cannibal holocaust Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I have sort of a love-hate relationship with horror movies. Truth be told, I love them mostly in theory, when I don't have to endure the scary stuff or the gory stuff or the haunting stuff that keeps me up nights afterward. But as a fan of zombie films, and Italian horror in particular, I really kind of embrace all of that stuff, be it in Dario Argento's creepy thrillers or Lucio Fulci's gross-out odysseys. But there is one film in particular that no matter how intrigued I am about its contents, no matter how much I'm interested in catching up with the rest of the horror-loving community, that I simply cannot, and will not watch: Cannibal Holocaust.

I've only seen one Ruggero Deodato film, House on the Edge of the Park, and despite the fact that its director was in attendance at the screening I attended, I was not particularly entertained. It crossed the line between provocation and exploitation, and aside from the lithe presence of softcore star Annie Belle, it was a generally crass and misogynist chronicle of two guys holding a group of socialites hostage. But I'd sworn off Cannibal Holocaust long before I saw House on the Edge of the Park, because, quite frankly, I actually saw some of it, albeit in still-photograph form, and it messed me the hell up.

If you are the type of person who believes what you are told, then the release of James Gray's Two Lovers is probably your last chance to see Joaquin Phoenix 'the actor' before he takes the hip-hop world by storm -- but that's only if you believe what you've been told. For every person who is convinced that Mr. Phoenix has gone around the bend (and you can't blame them with footage like this floating around), you will find another person who thinks that the whole thing is a big hoax...and it wouldn't be the first time we've been taken for a ride by a celebrity. But until Casey Affleck releases that 'documentary' of his, we won't know for sure, and I decided it might be worthwhile to look at other Tinseltown hoaxes to remind us that you can't always believe what you read -- especially in Hollywood.

1. Stanley Kubrick Fakes the Moon Landing
It's been a popular conspiracy theory that the director provided most of the footage for the Apollo 11 and 12 Moon landings; and as the story goes, Kubrick was right in the middle of post-production on 2001: A Space Odyssey, when he was approached by NASA to create footage of a moon landing since his was so realistic. Over the years, most of these theories have been debunked, but defenders of the 'Kubrick connection' love to remind us that Kubrick later used lenses for Barry Lyndon that were developed by NASA -- which they say is the proof of payment for faking the lunar adventure.

After the jump: the birth of 'Bigfoot' and hoaxes that ended with hard time...

Despite having previously established my feelings about this weekend's Quarantine, I must confess a new willingness to give it a fair shot later tonight. Regardless, this week's Cinematical Seven is all about first-person horror movies, with a couple of oh-so-subjective stipulations:

• We're leaving The Blair Witch Project (1999) out of this. It might not have been the first of these movies, but it was undeniably the most successful and influential. There are only seven slots here, and I feel like everyone has already made clear whether they find this scary or just stupid (I fall in the former grouping, though I say this having not seen the flick since my teens). If you still feel the need to take BWP to task, comment away.
• Also omitted will be The Last Broadcast (1998), which drew mild controversy at the time of its release for its similarity to Blair Witch. I'm only not writing about it because the copy of it sitting just over on my shelf here has remained unwatched. My bad.
• The previous film by the guys behind Quarantine is The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), which -- being in the hands of the Weinsteins -- has not yet seen the light of day beyond a couple of festivals. Having not attended any of said festivals myself, I'll just sit here and guess that it'll get dumped to DVD (probably under the Dimension Extreme label), and not any earlier than next year at that.

Now, on with the list...

Two months ago, I brought word that Brazilian filmmaker José Padilha is moving on up to Hollywood, but now comes word that he has first squeezed in a new documentary. The film is titled Garapa, and like both his brilliant debut, Bus 174, and his recent Golden Bear-winning follow-up, Tropa de Elite, it deals with social problems affecting his homeland. This time, he traveled to the poverty-stricken northeast, where he documented three families struggling to feed themselves, despite the nation's current economic boom and seemingly successful welfare program. Garapa was also shot in black and white with hand-held cameras and features no music score, to keep things simple and straightforward. It can't be said, though, that Padilha went for a non-intrusive style, and he admits that during and since the shoot, he's been compelled to assist the families directly.

Considering Bus 174 is one of the boldest, most powerful documentaries of the past 10 years, it's good to see Padilha returning to the documentary genre. The controversially divisive Tropa de Elite (which Cinematical reviewed at Tribeca and which will receive a day-and-date release this September) was still non-fiction, but it was a dramatization. When it was announced that he had been wooed to make a studio-produced action film, I was as disappointed as I was excited. Fortunately, he's keeping the documentary thing going simultaneously, and he's even already working on his next doc, which will be about the Yanomami Indians, natives of the Amazon rainforest who were previously unappealingly fictionalized in the exploitation film Cannibal Holocaust.

Now here's an interesting on-screen duo. Bloody-Disgusting reports that Philip Seymour Hoffman and Viggo Mortensen are in talks to join the cast of Vanikoro, which is based on a true story, was written and will be directed by Hitman helmer Xavier Gens. Vanikoro (which is not to be confused with Bryan Singer's Valkyrie -- what's up with all the 'V' titles?) tells of the real-life French explorer La Perouse who, in 1788, found himself in the middle of a shipwreck on the island of Vanikoro. Apparently there were two ships that got wrecked, and the survivors of the second ship found a way to salvage enough parts to re-build a smaller ship and sail away. However, two survivors remained on the island into the early 1800s. Those two survivors, we're guessing, would be played by Mortensen and Hoffman. Then again, neither is French ... so who knows?

Gens, who I feel received a bad rap after Hitman debuted to a very lackluster response back in November, spoke about Vanikoro to BD at the Toronto Fest (where he premiered the much buzzed-about horror flick Frontier(s)) and -- get this -- said Vanikoro was like Peter Jackson's King Kong meets Cannibal Holocaust. Throw in Mortensen and Hoffman, and that's a movie I want to see. Gens was also recently rumored to be among those being considered to direct a new updated Conan film, though I imagine fans would rather him stick to stuff he wrote; stuff he controls. It shall be fascinating to watch how all this pans out.

It's one of the chintziest, grungiest and most reviled horror movies ever made ... so of course it's remake time for Cannibal Holocaust! Yes that's right, my fellow gorehounds, Cannibal Holocaust, the movie that stooped to monumentally unpleasant levels in order to scare you gross you the hell out! The one with the "pole scene," the "nipple sequence" and more actual animal slaughter than you'd ever want to see ... is being remade? Really? Are they going to slice the head off another tortoise -- or will it just be a CGI tortoise this time out?

Reputedly banned in over 50 countries, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust does have one legitimate asset: It used the "Blair Witch" gimmick way back in 1980! The movie's about a professor who heads deep into the South American jungles to ascertain the whereabouts of a four-person documentary crew, but all he ends up with is a bunch of movie footage -- and what horrifically nasty footage it is! (The moral of the movie seems to be "Don't abuse jungle natives, no matter how docile and servile they might seem, because they just might turn around and eat you.") Certainly not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, CH is still a must-see (at least once) for any self-respecting horror freak.

Which probably explains why the folks at Relevant Entertainment and Scorched Earth Entertainment are so hot to remake the tacky old thing. I can't imagine the remake being as downright unpleasant as the infamous original, but if the producers decide to just use the basic premise and then go off in their own direction ... it could be pretty cool. Maybe.

[The history of this movie is considerably more entertaining than the movie itself.]