The film takes place on the night before Easter and opens with a robbery where a masked gunman mercilessly kills a liquor store clerk. We’re then introduced to a single Mother, Mindy Peters, and her handicapped son, Nicholas, who is obsessed with the holiday – we later find out that his father died on Easter. Mindy has a date with her new boyfriend, Remington, who, unbeknownst to her, is the criminal who committed the robbery and plans on moving in with her despite Nicholas’ objections. When Mindy has to work a double shift and can’t get a babysitter, Remington offers to help but has more sinister plans to party. Unfortunately for him and his friends, a masked killer is on the loose and begins to pick them off one by one.

So what separates Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! from other recent slasher movies? Firstly, it’s not a remake and even though it’s about a masked killer who chooses to kill during a particular time of the year, I think this is more in homage to classic slashers than an attempt to bring something entirely new to the table. I would have liked it to look a little more authentic (like last year’s The House of the Devil) but this may have been impossible due to budgetary constraints or simply because Director Chad Ferrin wants this to be remembered as an unpretentious modern-day slasher.

There are some gory death scenes which include a drill to the head, plastic wrap suffocation and even a broom to the throat (not the brush end). Muskatell manages to walk a fine line in his portrayal of Remington who’s simply vile but strangely likable (the handlebar mustache and chops complement his pear-shaped body and maniacal laugh for comic effect).

I’m a little uncertain about the direction as the photography is dodgy throughout and certain shots don’t appear to be framed properly – if this was for effect, I don’t know if it always worked. I thought the ending was a little weak and felt rushed but it tied things up nicely.

In the end, though, this isn’t looking to break any new ground; it’s a straightforward exploitation film in the style of the ultraviolent slashers from the 70s and 80s, with unwholesome characters, a thin plot and questionable morals (all of which is good).

Frumkes had previous filmmaking experience with his excellent documentary Document of the Dead (1985) – an on set exploration of the making of George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). The remainder of the crew of Street Trash were all pretty much first timers and students. Despite this and the obvious low budget this is a very cine literate film which shows great generic knowledge in the manner it goes about upsetting the conventions of the form and our own expectations. Quite simply Street Trash is a film that is impossible to predict. This remains Jim Muro’s only credit as a director, but the accomplished use of the steadicam in the film has seen him go on to work on films such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), JFK (1991) and Crash (2004). The first example of this is in the opening chase sequence as we follow the films ostensible hero Fred (Mike Lackey – who was also responsible for much of the outlandish special make up effects) being pursued after a bit of thievery. This introduces an aspect of the film which remains throughout – an attention to cinematic detail. This is a rare low budget horror film that places huge importance on the camera (angles, position, movement), composition, framing, and editing.

The narrative itself has quite a complex structure. The story is content to explore the milieu of the vagrants (including a very atmospheric junk yard), before it introduces the alcoholic beverage Viper, which causes all kinds of body popping and melting mayhem. The best sequence is a superbly choreographed steadicam sequence which ends with a vagrant flushing himself down a disused toilet! The illegal booze is just an excuse for the effects, but it lends itself well to a narrative that is meandering, episodic, and for large parts interested in exploring a gallery of grotesque characters – this includes the highly strung cop Bill (Bill Chepil) who has a penchant for throwing up on people he has just battered near to death. To confuse matters we also have a Vietnam veteran in the shape of the psychotic Bronson (Vic Noto) who is prone to having flashbacks and rules the junkyard like a giant rat atop a throne of garbage (the sequences in Vietnam are one of the weaker aspects of the film – possibly influenced by Troma‘s gruelling Vietnam veteran nightmare Combat Shock (1986)). Towards the end of the film Bronson is the character the narrative turns on as a kind of love triangle emerges, love is perhaps the wrong word Bronson is out to rape. Speaking of rape, the film includes a gang rape scene which is at odds with the tone of the film. As our ‘hero’ Fred is also involved this makes the scene one of the most problematic in the film. By contrast the scene in which a poor unfortunate is castrated, only then to have his penis used in a game of catch is brilliant in its audacity and fit’s the film perfectly.

The film completely rejects a political reading. It doesn’t attempt to redeem the homeless, instead it has great fun confirming all the fears that were emerging in late 80’s New York about the problem. Some might see this as irresponsible and to not tackle the issues head on perhaps smacks of social and political cowardice. Street Trash can be forgiven because a political message was the furthest thing from the filmmakers intentions. Instead it is content to wallow in the filth and trash of the streets. The film also has an inbuilt nostalgia for the Grindhouse distribution circuits, which by 1987 had been pretty much removed from the landscape of American cinematic distribution. The tone and spirit of the film has often seen it mistaken for, or compared too, the productions of Troma. But Street Trash not only stands apart, but is far superior to anything produced by that company. Be prepared to experience true horror anarchy, and wash it down with a bottle of Viper.

