10 Movie Special Effects Nobody Believed

1. The Impaled Woman - Cannibal Holocaust

The Special Effect

Whatever you think of Ruggero Deodato's ultra-controversial 1980 found footage horror film, there's no denying the impressive realism of the film's gnarly gore effects - though in some cases, Deodato sadly resorted to actually killing animals for real.

The same wasn't true of the film's doomed humans, at least, namely the famous impalement scene, in which a woman is found with a pole seemingly inserted into her mouth, forced through her body and, er, out the other end.

In actuality, the effect is incredibly simple - the bottom of the pole had a bicycle seat on which the actress sat, while she simply held a stick of balsa wood in her mouth to suggest a continuous object passing through her.

Why Nobody Believed It

Shortly following the film's premiere, it was seized by the Italian authorities, who believed Cannibal Holocaust to be a snuff film featuring the actual deaths of people.

Deodato was charged with murder, unaided by the fact that most of the crew had signed contracts agreeing not to appear in any media for a year following the film's release (to sell their "deaths").

The four main actors nevertheless eventually appeared on a TV show to help clear Deodato's name, and he explained to a court exactly how he achieved the impalement scene.

Even though the charges were dropped against the director, it did little to dispel the myth that the film featured real human murder, especially coming two decades before widespread Internet adoption.