CLASSICS OF CINEMA
CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST
CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST
“Shut your stinking bastard face and pull your trousers up”. That
right there is the first thing I uttered to Sergio Leone in this
dream I had one time. Thinking back, there’s a few other things I
wish I’d a said alongside that shit. I wish I’d have told him that
yeah, everybody thinks Once Upon A Time In America is a masterpiece
and all, but what The Duke thinks is that it’s a wretched,
misogynist wank-fantasy, and not even a cool, inventive one, but a
really, really uninspired one, like maybe you already had a fumble
a half-hour ago and now it’s not cause you got these demented ideas
in your head, it’s just cause there’s fuck all on telly.
Cheer up, though, I’d have said. It’s not all bad. I think those
spaghetti films you did with John Wayne were amazing. And Once Upon
A Time In The West, too. I can get behind that, Leone.
But what I wish I said most of all, is something along the lines of
“You were right, y’know. Cannibal Holocaust is a damn masterpiece.”
What Sergio Leone did back in the day, y’see, was that he sat down
for to view Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. Sometime between
then and a little while later, he composed a letter to Deodato,
which read as follows;
“Dear Ruggero”, waxed Leone. “What a movie! The second part is a
masterpiece of cinematographic realism but everything seems so real
that I think you will get in trouble with all the world.”
Leone knew the score, man. And he was right. Deodato did indeed get
in trouble with all the world. Especially the part of it that sat
down to watch Cannibal Holocaust of an evening.
Now, back in the day The Duke waxed all about Why Cannibal
Holocaust Is A Damn Masterpiece, but to be honest, I never felt I
did it justice. So what I decided to do about ten minutes ago is to
start scribbling a new-fangled essay on the subject, possibly with
crap CGI monkeys in place of all the silly old stuff from years
gone past.
That old article ain’t going no-place though, man. Don’t be jumping
on me about how I’m raping your childhood and so on. You ain’t
gonna have to scour eBay for pirate copies of the original one like
what you remember.
Anyway, the crux of the matter is this;
Back in the day, Italian horror flick producers decided that the
thing to do would be to make a shitload of flicks regarding the
cannibals for to go alongside the shitload of flicks regarding the
zombies. Unlike the shitload of zombie numbers, though, the likes
of Lucio Fulci’s incredible Zombie Flesh Eaters, or The Living Dead
At Manchester Morgue, the cannibal flicks were mostly an
unutterably boring bunch of grime-faced bastards. Bar The Mountain
Of The Cannibal God or maybe half of Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox, there
ain’t a whole lot to be getting overly excited about.
Cannibal Holocaust, though, is a different beast entirely. It’s not
the first cannibal flick, it wasn’t the last, but it’s far and away
the best, and not only a brilliant horror film, but a fucking
incredible work of motion-flickery regardless of genre.
What Deodato’s film concerns itself with, is a buncha
documentarians go missing in the Amazon, as in the one filled with
trees and rivers, and not the one you go to when you need a copy of
the Get Over It soundtrack in a hurry. Mind you, I’ve known fellas
to have gone clicking around the online behemoth and never fucking
be seen again. Sometimes they show up years later, mumbling some
incomprehensible pish about cheap DVD’s or expensive DVD’s or
rectal probes.
Back in the days of Cannibal Holocaust, though, the web-net was
still a tool known only to the military and the ganja-soaked
hippies they employed for to tinker with it.
Anyway, what occurs is that another fella from the TV company goes
off for to find them, a fella played by no less a motherfucker than
Robert Kerman, porn veteran and star of such wonders as 1976’s Sex
Wish, the seminal Debbie Does Dallas and 1980’s The Lady Is A Tramp.
He’s most recently been in Spider-Man, starring as “Tugboat
Captain”. He better not’ve tried to get his filthy nuts anywhere
near Kirsten, let me tell you right the fuck now. “Get to fuck you
dirty old bastard” She would undoubtedly have demanded. “I respect
your work, especially in Cannibal Holocaust, but are you The Duke?
The fuck you are, so get your wrinkly old arse out my face.” This
would be metaphorically speaking. Kirsten wouldn’t have let his
wrinkly old arse anywhere near Her beautiful face.
Anyhow, after a period of frolicking with the native tribes-people,
including some running around with his willy out, and observing an
unwatchable tribal abortion, Kerman is led to the cannibalistic
tribe who have seemingly ate the documentarians by way of killing
them to death. The footage, though, is still there.