Deadgirl has a simple plot: two deadbeat teenagers, one rather sweet and aimless (Ricky) and another clearly evil and unhinged (JT), break into an old mental hospital. As they pick around the creepy, atmospheric place, they come across a woman chained and cuffed to a bed, naked. She’s dehydrated and emaciated, her gums receding from her teeth. She seems to be dead at first (hence the movie title), but she opens her eyes, groans, and writhes around on the gurney, her faintly yellowish skin covered in sweat. Ricky suggests that they call the police. JT, though, tells him to wait. He wants to get to know her a little bit better.

The next day, when Ricky meets JT back at the abandoned hospital, JT tells him that the woman can’t die. He knows because he tried to kill her several times–he snapped her neck and shot her in the chest.  At this point, one would expect Ricky to have more of a reaction than his mopey, somewhat resistant shrug, but he doesn’t say much. JT, surprisingly, comes to the conclusion that they should keep this woman who can’t die down in the basement for their own pleasure. Ricky doesn’t participate in raping a deadish woman chained to a bed, but he doesn’t seem too concerned about her, either. He’s more concerned about his unlikely love interest, Joann, a popular, cheerleaderish girl who is out of his league.

Deadgirl is an odd mix of tones and aims. It seems to be saying something about men, sex, power, and violence. The Deadgirl of the title is the extreme of passivity. Punch her, hit her, spit on her–she doesn’t react. And the men/boys in the movie are so consumed by their own desires for sex and domination that this woman seems like a welcome change from the girls at school who are so inaccessible and demanding. This Deadgirl is their dream–a woman who can’t complain, talk, or move.

The young, relatively unknown actors do well in their parts, as far as the parts go. Noah Segan, as JT, is menacing and creepy as the mastermind of the rape-the-dead-girl project. His character doesn’t make much sense, but he plays it with a slimy, deranged energy. Sholoh Fernandex, as Ricky, is a fairly convincing foil to JT, but only in the twisted universe that directors Sarmiento and Harel create, where men are so desperate for control and power that a vague distaste for rape represents the moral center of the movie. And maybe that’s the point: if left to their own devices, men would beat, rape, and exploit women. Is this the director’s point? It’s not an assertion I agree with and it’s a bleaker view of humanity than I’ve seen in a very long time, even from a horror movie.

It’s hard to know what to make of this movie. In some ways, it’s pure exploitation, a film that shows what’s taboo in real life: a woman being beaten to death and then raped over and over again, for example. These scenes are I Spit on Your Grave and Irreversible levels of horrifying, but I suspect we aren’t supposed to react to them with the kind of outrage  and horror that those movies engendered because the woman is “dead” (what that means in the context of the film, I’m not sure). But the movie seems to be interested in examining (and critiquing) the male libido, too, which leaves me confused.

This is not an entertaining horror movie. It’s a very well-made, moody, interesting, and disgusting movie. I’m curious about what the directors and writers will do in the future, but I can’t say I understand this movie, its target audience, or its goals. It seems too cerebral for the Saw crowd but too steeped in horror conventions for the art-house crowd. The overwhelming feeling I had after seeing this movie was sadness, not horror. I didn’t much enjoy entering the world this movie creates, but I did feel that I had been there and back.

Basically, some rich boy (who looks WAY older then his girlfriend) is trying to get his girl drunk and score with her for the first time. A motorcycle gang with an affinity for Nazi paraphernalia bumps into them and proceeds to score with her instead, beating our protagonist and taking his girlfriend’s virginity. The rich boy, of course, doesn’t take kindly to this. He then, with his trusty Karate knowing friends (and who doesn’t have a few dozen of them?), proceeds to get revenge on the bikers at a funeral. You then get some of the laziest Karate you’ve ever seen. They also give one of the main bikers a quick John Bobbitt. Needless to say, the gang takes unkindly to this and goes after the rich boy and the Karate class, and somehow, they find where the rich boy lives. It then escalates from there, even more, to a decent trick ending that appealed to the nihilist in me, even if it comes off a little stupid. I wish I could tell you some of the characters names, but they seem almost meaningless in this film. I doubt I could place any of the actors in anything but this paticular title.

