3. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
Banned: UK, Singapore, Australia, Norway, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Malaysia Poster child of the Video Nasty scare, Cannibal Holocaust has a very complicated past when it comes to film censorship around the world. The uncut version of the film is an effective horror film which is infinitely disgusting and disturbing. The first film to use the found footage story arc, Cannibal Holocaust features an anthropologist venturing deep into the Amazon jungle to find out what happened to a Mondo-type documentary film crew who were shooting footage there. He gains the natives collective trust and finds film reels which he takes back to NYC and watches... The atrocities that the film crew either filmed or perpetrated include: lots of animal snuff, a native killing a woman with a stone dildo, a native woman having her foetus forcibly aborted and buried in mud, the crew raping a native girl, the crew torching the huts of the natives to get good footage, the crew coming across a woman impaled on a pole which enters her vagina and exits her mouth, and to top it all off, the natives wreak a terrible revenge on the crew which is captured to the bitter end. So it is pretty hardcore stuff which fooled a lot of people into thinking it was a snuff movie including the alarmed Italian authorities who, when they saw the film, forced director Ruggero Deodato to parade his actors around an Italian court to prove that they hadnt been killed. Cannibal Holocaust stands head and shoulders above all of the films that constitute the salubrious Italian Cannibal subgenre of Italian Exploitation. Its verisimilitude is further enhanced by the inclusion of real life death footage which Deodato has culled from various Mondo Movies. Basically, the whole film is an indictment of the Italian Shockumentary particularly the films of the Godfathers of Mondo Jacopetti & Prosperi which include such subgenre epics as Mondo Cane, Addio Zio Tom and the infamous Africa Addio. Regarding the latter film, Jacopetti & Prosperi were accused of staging executions for the camera. They were eventually exonerated by an Italian court after a lengthy investigation. Cannibal Holocaust plays around with the accusations laid on Jacopetti & Prosperi to create a bunch of fame hungry, unscrupulous Mondo movie makers who would do anything to get good footage. Unfortunately Deodato was too successful in this endeavour and ended up being landed with the same accusations as Jacopetti & Prosperi! A film which continues to shock and awe all those who watch it, there is no denying the cleverness or complexity of Cannibal Holocaust. In fact, it was probably too clever for its own good and thats what got it banned in so many countries.