Luke Rolfes: Nathan Wardinski is out with a new book that explores the infamous horror film from 1980 called Cannibal Holocaust. This analysis takes a wide and then narrow look at the connotations, ethics, influences and repercussions, and consequences of this film that often tops the list of most disturbing movies of all time. Thanks for talking with us today, Nathan! Can you give us a sense of this project? How long have you been working on it, and when did you get the idea to explore this film more fully?
Nathan Wardinski: I had been thinking about writing this book for a long time. I had been fascinated by Cannibal Holocaust since I first watched it in 2003. I saw the movie during America’s dual occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and I initially viewed the film through that lens. As I kept coming back to Cannibal Holocaust over the years I saw new things that were interesting and relevant and provocative. I’ve been reviewing films for my weekly public radio program since 2004 and after so many years I felt like I had the confidence and the skills to finally write a book. I had been inspired by the BFI Film Classic series. Each title in that series analyzes a particular film for about 100 pages. I originally thought my book would end up that length and scope but as I developed the book it became longer and more involved, which reflects the nature of Cannibal Holocaust itself. I responded to a call for proposals from Lexington Books and went through a process that required me to develop an outline and write a couple of sample chapters. It took about two and a half years from the time the contract was signed to the publication of the book.
LR: Before we dive into the film itself, can you give us a bit of background on yourself as a horror aficionado? What drew you to this genre originally?
NW: I’ve always loved horror films. I love the visceral thrill but I also enjoy the potential of the genre. It can be disreputable but that’s because horror inherently works with marginal and taboo subjects which is what makes the genre interesting. Horror offers filmmakers a chance to experiment and we can find such variety and creativity even within specific subgenres like vampire films or zombie pictures. I’m also personally moved by stories that touch the primal aspects of our existence which horror frequently addresses.
LR: And do you have a top 5 of horror films? Personally, my top five are all classics: Night of the Living Dead (original), Jaws, Alien, The Shining, and Halloween. Can you narrow down a top five?
NW: Those are good picks. I can answer this question in a couple of ways. If you mean five horror films that define the genre, I would point to Nosferatu (1922), Frankenstein (1931), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Exorcist (1973), and The Thing (1982). And if you ask me this question again next week I’d probably give you five different titles. If you mean five horror films that are important to me personally, I’d start with Jaws (1975) which is my favorite film of any genre. The story plays out on the overlapping space between society and nature, which I find interesting, it has great characters, and the filmmaking is first rate. Other horror favorites of mine include a couple of Wes Craven classics: the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). I watch Halloween (1978) every October. It’s a perfect film. And I’ll add Cannibal Holocaust which, among other things, demonstrates the possibilities of horror cinema.
LR: Cannibal Holocaust is notorious for various reasons—for graphic and realistic violence, animal cruelty, and depiction of sexual assault. Filmmakers were arrested in Italy on obscenity charges, and rumor has it that they were charged with murder due to the gory scenes in the movie being rendered so realistically that people thought that victims were actually murdered. I’m curious, when you encountered this film for the first time, did it live up to the infamous hype for you?
NW: As I discuss in my book, the murder charges are an urban myth. The filmmakers were convicted of obscenity but there is no evidence that director Ruggero Deodato and his cohorts were charged with murder although a few viewers may have believed the deaths were real. And in fact, the executions in the “Last Road to Hell” sequence were actual newsreel footage. I first saw Cannibal Holocaust over twenty years ago so it is difficult for me to recall what my expectations might have been. I was working my way through the titles in Stanley Wiater’s essay “Disturbo 13: The Most Disturbing Horror Films Ever Made” and that probably set my expectations. It wasn’t one quality or another that really grabbed me and continues to intrigue me about Cannibal Holocaust but rather its cumulative effect and meaning. The movie is extremely violent but also very smart and addresses political topics, the relationship between cinema and reality, and fundamental truths about nature and humanity. Intelligence and ambition set Cannibal Holocaust apart from a lot of other gross out films. They still do.
LR: It appears that this film splits critics. There is pointed social commentary embedded in the subtext of the film, but I’m guessing that the violent/disturbing content is too much to handle for a lot of people. I’m curious: Did you always think this film had artistic merit, or was that something that you came around to eventually?