The sheer amount of violence in this film is pretty staggering. The blood starts right from the beginning and never lets up. There’s cheesy Kung Fu beat downs, machine guns, death by shears, and a lobbed off penis, as mentioned. It also has tons of gratuitous nudity, including a pretty bizarre bondage scene, which of course always helps in a film of this genre.

There are some pretty disturbing images in this film, and it’s definitely a little vile, if stupid, in parts. The dubbing on the copy I saw was pretty abominable, which of course added to the charm. Going by the expressions on some of the actors faces, I’m pretty sure there’s quite a bit of over-acting going on, bad dubbing or not.

There are a few different versions floating around, some with hardcore inserts, so viewer beware. Picture John Waters doing a biker-revenge film and you sort of have an idea of what this film is like. It’s almost delirious in parts, as it seems to veer from one incredible scene of violence and nudity to the next. If you’re into Biker films or exploitation films in general, I highly recommend this one.

I usually recommend this film when people ask for a good introduction to Grindhouse or exploitation films. It’s not great, it’s pretty technically inept, and it’s really kind of ludicrous.  Still, this film delivers the goods, albeit a little sneakily. The film doesn’t quite live up to the title, which is one of exploitation films finest, but it’s still worth tracking down and watching.

Ron Slinker IS Mr. No Legs, a mob enforcer with no legs. Not just in a wheelchair, but an amputee with no legs.   Maybe he was born that way,  honestly, the film doesn’t let you know either way and there isn’t too much written history assosiated with the film either.  I’m not a huge wrestling fan, but apparently Ron Slinker was also a big-time wrestler, of some sorts. Apparently, he was also a raging alcoholic. I hope this film bought him a few crates of Wild Irish Rose. This flick was also directed by Ricou Browning, better known to the world as the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He was the man squeezed into the infamous monster suit. He also was a big stunt guy for anything aquatic apparently, and did work on Flipper and other nautical shows. But he only solely directed one film, and this is it. And who would have thought it would be so entertaining, and so sleazy? The film, per the IMDB page, was released in 1981, but don’t you believe it. The styles, camera and film style all scream Seventies. If this was made in 1981, they were clearly using clothes from 1977.

Mr. No Legs is a mob enforcer in the film. He gets fed up with his immediate boss’s insults and pay, and decides to double cross the mob when he’s had enough. The insults about his condition enrage him to the point that he decides to wage war on the mob. Personally, I think the guy had it made: wimming pool, good looking seventies floozy, but I guess enough was enough. Armed with his pretty awesome wheelchair of death (it has throwing stars on the wheels, drop down shotgun boxes on the side) and his martial arts (which he’s stunningly good at – this guy is in phenomenal shape) he begins to muscle in on the mob action. Two detectives (who, sadly, the camera follows as much as Mr. No Legs) try to stop the bloody mayhem that ensues as Mr. No Legsmurders everyone in his way, including a hooker who may be a police rat. The said murder occurs in one of the crappiest, sleaziest bars I’ve ever seen, and looks genuinely authentic. The hookers in the film all look legit as well. This is clearly a film shot on the cheap, and it pays off. Sometimes a lower budget can help a film, and it really works here. The only issue with the film would be some of the overly long dialog (which is a true sign of exploitation films, in general) and the fact that Mr. No Legs isn’t in it as much as you’d want.

I’m not going to bore you with all the plot details, or the plot ‘twists’, as they are almost irrelevant. What matters is a muscular dealer of death with no legs and his wheelchair of mayhem. Set in the Seventies, with all the great seventies fashions to boot. He gets the chicks, he kicks serious ass with his wheelchair-fu, and does it all in a film that is completely worth seeking out. I’m not saying its perfect: no film in this genre will ever be, but come on, doesn’t the premise alone sound pretty intriguing? I’d recommends seeking it out, if possible.

As Mari, our main character, emerges from the bathroom, we meet her parents, a handsome middle-aged couple, seemingly good-hearted and concerned about their daughter. Although none of the actors seem like professionals, they have a decency about them that the gives the move a documentary-like feel. The very 70’s banter of the opening scenes, where Mari’s parents express mild disapproval of her shirt, which is a little too revealing, and warn her to be careful at the rock concert she is about to attend, is charming because the family seems to be amused to be in front of a camera. This strange realism of this amateur acting creates a queasy, uncertain tone right at the beginning of the movie. It’s clear something awful will happen, but the viewer doesn’t know when or how.