Fucking lucky for Deodato, since he’d have had a film all about
Kerman and his moustache getting his sex-limb out and then some
ladies touch it. What a load of shit that would’ve been. You’re
lucky as sweet fuck, Deodato.
What unfolds via said film-reels, is a relentless, truly punishing,
brutal assault on a fella’s senses.
Cannibal Holocaust is really three flicks in one. It’s a jungle
adventure, it’s a Mondo-esque spectacle of horrific cruelty, and
it's a piercingly sharp media satire.
It’s also nigh-on unwatchable a hell of a lot of the time.
And, let’s not forget, it’s a flick choking to death on its own
contradictions. It rages at the ethics of the Mondo filmmakers,
documentarians who, it’s been alleged, were more than a tad
responsible for much of the carnage caught on their cameras. In
fact, Cannibal Holocaust appeared not long after Gualtiero
Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi had faced murder charges as a
direct result of their Africa Addio. At the same time, however,
Deodato presents the authentic slaughter of animals at numerous
points in the film. One scene in particular, involving the capture
and dismemberment of a giant turtle, is among the most infuriating
pieces of film I’ve ever fucking seen, and actually led to Kerman
leaving the production for a time. The puke flying out the faces of
the actors is real. Chances are, you might join them in the
thrusting of stomach-paste across the damn floor.
It’s a film that condemns our thirst for media splatter, and yet
barely a frame passes in the second half without somebody’s guts
being ripped out their throat.
For all this, though, a fella just can’t turn his nose up and say
about “Fuck off, if you think I intend to give Cannibal Holocaust
one damn syllable of my critical musing.” There are plenty of films
that attempted to replicate the savage intensity of Cannibal
Holocaust, but missed the biting wit, the political anger, the
fierce intelligence.
Cannibal Holocaust is an anti-colonialist work, it’s a film about
marauding westerners coming into an indigenous community and
wreaking utter fucking chaos. They rape, they torture, they
imprison dozens of families in shelters and burn the buildings to
the ground, all in the pursuit of the green. Despite the title, and
the lurid marketing, Cannibal Holocaust never demonizes the tribes-
people. When they eventually turn on their captors, tearing them
shattered-limb-from-shattered-limb, it’s because they’ve been
pushed to the absolute limits. The cannibal horrors in the final
act are tame in comparison to the sheer barbarity inflicted by the
white-skinned types.
Keep in mind, folks, Vietnam weren’t so far back in the old
international conscious. All those images of mayhem and slaughter
and inhumanity flooding telly screens weren’t just shit to be found
in an Oliver Stone picture. That right there was the kinda shit
Deodato would’ve been glancing at for much of the decade prior to
filming Cannibal Holocaust. In fact, some sources state that he was
inspired to make the film after catching an especially bloodthirsty
news report.
In many regards, then, Cannibal Holocaust has the morals of a
saint. In others, it’s just fucking incomprehensibly sickening. The
repeated, graphic murder of animals for filmic gain does nothing
but undermine the point of the damn thing. Plus, it’s not like
Deodato needed to rely on it for to up the shock value. The staged
stuff is just as unbearable.
Then again, man, Coppola did the exact same thing in Apocalypse
Now. How come that’s ok, yet Deodato’s obviously an evil bastard
spat from Satan’s cum-hole?
And this is all without touching on the technical aspects of the
thing. The mock-documentary footage that makes up the bulk of the
running time is incredibly convincing, so much so, in fact, that
Deodato had his stars do the talk-show circuit as proof that he
hadn’t had them butchered for real.
In addition, the “fictional” sections are breathtakingly beautiful,
and Ritz Ortolani’s score is masterful, bounding from intensely
disturbing bleeps and chimes to stunning orchestral overtures.
Cannibal Holocaust is a motherfucking masterpiece, man, pure and
simple. It’s repellent, it’s relentless, it’s by no means
“entertainment”, but it’s also incomparably powerful, thought-
provoking, conscientious.
And you don’t need to look around too far for to trace its
influence. Dig all that splatterific mayhem following in its
immediate wake, would you ever? Dig those Blair Witch cats; three
filmmakers, one lass and two fellas, being destroyed during a jaunt
into the woods. “Only the footage remained” and so on and so
fourth.
It ain’t a flick fit for every manner of soul to be watching. I
have the DVD, but I’ve only watched the film twice in its entirety.
I think it’s a masterpiece, and less face it, when the fuck is The
Duke ever wrong about anything worth thinking about, but some
masterpieces ain’t necessarily things you wanna spend a lot of time
with, nonetheless.
Thanks folks.
