Cannibal Holocaust

[gattoparde59]

I just saw a review today of yet another "found footage" horror film and it reminded me of this review from youtube. If you remember Cannibal Holocaust appears at least twice in Little Star, sort of the ne plus ultra of exploitation movies.

Despite the tawdry "Sadist Cinema" title, this review is a pretty intelligent recounting of one of the darker, sleazier episodes in the history of the cinema. The director was actually put on trial for murder because of the realistic portrayal of violence. Like Theres observes in the novel, the Italian courts found this charge to by unfounded although animals really were killed. So be warned, even when being reviewed some people will find this material offensive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nEPmfGGR2o

Oh, and by the way, I have never seen this film, nor do I plan on doing so anytime soon.

[varamiglite]

Cannibal Holocaust got in deep doo-doo because of its extreme animal cruelty. In three separate scenes animals were killed in very inhumane and disgusting fashions. The movie went under fire because the animals were real and not some sort of special effects. I've been fortunate or unfortunate enough to see the film and it was quite a mess of just gore and exploitation. It had a realistic documentary feeling so I can see how they got into trouble for that. For those that have not seen it... it's easily left out. You're not missing a whole lot by choosing to skip it.

[Tigermamma]

I just saw a review today of yet another "found footage" horror film and it reminded me of this review from youtube. If you remember Cannibal Holocaust appears at least twice in Little Star, sort of the ne plus ultra of exploitation movies.

Despite the tawdry "Sadist Cinema" title, this review is a pretty intelligent recounting of one of the darker, sleazier episodes in the history of the cinema. The director was actually put on trial for murder because of the realistic portrayal of violence. Like Theres in the novel, the Italian courts found this charge to by unfounded although animals really were killed. So be warned, even when being reviewed some people will find this material offensive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nEPmfGGR2o

Oh, and by the way, I have never seen this film, nor do I plan on doing so anytime soon.

I actually have this movie. and the dvd has a panflet about the movie. Much of the trial revolved around the scene of the death of one of the Yamamomo-girls, beeing put on a spir. It looked so real, they actually had to bring in many of the actors for the trial to prove they hadn't been killed... It's a sick movie

[gattoparde59]

On my second reading of the novel and it turns out Cannibal Holocaust is pretty important. Maybe my subconscious mind was prodding me to think about this film. Maybe "it" knew something that I didn't know? More about the "it" in a minute.

In the part titled "The Girl with the Golden Hair" chapter 2 is where Cannibal Holocaust becomes so important.

If you remember Jerry is now sheltering Theres and he has resolved to give her up to trained professionals after a certain amount of time. He buys a load of black market baby food from a shady friend and Theres gets food poisoning. Big surprise!

While Theres is ill, Jerry pursues the troubling questions that he has about why she murdered his parents, and why she has not killed Jerry in the interim. He decides to show Theres his copy of Cannibal Holocaust. It is then that Theres tells Jerry the business with the red smoke. She recognizes that the murders in the Italian horror film are fake (a fact proven when the director was put on trial for murder) because there is no "red smoke." She goes on to explain that she consumes the red smoke and she considers that to be the "love in their heads" that she has been told about. This suggest to me that the red smoke is real and not a contagious hallucination. Theres has no other way of knowing that the killing shown in Cannibal Holocaust is actually simulated and not real.

A bit later on Theres is on the verge of death from the food poisoning and Jerry claims to be able to see the red smoke emerging from Theres' mouth, if only for a second. Theres does not die, but she does say later that she very nearly did die when Jerry saw the smoke.

By far the most interesting revelation during this episode is when Jerry again asks Theres, why has she not killed Jerry and taken his red smoke? Theres feverish answer is "I don't know. It says stop."

What is "it" exactly?????

[Nightrider]

In the part titled "The Girl with the Golden Hair" chapter 2 is where Cannibal Holocaust becomes so important.

If you remember Jerry is now sheltering Theres and he has resolved to give her up to trained professionals after a certain amount of time. He buys a load of black market baby food from a shady friend and Theres gets food poisoning. Big surprise!

While Theres is ill, Jerry pursues the troubling questions that he has about why she murdered his parents, and why she has not killed Jerry in the interim. He decides to show Theres his copy of Cannibal Holocaust. It is then that Theres tells Jerry the business with the red smoke. She recognizes that the murders in the Italian horror film are fake (a fact proven when the director was put on trial for murder) because there is no "red smoke." She goes on to explain that she consumes the red smoke and she considers that to be the "love in their heads" that she has been told about. This suggest to me that the red smoke is real and not a contagious hallucination. Theres has no other way of knowing that the killing shown in Cannibal Holocaust is actually simulated and not real.