In addition, the cheerful score throughout the film adds to this strangeness. This being the 70’s, we have some cheesy singer-songwriter fare, but also some jarringly happy banjo music during crucial scenes. As a viewer in 2009, knowing that this film is a famous horror/exploitation flick, I was waiting in dread for something awful to happen to the characters, and the naiveté of the film’s characters and music left me completely unsettled. Craven’s choice to let the viewer linger so long in this wistful 70’s almost-innocence is one of the many reasons why Last House on the Left rises above its exploitation flick status. By the time Mari and her friend Phyllis make it to the city, we are thoroughly on board with them as characters.

In a particularly skillful transition, as Mari and Phyllis drive to the city for the concert they hear a radio report about an escaped murderer and rapist, Krug, and his band of cronies: the knife-happy Weasel, his son Junior (a heroine addict), and an “animal-like” woman named Sadie. As the report plays, the scene cuts to an apartment building where Krug, Weasel, Sadie, and Junior are hiding out, watching television and drinking beer.

Krug (one of the best villains in movie history, in my opinion) is played with a sexy menace by David Hess. The other actors, though they do not rise to his level of magnetism, are excellent: Junior is endearing, as he is basically a good person with an addiction that keeps him bound to Krug; Weasel works through the scenes with a subtle, quiet menace; and Sadie, with her thick eyeliner and teased hair, is the high school bad-girl from hell. When the girls go looking for some weed before the concert, they meet Junior, who has been sent out by Krug to snare some prey. When the girls meet Krug and his gang, it’s clear that they won’t make it out. As the audience, we know this, but they do not; this makes their pleading, their reasonable arguments, all the more painful.

At this point, it’s probably time to mention that this film roughly follows the plot of Virgin Spring, a 1960 film by Ingmar Bergman about the rape and murder of a young girl and her murderers who take refuge in her family’s house, only to be murdered themselves by the girl’s father. Although there has been some debate about how seriously one should take this imitation (after all, Bergman’s film is considered a “serious” movie and Craven’s was an “exploitation” movie, terms that affect critical reception, if nothing else), I think that Craven’s film is interested in completely different aspects of this basic set-up. In Bergman’s movie, the girl is much younger, twelve or thirteen, and is more of a symbol of purity than a real person. In Craven’s movie, the girls aren’t angels—Mari and Phyllis are out to score pot before they see a rock band. They are aware of their sexuality—in scenes before they leave for the concert, they discuss sex and romance, and Phyllis dismisses Mari’s childish ideas about sex. In this movie, the girls are human and complex, and therefore more personally compelling than Bergman’s allegorical girl could ever be. They could be any normal teenage girls, and they are targeted simply because they are beautiful and curious.

This movie is famous for being bloody and graphic. Although it is more graphic and bloody than any regular thriller, it’s not really the blood or gore that is disturbing—it’s the acts that the girls are forced to perform, the terror and hope that flits across their faces as they perform humiliating acts, and the hope that they just might escape (a hope that is never realized), that makes the movie tense and distressing. During the protracted scene where the girls are taken to the woods (just across the road from Mari’s house), made to perform humiliating sexual acts, then murdered (in Phyllis’ case) and raped and murdered (in Mari’s case), the cheap, documentary-style film making really work to Craven’s benefit—the movie looks cheap, and dirty, and real, which makes it terrifying.

Another remarkable aspect of this film is the complexity of the villains. They are indeed villains, and they take real joy in the terrible things they do, but they also express remorse. In the case of Junior, who does not participate in the murders, we have a complete innocent who is bound to his father by love and by his addiction. In one pivotal scene, after Krug and the others (excluding Junior) have raped Mari, the gang look away as she gets on her hands and knees and vomits. We get closeups of Krug, Weasel, and Sadie picking grass from their hands, trying to compose their faces and ignore the sound of her gagging.

The most famous scenes in the movie involve the revenge that Mari’s parents take on Krug and his gang after they figure out that Mari was murdered. The elaborate, bloody ways that they kill Krug, Weasel, Sadie, and ultimately Junior are satisfying—at this point, the viewer wants something to happen to them, for some kind of justice to be meted out–but they are also terrible. They transform Mari’s parents, two decent and normal people, into sadistic murderers, and this is difficult to see.

Although I think this movie is a classic and one of the best examples of the genre, it does have some less than stellar moments. The most glaring error in the movie was Craven’s choice to include a bumbling sheriff and deputy in the movie. They are supposed to be for comic effect, I suppose, but whenever they show up in the movie, it feels like we have suddenly been thrown into an episode of Dukes of Hazzard.

