Cannibal Holocaust / Justified Filmmaking?

Is Cannibal Holocaust justified filmmaking or is it exploitive snuff?

For those who haven't seen Cannibal Holocaust (spoilers, just so you know), the touted influence for The Blair Witch Project, it tells the story of a group of documentary filmmakers who travel into the Amazon to make a film about the elusive Yanomamo tribe of cannibals. The expedition goes wrong and NYU then sends in a professor to uncover what happened to them. Once he makes contact with the tribe he discovers their footage and eventually brings it back to NY. In NY they watch the footage which shows the documentarians manipulating the tribe to get horrible shock footage out of them and then having the tribe revolt against them, kill them and eat them.

The question the movie asks is are these people being filmed cannibals or are we, the viewer, the cannibals for seeking out and producing such film. The people trying to retrieve the footage are eager to exploit the Yanomamo for profit - to exploit the horrors they face, but are disgusted when they finally view the last reel of the footage in which their crew is slaughtered. This synposis may not be as convincing, but I do think the movie makes a profound statement in the last 30 minutes about violence, gore, our fascination with it and societal cannibalism.

However, is this point null and void because of the lengths the filmmakers go to to make it? Before we see their deaths, the "found footage" of the crew contains many shots of the actors killing and brutalizing animals in a very real way. We see various animals killed and eaten (from a pig to a monkey), but what absolutely pushed the limit to me was the savage, real killing of a giant turtle for food. We, the viewer, witness real footage of the actors decapitating, deshelling and gutting a turtle - all while it writhes in pain.

While the acts of violence commited by people towards people is not real (though the ethical exploitation of the natives as actors is another issue entirely), does the killing of animals for the sake of capturing the horror of it, and thus sky-rocketing the illusion of realism in the last reel, void the point the filmmakers are making in saying, "we are the real cannibals", or is it a necessary evil to their goal that can be forgiven in the pursuit of art.

I think Cannibal Holocaust is a tremendeously vocal film, but I can't endorse it because of the level of exploitation the filmmakers went to to make the point that we as a society are grossly exploititve of the world and its inhabitants everywhere.

What do other people think? Is the voice of the filmmakers behind Cannibal Holocaust a valid one? Or is the entire point of the film redundant because it is completely cyclical in nature?

Does it even matter if the footage in the movie (even the "found footage") is real or not?

Is filming exploitation to make a statement about exploitation justified?

I'm somewhat torn.

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While Cannibal Holocaust is notorious for it's animal killings, it is not the only movie to do this. In my review of the film I stated that I will not go into the politics of animal killings, but here I will.

The animal killings (turtle) are brutal and hard to watch, especially when the turtle twitches while it's guts are being ripped out. BUT, these cannibals, do this in real life in order to survive. This happens everyday. These filmmakers did in fact eat the turtle, they became the cannibals they were seeking. Is the extreme length they went to in order to get this message across justified??? I don't think so. But the filmmaker do.

Is it okay for other movie to kill animals, if they find a loop hole???
WAKE IN FRIGHT (1970) Yes, the killings are real, but as an elaborately worded end credits statement informs us, they were filmed during an actual hunt conducted by licensed hunters and not staged specifically for the film. Is this any different then real cannibals killing food in the jungle for food....and just filming it?

For my opinion on it, in Cannibal holocaust, they do not just eat it, they torture the turtle, cutting off it's limps, then rippingi it's shell off, poor excuse for a filmmaker to justify such an act. Or holding up a muskrat to the screen and slowly driving the knife into it, then through it's skull.

The mere fact that people want to go out and see films such as Cannibal Holocaust, is because of the word of mouth about how brutal it is, due to animal killings. So showing this is a double edge sword, because even though it may have been made for a thought provoking purpose, it is a way to get people to see a movie to see the raw carnage of it. Cannibal holocaust is said to be the most disturbing movie ever made....due to these animal killings? Probably.

For me, personally, I do not see the reason to kill any animals for the sake of entertainment (film). You can get the same message across if you were to use fake material. The purpose to show real animal killings, well, shock value. The director of...either this film or Cannibal Ferox has said, that if he were to go back in time and change anything,he would change the fact that they killed real animals. If the people behind these killings would change that fact, then you may have your answer.

Would it be okay in an art film? Would it make any difference if it were in an movie people respected??? Apocalypse Now.

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Suspect's Reviews

I would need to see the film to have anything interesting to say. Great thread, btw!

I do have a problem seeing animals being tortured on film so... well... we'll see...

The comment about Apocalypse Now is not bad at all. I do not enjoy that part of the film, the one with the cow and Kurtz being slaughtered at the same time, even if I think it's a brilliant cinematic moment. It's not like I can't stand wathcing it. It might have something to do with the context in which the slaughtering of the cow is being put. If the point was to torture the cow as much as possible and to make that the main thing or the core of the scene, then I would probably have a much harder time accepting it. Perhaps that's hypocrisy, but I guess that is what we're discussing here. Or? It's 3:30 am here and I don't know what I'm writing any longer.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.