtually every theatrical and video version of Cannibal Holocaust has been chopped all to hell, but Grindhouse has pieced together as complete a version of the film as you're ever likely to see. Or would likely want to.

Entertaining? I don't know if that's the term I'd use for it. But I guarantee, it's a film you won't forget for a very long time.