And now, at long last, we get down to it – the final circle in exploitation hell, the cellar beneath the cellar, the lowest depths of the House of Horrors, where the movies that can actually hurt you are waiting. Salo is down here, and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and Last House on Dead End Street, and they’ve just cleared out a spot for the newest tenants, August Underground and Scrapbook. But the darkest corner is reserved for a spate of films that out-shock even this ugly company. These are the movies that blur the lines between fiction and reality, between sanity and madness – the reprehensible mondo movie Africa Addio is here somewhere, and Cannibal Ferox, and some very grimy Super-8 B&D and abuse films from the sick, sick Seventies. It’s here where you’ll also find the most malevolent, the most morally questionable, and the most damaging of this unholy company, and that’s Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. And guess what? It’s just been released on DVD. Just for you.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: come on… is that bad? Is it worth all the vitriol, all the disgust, all the legal wrangling (as well as all the hardcore, do-or-die fan worship) that’s been hurled at it for the last two decades? The answer is yes. Outside of actual atrocity footage, you aren’t going to see a non-stop cavalcade of hideous violence anywhere else – heads, legs, and penises lopped off, rape with a stone phallus (followed by a bludgeoning with said phallus), abortion by force, through and through impalement (through the genitals and out the mouth), multiple rapes, disembowelment, decapitation, and of course, prolonged scenes of cannibalism. Okay, that’s bad, you say, but I’ve spent my time in the trash movie trenches – I can hack an orgy of special effects. Oh, can ya, tough guy? How about if we mix in some actual firing squad footage – oh, yeah, those dudes tied to the poles are dead for real. Will that change your tune? No? All right, then you can enjoy some on-camera animal slaughter – take a deep breath and get an eyeful of a muskrat that gets skinned alive, or a turtle hacked to pieces while it’s still breathing, or a cute little piglet that takes a shotgun blast, or a sweet, cuddly monkey that has the top of its fuzzy head lopped off and its bloody brains plucked from its skull and eaten? You starting to come around on this movie? I think you will, soon enough, because that’s what’s waiting for you in Cannibal Holocaust.

But you know, I think that there’s a few of you out there who might just dig the mix of real and fake violence, who might be saying, “Right on, man – the world’s a fucked up place, and this proves it, so bring on the putrid!” Well, here’s the catch: you never quite know what’s real and what isn’t in the movie. Deodato, who knew a thing or two about creating reality out of fiction (and vice versa) by assisting Roberto Rossellini, one of the fathers of the Italian neo-realist movement in the late ‘50s, fashions the crux of his picture as a documentary, with jagged, hand-held movement, direct address of the camera, and deliberately worn film stock to approximate the look and feel of raw footage abandoned in the heart of the jungle. The premise (which is framed by ‘70s porn star Robert Kerman, a.k.a. R. Bolla, as a professor sent to the Amazon to find the film after the team that shot it is massacred by a cannibal tribe) is a novel one, because it avoids the pitfalls of repetition that was already plaguing the Italian cannibal subgenre (which Deodato himself helped to launch in the early ‘70s with Jungle Holocaust). But the overall effect is more devastating than impressive – since audiences are already going into the film with disbelief held at a high level to enjoy what they believe will be a thrill ride, the combination of very convincing “fake” documentary footage with real animal butchery and murder creates a nightmarish feeling of disorientation (it should be said that Riz Ortolani’s score, which alternates between staggeringly sad orchestration and electronic dissonance, contributes greatly to this effect). In short, you are not safe when watching Cannibal Holocaust, and that’s about as far as any film can take you.

Was it responsible or ethical of Deodato to play with his audience in such a manner? If you’re talking about creating a mood with the documentary approach, then yes. Just about anything is fair game in horror, and since the goal is to terrify the audience, he is allowed to take them as far as they can go by virtue of his own skill and imagination (just ask the makers of The Blair Witch Project, who used the same approach a few years back to scare audiences witless) Where the film treads into questionable territory is his use of the execution footage, and the animal killings, some of which is carried out by his cast. Though Deodato has defended these actions over the years by declaring that his native extras ate the animals after the cameras stopped rolling, that excuse doesn’t really fly – at least for me, it doesn’t. I won’t assume to speak for you, but the fact of the matter is, these scenes go way beyond what is generally acceptable for horror films – or any genre of film – to use in delivering an emotional impact. That’s my two cents added to a twenty-five year argument, and you can take it or leave it. You should know, however, that if you want to see the film but didn’t want to deal with the animal slaughter, Grindhouse’s DVD offers in this set a slightly edited version that trims away these objectionable moments. But either way, you’re still gonna feel the hurt.