Thank you Kirsten. I believe I love you, is the truth of it all.
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
right there is the first thing I uttered to Sergio Leone in this
dream I had one time. Thinking back, there’s a few other things I
wish I’d a said alongside that shit. I wish I’d have told him that
yeah, everybody thinks Once Upon A Time In America is a masterpiece
and all, but what The Duke thinks is that it’s a wretched,
misogynist wank-fantasy, and not even a cool, inventive one, but a
really, really uninspired one, like maybe you already had a fumble
a half-hour ago and now it’s not cause you got these demented ideas
in your head, it’s just cause there’s fuck all on telly.
Cheer up, though, I’d have said. It’s not all bad. I think those
spaghetti films you did with John Wayne were amazing. And Once Upon
A Time In The West, too. I can get behind that, Leone.
But what I wish I said most of all, is something along the lines of
“You were right, y’know. Cannibal Holocaust is a damn masterpiece.”
What Sergio Leone did back in the day, y’see, was that he sat down
for to view Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. Sometime between
then and a little while later, he composed a letter to Deodato,
which read as follows;
“Dear Ruggero”, waxed Leone. “What a movie! The second part is a
masterpiece of cinematographic realism but everything seems so real
that I think you will get in trouble with all the world.”
Leone knew the score, man. And he was right. Deodato did indeed get
in trouble with all the world. Especially the part of it that sat
down to watch Cannibal Holocaust of an evening.
Now, back in the day The Duke waxed all about Why Cannibal
Holocaust Is A Damn Masterpiece, but to be honest, I never felt I
did it justice. So what I decided to do about ten minutes ago is to
start scribbling a new-fangled essay on the subject, possibly with
crap CGI monkeys in place of all the silly old stuff from years
gone past.
That old article ain’t going no-place though, man. Don’t be jumping
on me about how I’m raping your childhood and so on. You ain’t
gonna have to scour eBay for pirate copies of the original one like
what you remember.
Anyway, the crux of the matter is this;
Back in the day, Italian horror flick producers decided that the
thing to do would be to make a shitload of flicks regarding the
cannibals for to go alongside the shitload of flicks regarding the
zombies. Unlike the shitload of zombie numbers, though, the likes
of Lucio Fulci’s incredible Zombie Flesh Eaters, or The Living Dead
At Manchester Morgue, the cannibal flicks were mostly an
unutterably boring bunch of grime-faced bastards. Bar The Mountain
Of The Cannibal God or maybe half of Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox, there
ain’t a whole lot to be getting overly excited about.
Cannibal Holocaust, though, is a different beast entirely. It’s not
the first cannibal flick, it wasn’t the last, but it’s far and away
the best, and not only a brilliant horror film, but a fucking
incredible work of motion-flickery regardless of genre.
What Deodato’s film concerns itself with, is a buncha
documentarians go missing in the Amazon, as in the one filled with
trees and rivers, and not the one you go to when you need a copy of
the Get Over It soundtrack in a hurry. Mind you, I’ve known fellas
to have gone clicking around the online behemoth and never fucking
be seen again. Sometimes they show up years later, mumbling some
incomprehensible pish about cheap DVD’s or expensive DVD’s or
rectal probes.
Back in the days of Cannibal Holocaust, though, the web-net was
still a tool known only to the military and the ganja-soaked
hippies they employed for to tinker with it.
Anyway, what occurs is that another fella from the TV company goes
off for to find them, a fella played by no less a motherfucker than
Robert Kerman, porn veteran and star of such wonders as 1976’s Sex
Wish, the seminal Debbie Does Dallas and 1980’s The Lady Is A Tramp.
He’s most recently been in Spider-Man, starring as “Tugboat
Captain”. He better not’ve tried to get his filthy nuts anywhere
near Kirsten, let me tell you right the fuck now. “Get to fuck you
dirty old bastard” She would undoubtedly have demanded. “I respect
your work, especially in Cannibal Holocaust, but are you The Duke?
The fuck you are, so get your wrinkly old arse out my face.” This
would be metaphorically speaking. Kirsten wouldn’t have let his
wrinkly old arse anywhere near Her beautiful face.
Anyhow, after a period of frolicking with the native tribes-people,
including some running around with his willy out, and observing an
unwatchable tribal abortion, Kerman is led to the cannibalistic
tribe who have seemingly ate the documentarians by way of killing
them to death. The footage, though, is still there.
Fucking lucky for Deodato, since he’d have had a film all about
Kerman and his moustache getting his sex-limb out and then some
ladies touch it. What a load of shit that would’ve been. You’re
lucky as sweet fuck, Deodato.