Overall, this movie creates a tightly-wound, distressing, and alarmingly realistic picture of murder and revenge. Craven showed in this movie that he could both terrify his audience and make them think about what it means to view humiliation and death. The movie leaves its audience disturbed and haunted.

At the level of characterisation though the film is a dismal failure. The characters are uniformly repugnant, and without exception deserve the fates in store for them. Our amateur detective protagonist Carlo is a character with no redeeming qualities, and as a result gives us nothing to cheer about when the mysterious assailant is unveiled at the films conclusion. Carlo then goes on to end the film with the threat of sodomy to his lover, confirming if confirmation was still required what a sleazy piece of trash this nominal hero is. Bianchi curiously extends this perversity and grotesqueness to every character in the film, with the slight exception of Magda played by Edwige Fenech. However it is clear very early on why Fenech is so important to the film, one of her first actions is to strip off and perform oral sex on the sleaze bag Carlo. Nevertheless much of the cult credentials of the film lie with Miss Fenech, who has become a figure of semi-worship for many a fan of European sleaze cinema. However her short close cropped hair, and androgynous look in the film did very little for this reviewer.

The mystery, such as it is, revolves around a botched abortion. One might imagine that Bianchi could use this to investigate this touchy subject, but one gets the impression that the only reason this is here, is so the film can open with a camera shot of a naked woman with her legs spread. Admittedly, few films open so distinctively, and Bianchi inserts a number of subliminal shots throughout of her corpse in a bathtub, but the reasons for the fashion house slaughter seem mean and tangential. However the assailant is distinctively attired in a motorcycle leathers, a good method of concealing both the identity and gender of the killer – because yes Bianchi uses the old Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) gender twist, unfortunately for this film however, by this point nobody gives a toss. The unforgivable error that Bianchi makes here is to direct a giallo completely lacking in suspense. For the exploitation elements one must commend his efforts, but the most successful examples of the form manage to combine the nudity/lesbian undertones with a strong plot, a strong visual style and suspense – Bianchi only gets one of these spot on.

Bianchi would never again step into the camp cosmopolitanism of the giallo. The promise of his debut film the underrated psychological thriller Night Hair Child (1972), would ultimately remain unfulfilled. He was a director seemingly unable to resist the pull of trash and sleaze. Whilst this is not a bad thing, there was enough in his debut film to suggest that Bianchi could have had an interesting career in chilling and atmospheric horror, as it turned out he would end up directing such incompetent dross as Nights of Terror (1981) – compared to that film Strip Nude For Your Killer is a success, but by the standards of other contemporary gialli this is a forgettable piece of cinematic garbage.

If you take Funny Games (2007) as a critique of violence in American films, as director Michael Haneke has claimed he intended, then it’s a hypocritical failure—a two-hour exercise in luring the viewer with violence and then critiquing the viewer for being lured. Fortunately, the English version of Funny Games (a shot-by-shot remake of Haneke’s original German-language version), has much more going on than a tired critique of violence.

It’s hard to characterize Funny Games.The plot is bare-bones—an upper-class family is terrorized by two strangers for no apparent reason. Very little violence happens onscreen, which will disappoint viewers who are expecting the now-familiar gore of torture movies. So what makes this a horror movie and not a thriller? The real horror in this movie is in seeing the characters (Tim Roth and Naomi Watts, most notably) suffer for no discernible reason and feeling similarly trapped in a world that looks normal but doesn’t seem to work by the usual film rules.

One of the reasons why I love horror movies so much is that things don’t have to turn out all right—we expect things to go bad and stay bad. But Funny Games doesn’t even follow normal horror movie narratives, which makes it far more terrifying than many movies I’ve seen lately. It reveals how breakable the rules really are and how much we rely on them to get through what otherwise would be intolerable to watch onscreen. When Haneke yanks the rug out from under his characters, he does it to the viewer, too.

In Funny Games, the terrorizing strangers are young, upper-class men dressed completely in white. They are well-spoken, painfully polite, and seemingly completely reasonable, which makes their actions all the more confusing and frightening for the viewer. Michael Pitt, the more vocal of the two, is an amazing villain. Soft-spoken, polite, and completely calm, Pitt is void of any characteristics of a real person. He has no name, no motivation for his actions, and no purpose in carrying them out. The lack of motivation becomes a part of the movie when Pitt and his accomplice, Brady Corbett, play with different explanations for their behavior. Were they abused by their parents? Are they psychotic? With each new explanation, the idea of explaining away their behavior becomes more and more ridiculous. Explanations are what keep the viewer from realy experiencing what is horrifying—Haneke doesn’t let the viewer escape behind reasons.