A bit later on Theres is on the verge of death from the food poisoning and Jerry claims to be able to see the red smoke emerging from Theres' mouth, if only for a second. Theres does not die, but she does say later that she very nearly did die when Jerry saw the smoke.

By far the most interesting revelation during this episode is when Jerry again asks Theres, why has she not killed Jerry and taken his red smoke? Theres feverish answer is "I don't know. It says stop."

What is "it" exactly?????

Anybody with half a brain will recognize that killings in "Cannibal Holocaust" are faked. And Theres certainly proved herself to be an intelligent creature.
There was no red smoke except as a vision/creation of Theres' warped little mind. Jerry's brief participation in Theres' hallucination only asserts one of novel's persistent themes: power of suggestion.

I imagine the "IT" was the greater power(also created by Theres' mind), the force, deus ex machina, omnipotent being(?)...
Something that is a convenient explanation for things that cannot be explained.

[gattoparde59]

Anybody with half a brain will recognize that killings in "Cannibal Holocaust" are faked. And Theres certainly proved herself to be an intelligent creature.

That is an interesting theory, or really an opinion on your part. I get a different reading from the novel. Jerry, for one, seems to have a brain that weighs in at something less than 1/2:

Jerry had always thought Cannibal Holocaust was one of the better splatter films. It felt and looked real. Since Theres was totally unfamiliar with the phenomenon of film, he had thought she would see it as pure documentary, which fitted in with his somewhat unclear aim.

This looks pretty straight forward to me. If Theres had seen through some cheezy special effects she would have said so, in so many words. Instead she relies exclusively on the phenomenon of the red smoke. Other wise I have to think of Theres as being sly, deceitful and completely out of character.

There was no red smoke except as a vision/creation of Theres' warped little mind. Jerry's brief participation in Theres' hallucination only asserts one of novel's persistent themes: power of suggestion.

That would be the obvious explanation, but the more I read about Theres the less happy I am with the rational explanation. Theres' visions have the weight of conviction behind them. She is intimately acquainted with the border land between life and death. At the same time she is sadly aware of the borders that separate her from the rest of the human race.

[sauvin]

It's been some time since I've read the novel, and only read it once (so far).

I don't remember anything to suggest anything of an Otherness about Teresa; everything about her seems likely explainable in terms of conventional mental illness. Theres, on the other hand, had had to be "revived" after having been presumably dead long enough for brain damage to occur. Who knows what kinds of changes she sustained during that time?

JAL has presented us with creatures in other works who are at least partially Other, Eli being an obvious example. With Handling the Undead, he presented us with whole hordes of "reliving" people who either didn't come all the way back, or didn't come back "right". Within such a context, I'd suggest it might not be terribly appropriate to claim that Theres harbours no Otherness.

I'm with Gattoparde. If the girl has no idea how music is stored on a CD or how a boombox re-encodes a CD's contents into sound, I'd suggest she'd have no idea how deaths can be faked in a movie. She was nevertheless not fooled by the "documentary-like feel" of the Cannibal Holocaust not because she could point to makeup, funky camera angles or some clever editing but because she didn't see this "red smoke".

Theres is so human - oh, so brokenly human - in so many ways, but there's still an essential strangeness about her that I (for one) have never encountered. I'm certainly prepared to accept the proposition that this strangeness isn't human - or even terrestrial at all - and that it's what enables her to perceive things that we either can't or won't. More baldly stated: where there's red smoke, there might be Otherness fire.

[EEA]

Interesting. Right now I am reading the novel for the second time. Theres is an intriguing character and sometimes I think that she might not be real. But once she and Teresa come together, the whole world crashes around them.

[gattoparde59]

More movie garbage from director Eli Roth. It does suggest two movies that play a role in Little Star: Cannibal Holocaust and Roth's Hostel.

[danielmann861]

I just saw a review today of yet another "found footage" horror film and it reminded me of this review from youtube. If you remember Cannibal Holocaust appears at least twice in Little Star, sort of the ne plus ultra of exploitation movies.

Despite the tawdry "Sadist Cinema" title, this review is a pretty intelligent recounting of one of the darker, sleazier episodes in the history of the cinema. The director was actually put on trial for murder because of the realistic portrayal of violence. Like Theres observes in the novel, the Italian courts found this charge to by unfounded although animals really were killed. So be warned, even when being reviewed some people will find this material offensive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nEPmfGGR2o

Oh, and by the way, I have never seen this film, nor do I plan on doing so anytime soon.

I love Cannibal Holocaust and will never make an apology for it.

I understand why people hate it. But for me? One of the best horror films ever made. Not even joking when I say that. A real example of human savagery.