What unfolds via said film-reels, is a relentless, truly punishing,
brutal assault on a fella’s senses.
Cannibal Holocaust is really three flicks in one. It’s a jungle
adventure, it’s a Mondo-esque spectacle of horrific cruelty, and
it's a piercingly sharp media satire.
It’s also nigh-on unwatchable a hell of a lot of the time.
And, let’s not forget, it’s a flick choking to death on its own
contradictions. It rages at the ethics of the Mondo filmmakers,
documentarians who, it’s been alleged, were more than a tad
responsible for much of the carnage caught on their cameras. In
fact, Cannibal Holocaust appeared not long after Gualtiero
Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi had faced murder charges as a
direct result of their Africa Addio. At the same time, however,
Deodato presents the authentic slaughter of animals at numerous
points in the film. One scene in particular, involving the capture
and dismemberment of a giant turtle, is among the most infuriating
pieces of film I’ve ever fucking seen, and actually led to Kerman
leaving the production for a time. The puke flying out the faces of
the actors is real. Chances are, you might join them in the
thrusting of stomach-paste across the damn floor.
It’s a film that condemns our thirst for media splatter, and yet
barely a frame passes in the second half without somebody’s guts
being ripped out their throat.
For all this, though, a fella just can’t turn his nose up and say
about “Fuck off, if you think I intend to give Cannibal Holocaust
one damn syllable of my critical musing.” There are plenty of films
that attempted to replicate the savage intensity of Cannibal
Holocaust, but missed the biting wit, the political anger, the
fierce intelligence.
Cannibal Holocaust is an anti-colonialist work, it’s a film about
marauding westerners coming into an indigenous community and
wreaking utter fucking chaos. They rape, they torture, they
imprison dozens of families in shelters and burn the buildings to
the ground, all in the pursuit of the green. Despite the title, and
the lurid marketing, Cannibal Holocaust never demonizes the tribes-
people. When they eventually turn on their captors, tearing them
shattered-limb-from-shattered-limb, it’s because they’ve been
pushed to the absolute limits. The cannibal horrors in the final
act are tame in comparison to the sheer barbarity inflicted by the
white-skinned types.
Keep in mind, folks, Vietnam weren’t so far back in the old
international conscious. All those images of mayhem and slaughter
and inhumanity flooding telly screens weren’t just shit to be found
in an Oliver Stone picture. That right there was the kinda shit
Deodato would’ve been glancing at for much of the decade prior to
filming Cannibal Holocaust. In fact, some sources state that he was
inspired to make the film after catching an especially bloodthirsty
news report.
In many regards, then, Cannibal Holocaust has the morals of a
saint. In others, it’s just fucking incomprehensibly sickening. The
repeated, graphic murder of animals for filmic gain does nothing
but undermine the point of the damn thing. Plus, it’s not like
Deodato needed to rely on it for to up the shock value. The staged
stuff is just as unbearable.
Then again, man, Coppola did the exact same thing in Apocalypse
Now. How come that’s ok, yet Deodato’s obviously an evil bastard
spat from Satan’s cum-hole?
And this is all without touching on the technical aspects of the
thing. The mock-documentary footage that makes up the bulk of the
running time is incredibly convincing, so much so, in fact, that
Deodato had his stars do the talk-show circuit as proof that he
hadn’t had them butchered for real.
In addition, the “fictional” sections are breathtakingly beautiful,
and Ritz Ortolani’s score is masterful, bounding from intensely
disturbing bleeps and chimes to stunning orchestral overtures.
Cannibal Holocaust is a motherfucking masterpiece, man, pure and
simple. It’s repellent, it’s relentless, it’s by no means
“entertainment”, but it’s also incomparably powerful, thought-
provoking, conscientious.
And you don’t need to look around too far for to trace its
influence. Dig all that splatterific mayhem following in its
immediate wake, would you ever? Dig those Blair Witch cats; three
filmmakers, one lass and two fellas, being destroyed during a jaunt
into the woods. “Only the footage remained” and so on and so
fourth.
It ain’t a flick fit for every manner of soul to be watching. I
have the DVD, but I’ve only watched the film twice in its entirety.
I think it’s a masterpiece, and less face it, when the fuck is The
Duke ever wrong about anything worth thinking about, but some
masterpieces ain’t necessarily things you wanna spend a lot of time
with, nonetheless.
Thanks folks.
Thank you Kirsten. I believe I love you, is the truth of it all.
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
