Anyone seen Cannibal Holocost? (sp)

Dare I say it actually really disturbed me. Brilliant in terms of it's the only film I've seen that's made me weep in horror! Really awful for me, wish I'd never seen it. I still can't think why I actually sat and watched the whole thing. I'd advise any softies like me not to watch it! :(
 
Maybe I'm mixing the two soundtracks up... I havent watched these films in quite a while, I'll have to have a looka t them again on the weekend. And the more I think about it I am starting to remember some dodgy execution footage. Evil films :(:D
 
It's extremely overrated in the Horror world in my eyes and found it quite rubbish when I first saw it, and if I had known before I saw it about the animals I would never have watched this.
 
I absolutely hated it. The good points can be counted on the fingers of one hand - good music, interesting idea, extreme violence.

The bad points are the stuff of legend. The acting is horrible, it's so bad it's almost painful, while the script the actors are trying to work with is at best dreadful - it's typical of Italian horror in which scripts were written in English by people who don't speak it particularly fluently (and the same with the usage of Italian actors trying to soldier through an English script and then dubbed with American voices in the editing suite).

The much-praised social commentary is nothing of the sort, it's just a tacked on reference to the mondo exploitation movies it was inspired by, while ignoring that every convention of those movies it is criticising has just been laid on, in spades, for entertainment; the fact that real animals were used and a member of the cast was a hardcore porn star just highlights the hypocrisy.

How any court anywhere in the world could have thought it was anything more than a badly-made horror film is beyond me, they must have been really stupid.

It's effective though, I'll give it that - the turtle scene is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.
 
It's total trash made by a hack of a director and has basically no redeeming qualities.

If not for the real animals being killed nobody would give two shits about it, it's the only real reason it's gained this reputation. I can watch plenty of trashy crap horror which doesn't resort to butchering animals for entertainment sakes thank you very much :)
 
I haven't seen the film and have no intention of doing so, but I am wondering what was the purpose of the animal killings, in the story? Just curious, not trying to continue the "omgz so cruelz shudnt hav done it!1!" argument.
 
If anyone wants the uncut version, there are several copies you could get. It's one of my favourite films and sucker that I am, I have three copies of it. My first is a first pressing, limited to 11,111 copies, Grindhouse Releasing 2 disc edition. This is now available as a non-limited Deluxe edition, without the cool packaging but with the same two discs, and you can get it from Amazon or ebay, and I believe a few ebay sellers in the UK already will have it so shouldn't be a customs risk (to be honest I doubt it would get found anyway). It's remastered, has an option to watch the film without animal cruelty, and has the best extras, albeit the film itself is an interlaced transfer, for some reason.
The second copy of the film I has is a 2 disc "Ultrabit" special edition by EC Entertainment. This is supposed to be limited to 4,000 copies, but a quick look on ebay still finRAB me quite a few so maybe they re-released it or something. Anyway it is fully uncut, including, unlike the Grindhouse version, a few extras seconRAB of the "film within a film", stock footage (I think it was called Last Road In Hell or something). Also the film has a progressive transfer, has to my eyes better colour grading and saturation than the Grindhouse version, and looks simply amazing. The second disc has some interviews on it from a film festival, which aren't anything special.
The third copy I have is a magpie-like copy which combines the best of the other two editions. It is by XL Video, who have released and repackaged CH a number of times over the years (the best being an extremely limited edition package with a figurine of the girl impaled on a spike). My copy is a "big box" version, and has one of two covers; both covers were released limited to 667 copies. Inside the box is basically the film disc from the Ultrabit EC Entertainment release, and the second extras disc from Grindhouse, but obviously with some slight branding / authoring adjustments. I think they basically must have got permission and licensed the discs, but this way you get the best of both worlRAB. Finally the third disc is the CD soundtrack, well worth having.

The XL Video releases are a little hard to come by, but definitely fans of the film would do well with either the Ultrabit or Grindhouse Releasing versions. True fans would probably get both.
 
The filmmakers in the movie are making a documentary about cannibals and are disappointed to find the cannibals are a bit boring so they stage various acts on camera to spice up the documentary, some of which contain real animal killings.

It's based on a genre of movies from the 70s called "mondo" which were exploitative documentaries about things like tribal war in Africa that became notorious for staging scenes for shock value.
 
that's right, apparently some people thought that the people that were impaled on the poles died for real....

I first saw it a few years ago and it's a pretty disturbing movie.

It possibly influenced the Blair witch project with the lost footage storyline.......:)
 
Ah, but you see I don't think it is ignoring that, the film is self aware, it is in a way criticising those films, and justifying its critique by becoming one of them. That's the interesting thing.

So what you have is a strange metafiction, where the film is arguing against its own exploitative existence.
 
The UK disc is butchered worse than any animal in the film.

The uncut 2 disc US set is the best and it also allows you to view it with animal slaughter skipped.

Ferox was complete tosh and pretty much a ripoff of Holocaust.

The UK disc of Ferox is equally worthless as it is cut to bits
 
Actually the Grindhouse version is the true uncut version as The Last Road To Hell version that appears in it is the original version. That is the version that is on the original negatives of the movie and the alternate version of the film with the extended Last Road To Hell was part of the release that Japan got. Therefore it is just slightly extended and not in anyway the original movie. It is available as a special feature on the Grindhouse disc as you know and that is where it should stay.
 
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