NW: Yes, the artistic merit of Cannibal Holocaust was evident to me right away. I think that quality was lost on viewers for a long time partly because of the extreme nature of the film. Cannibal Holocaust exists outside of the realm of polite and respectable art, and is in fact an attack on it. Our ideas about artistic merit are intertwined with other preconceived notions about certain genres and modes of filmmaking. There is a presumption that exploitation films must not be well made or are beneath serious consideration which is of course false. For the early part of its existence, Cannibal Holocaust was circulated on pirated VHS tapes, often multiple generations removed from the original source, and that poor quality also obfuscated the film’s artistic and technical merits. Now with remastered editions on disc we can see just how well the movie is made.
LR: Did Cannibal Holocaust change the rules of horror? Are there rules? Why or why not?
NW: I’m not sure that there are rules for horror or any other genre but there are tropes and conventions and audience expectations. Cannibal Holocaust is very non-Hollywood. By that I mean Hollywood produces fantasies that tend to affirm the audience’s aspirations and are designed to assuage our anxieties and meet our expectations. Horror in general tends to exploit those anxieties and sometimes it does so in ways that may unsettle our sense of reality. Cannibal Holocaust is very aggressive about that. It’s working with tropes and master narratives that are found throughout our fiction and suggests that the violence usually ascribed to the other is actually within all of us and our institutions. I don’t think Cannibal Holocaust changed the horror genre. It’s still a singular text that way. It does violate some of what viewers expect. We consume a lot of violence in our entertainment but violence is usually presented within specific parameters. The violence of Cannibal Holocaust is not restorative or redemptive and the gore is quite realistic (in some places literally real) which is different from the spectacles of gore we get in Evil Dead 2 (1987), for example. It spoils the enjoyment we usually get from screen violence. That’s probably part of why people react so negatively to Cannibal Holocaust.
LR: The film ends with the character Monroe asking who exactly are the “real cannibals." Do you think the social/political commentary is what brings legitimacy to the film, or is it there something deeper about the film (perhaps even unintentional) that raises it above the rest?
NW: Legitimacy is a funny word. Is Cannibal Holocaust legitimate? It is insofar as the film is well made and has something interesting to say. But legitimacy usually means a status granted by cultural norms and institutions. Part of what gives Cannibal Holocaust its power and relevance is the fact that it occupies disreputable territory. It’s an exploitation film and more than that it is part of the cannibalism subgenre from the 1970s and 80s which is one of the most politically incorrect (or problematic or unwoke or whatever phrase you want to use) genres in cinema history. From that culturally low position, the filmmakers attack establishment media and imply that corporations and documentarians and exploitation filmmakers are all essentially making the same product. I think there is a lot of truth in that critique. As far as legitimacy, I tend to think of Cannibal Holocaust like punk rock music. It has integrity in its commitment to spitting in the face of the people and institutions that dictate what is art and what is acceptable.
LR: You break horror up into three categories: fear (classic horror), disgust, and despair. You posit that Cannibal Holocaust falls into the third category of horror: the horror of despair. Your argument is that the film makes moviegoers confront an uncomfortable truth—that we are a part of a violent and cruel universe in which life feeds mercilessly on other life. Can you talk a bit about that third category of horror and how it is perhaps the hardest one for viewers to handle?
NW: Each category—fear, disgust, and despair—is based on the emotion that the filmmakers intend to elicit from the audience. Viewers can handle being scared or even disgusted because those emotions can be made fun. Despair—and I mean real despair, not the hip nihilism and casual misanthropy I often encounter these days—is not so fun. In the horror of fear or disgust, horror is an aberration from normal life. We can run from it or defeat it. In the horror of despair, everyday life is horrific. It’s harder, maybe impossible, to tell a conventionally entertaining story that affirms this view of the world.
LR: So I take it "horror of despair" is the least marketable/palatable for audiences?
NW: Of course. It’s a matter of what we go to the movies to see. We select books and movies in pursuit of a particular kind of emotional experience. Most people seek pleasure. Even most mainstream horror is optimistic. The monster is destroyed and in the end all is right with the world. Or the movie is fun by offering a cathartic thrill that is far enough away from our daily existence that it won’t make us feel bad about our lives. The horror of despair lacks the comfortable narrative structures and cinematic styles we find in mainstream entertainment. It doesn’t reassure us of an ordered moral universe in which love and justice conquer all. It’s a hard sell.
