The Italian Cannibal film is one of the most lurid exploitation subgenres on the market. Closely allied to its sister - The Italian zombie movie, the cannibal film is a mainly Italian phenomenon although there has been pretenders (for example - Cannibal Terror, a terrible French cannibal atrocity). Perhaps the Italian cannibal movie mutated from another Italian subgenre - the Mondo movie and viewers' desire to see primitive peoples making fools of themselves by their rituals and living ways. It was also definitely motivated by George Romero who made flesh eating one of the horror film's favourite pastimes. Whatever the heck happened, the world was inundated by Italian Cannibal movies for a very brief period in the late 1970s to the early 1980s. They attracted a lot of interest - not all of it positive. When the UK was overcome by the Video Nasty scare, Italian Cannibal films were the main target of the Video Recordings Act and virtually every film on this list was rendered a video nasty. However those films that were banned have now been granted a certificate and we can feast ourselves on Italian Cannibal movies. Just don't bite off more than you can chew...