10 Best Video Nasties (And Why They Were Banned)

Ruggero Deodato's infamous film about a documentary crew running afoul of a cannibal tribe in the amazon spawned a string of copycats and practically created the found-footage genre, later popularised by the Blair Witch Project.

But where Blair Witch would use suggestion to create chills, Deodato's unflinching lens brought graphic violence, made all the more disturbing by the apparent realism the style lends. In fact, the film seemed so real that it was seized by the Italian courts and Deodato wound up facing life in prison for having apparently murdered several actors on film.

Deodato's dedication to realism backfired spectacularly here. He'd previously made an agreement with these actors that they would all disappear for a year and the alleged victims had to be tracked down to prove the director's innocence.

Luckily for the Deodato, they were soon found and when they appeared in court the murder charges were dropped.

Some of the violence was real, however. A river turtle, a snake, a tarantula, a coatimundi, a pig and two monkeys were actually killed on film. These scenes are more upsetting to watch for that reason and are the only thing Deodato regrets about the making of the film.

Cannibal Holocaust was banned in the UK until 2001 when it received 6 minutes of cuts, removing all footage of animal deaths, reducing a rape scene and torture sequence involving a spiked ball. in 2011 the film passed with only 15 seconds cut from the coatimundi scene alone.