LR: I enjoyed the section where you discussed the various influences of the film—everything from jungle adventure to mondo films to Italian cannibal films. I’m curious about literary horror influences that predate film. If I recall correctly, the granddaddy of gothic/horror fiction was The Castle of Otronto by Horace Walpole. But can you point to some works that inspired what you refer to as “the horror of despair”?
NW: There may be some precedent for the horror of despair in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft given the way their characters are tormented souls and are so often physically or psychologically destroyed. But I tend to think the precedents for the horror of despair are less narrative and more philosophical. For instance, my book includes an epigraph from the St Petersburg Dialogues: or Conversations on the Temporal Government of Providence by Joseph de Maistre, a Counter-Enlightenment thinker. Maistre argued that progress was ultimately doomed by the fixed nature of the human character. I think there are also links between what I call the horror of despair and philosophical nihilism and postmodernism. The violence of the horror of despair is often gratuitous. Nothing is gained from all the suffering. The storytelling may subvert or dismantle the order and epiphanies we experience from narrative. The major feature film relevant to the horror of despair is Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) which was an adaptation of Marquis de Sade’s unfinished work but updated to fascist era Italy. There’s not much plot to it, just a series of increasingly debased set pieces, which dramatizes the anarchic and nihilistic nature of totalitarianism. I would also point to the original I Spit on Your Grave (1978), Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1999), some of Lars von Trier’s films such as Antichrist (2009), Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), and maybe Threads (1984) and A Serbian Film (2010).
LR: You mentioned in your book that you thought Cannibal Holocaust was the apex of cannibal movies. I also saw that sentiment echoed online. Why do you think this is seen as the king of cannibal movies?
NW: Cannibal Holocaust is the highpoint (or low point depending on your point of view) of the Italian cannibal cycle. It’s one of the best made of these films while also the most ambitious as well as the most extreme. Part of what sets Cannibal Holocaust apart is the way it interrogates the underlying master narrative that all these stories are working from. Its use of anthropophagy is also interesting. As I discuss in the book, cannibalism is generally shorthand to identify savagery, decadence, social collapse, and antisocial behavior. But in Cannibal Holocaust man-eating has a social function. Eating is a visual motif used to symbolize relations between groups. The filmmakers use cannibalism in very specific ways that question what we mean when we use that word.
LR: One of the ways this film was influential, as you show, is what it did with the “found footage” subgenre that was utilized by films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. What is it about this subgenre that is appealing to audiences?
NW: There is an immediacy to the found footage style. It breaks down some of the distance between the spectator and the action that is found in a more traditional style of dramatic filmmaking. Found footage also has an inherent sense that we’re seeing something not intended for us. It’s like when we see an outtake of an actor flubbing a line or breaking character. Cannibal Holocaust was not the first found footage movie. We can find a similar structure and technique in 1960’s Peeping Tom in which third person drama is intercut with film footage shot by the killer. But Cannibal Holocaust might be the first film with the chaotic run-and-shoot finale that we see in so many later found footage films.
LR: Cannibal Holocaust is often lumped in with other “disturbing” films. Can you speak to the existence of these films. Do you think these films were made for a specific audience in mind? Or do you think that they were made, and then an audience was created?
NW: “Disturbing” is obviously a subjective term. We can understand it as an extension of exploitation filmmaking. The word “exploitation” is often used as a pejorative but in this context it really means a gimmick or hook that can distinguish the movie in the marketplace. Contemporary Hollywood now uses the term “high concept” which is basically the same thing. Moviemakers and distributors want to attract an audience and spectacle and shock are obvious ways to do that. Some movies are deliberate and obvious provocations. For example, the filmmakers of Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975) had to know what they were doing. They made something salacious that they knew would offend. The same with the Human Centipede trilogy. In other cases, the filmmakers have something to say and the disturbing qualities of the film grow organically out of realizing that vision. I think that’s the case with Cannibal Holocaust. There’s an audience that wants to see the forbidden and the extreme. Filmmakers didn’t invent that desire.
LR: What do you think is next for you and your work? Is there another film you want to explore in more detail?
NW: I’ve got some ideas for another film-related book but it’s still early for that. I’d like to do more creative work at this point. I have part of a novel written that I want to finish. I have some screenplay ideas as well.
LR: Thanks for taking the time with us today, Nathan! Check out Dissecting Cannibal Holocaust from Lexington Books. Also, Nathan's film reviews and commentary can be found at https://soundsofcinema.com/. Follow him on social media or at his website: https://nathanwardinski.com/.