The plot of the movie isn’t important, and you’ve seen it before—The Strangers, Them, and pretty much every other home-invasion movie ever made. What Haneke does differently here is toy with the way that these movies usually unfold. Heanke often has Pitt’s character directly face the camera and comment on the scene, asking the viewer who their sympathies are with or what they expect to happen next. In one pivotal scene, when things don’t go quite as the villains have planned, Pitt’s character actually rewinds the movie and changes a scene. This kind of “fourth wall” move is familiar in art-house films, but in applying it to a genre movie, Haneke shows how much we rely on the orderly worlds that directors create to guide us through even the most harrowing and terrifying experiences.

In Funny Games, conventions are stretched and reveal that the director is in complete control. The viewer is dragged along, foiled at every turn, and asked to accept the completely irrational and disordered world that Haneke has created. Funny Games might not be the scariest movie you’ll see, but it will probably linger with you long after the credits roll.

Enter Cannibal Holocaust. It’s the film that has been banned in many countries all across Europe and has seen the light of many different versions and edits. Your local mondo video store owner will call it a classic, and so will I. Watch in alone and come to your own conclusions, but this film is a masterpiece and I have yet to see (or give me recommendations) of a better exploitation film out there today.

The first five minutes of Cannibal Holocaust can basically sum up the major premise behind the film. As mankind (at least in the states) embarks on the 21st century, it is now easier to recognize the fact that human beings can achieve nearly anything, and nothing should ever be deemed impossible. Still, there are many people who are blind to the fact that there are still civilizations in the world today that live in the stone age and practice cannibalism. Awesome! Right? You want to know more? Because Cannibal Holocaust is about to show you what it’s like to live in the Stone Age, but that’s not all, not even close. The film will show us a smaller taste of life as we know it in New York City. A place filled with the latest technology, fashions, and industry. Then, we are given a larger perspective on the culture and habits of more than just one different tribe of cannibals. Although, it seems like these two contrasting cultures could not be any farther apart geographically and intellectually, Ruggero Deodato (director) and Gianfranco Clerici (story) invite you to take a closer look. It is absolutely gut-wrenching to think that our capitalistic form of society and our more intellectual frames of mind could be compared to those of savages in a far away jungle. Now, Cannibal Holocaust doesn’t necessarily jump out at you just to say that the world is every man for himself no matter where you go, either. Cannibal Holocaust more clearly states the fact that man are simply beasts, and every beast is capable (whether urbanite or cannibal) of acting within their own primitive nature.

I don’t really wish to get into that actual plot of this film because it’s the premise of the film and its characters that, by far, shine the most. The characters are all strong, and the actors that portray them all give extremely realistic performances. Cannibal Holocaust is actually so real with its entire presentation that the director was almost thrown in jail for creating a film which showed actual footage of established characters and human beings being brutally slain on camera. As we all know, such acts of filmmaking are illegal, but there has always been a lot of controversy surrounding this film in terms with what is real and what is fiction. Nobody on film was killed during its production, but the animals that were killed on screen were actually put to death for the sake of continuing a more realistic atmosphere. This is part of the reason why Cannibal Holocaust is banned in so many countries, and why it has gone through numerous edits for its brutal content.

As you may have already guessed, even though this film is entirely fictional, there is not an ounce of a more surrealistic approach to this film. This is bare bones exploitation that touches down on the types of scenes you swear came right out of the latest releases of Faces of Death. You have a small group of researchers from the city embarking upon the daily lives of cannibalistic tribes. You’re going to see some flesh being torn – no doubt about it because these researchers are not at all careful with their threatening surroundings. You’ll also find some political undertones throughout the film in terms of issues revolving around American troops’ interference with the Vietnamese in the Vietnam War. It may not have been Deodato’s underlining contrast, but it’s hard not to find similarities behind the films’ presentations and the recent history of our troops abusing their powers and military standings.

The bottom line is, if you are a fan of exploitation films, you have to have a copy of this Italian film. It’s not so hard to find a copy online these days that has minimal editing and is presented in almost its entire unrated format. The best thing about this film is that it is not at all a clip show. There is actual character development here. You will learn to respect a few characters, but learn to absolutely loathe most of them by the film’s end. You will be left staring at the credits asking yourself exactly the one question that the film leaves you with – “I wonder who the real cannibals are?”