The Cannibal Holocaust Thread!

[Mike T]

TBH...not to say that companies shouldn't supply screeners in advance to get the word out about their releases prior to street-date, as they should. But from my impression, excepting a few more honest sites like this one, there's an awful lot of people out there with limited technical knowledge and/or ability writing these useless "fence-sitting" reviews that tell us the consumer nothing, but seem to serve the sole purpose of keeping them on some distributor's screener list for freebies. I hate to say it, but it's really starting to piss me off.

I, as a consumer, want to read about the whole release. I'd like to know a bit about the film (in the rare instance where I don't), and what else is on the disc if anything...but I also want to read accurate and objective assessments of how it's going to look and sound on my home theatre system once I've shelled out my hard-earned cash for it. I don't want to read empty platitudes, and vague "skimming the surface" prose that tells me absolutely nothing. Nobody has loads of disposable income anymore (thanks GFC!), and no-one wants to pay good money for something only to get it home and find out it looks and sounds like crap.

That's why these "cash for comment" type reviews we see more and more of are so utterly useless -- fine, we get it, you don't want to be too objective because you're shit-scared the labels will cut off your freebies. But as almost two decades in retail taught me, honesty is the best policy when it comes to consumer goods. And if you're going to lie about the product, or misrepresent it, then that's going to come back and bite you on the arse. Big time...

[Kevin Coed]

instead making some obscure commentary/reference to The Blair Witch, which was shot on video not film).

A combination of video and 16mm in fact - but agree with you 100% on everything else.

[Mike T]

...aren't those the same screen caps that were posted on the CL board?

Well spotted! They're the identical screenshots that were posted there. Hmmm, me thinks there's some skullduggery going on here... :think:

[Ian Jane]

DVD Beaver has a review up too - aren't those the same screen caps that were posted on the CL board?

[Mike T]

Well, both reviews are good for pictures and that's about it! And agreed on the screenshot -- that's a pretty awful digital correction flaw.

10kbullets stopped being of any interest to me once I noticed that one of their main writers appears to "borrow" liberally from your (Ian's) reviews. And as for Film 365, it's run by one of the moderators/shills at Cult Labs, so objectivity or accurate technical data therein appears often forfeited over staying on their PR firm's screener list (as an example, look at the sidebar vs. main review text: sidebar lists LPCM audio and the review states DTS-MA; also the "picture" part of the review tells you nothing, and completely overlooks the fact that the "found footage" was shot 16mm then blown up to 35mm - instead making some obscure commentary/reference to The Blair Witch, which was shot on video not film). Mind you, in the case of the latter, this is one of the same people that stated they watch the film and don't spend their time with "their nose pressed up against their TV looking for faults"!

All up, two utterly useless "reviews" -- but fortunately there are screenshot images present in both cases for the more seasoned (read: unbiased) consumer to make an informed purchasing decision. ;)

PS: I think we'll start seeing more honest appraisals of the disc once people who have actually paid for their copy start writing about it.

[Ian Jane]

A few more reviews:

http://www.film365.co.uk/reviews/blu...holocaust.html

http://10kbullets.com/reviews/c/cann...inment-bluray/

The 10kbullets review says there aren't any DNR or compression problems but the screen caps might say otherwise - they're either VERY compressed or the transfer is a mess. Look at the right side of dude's hairline in that last cap. WTF is going on there? Looks like it's pretty edge enhancement heavy to me.

[Mike T]

I stand corrected! There is no Italian audio, or subtitles for that matter, according to this...erm, "review"...

http://mcbastardsmausoleum.blogspot....aust-1980.html


...which, tbh, if that promotional piece is to be trusted at face-value, sucks balls.

[Mike T]

That little critter looks delicious.

[Roderick]

That little critter looks delicious.

[Mike T]

Hello! I am a coatimundi! People often mistake me for a muskrat...and that bastard Deodato treated one of my cousins REAL badly...

[Mike T]

As a means of showing how easy it is to source factual information from the BBFC, here's the Board's commentary on Deodato's film (which took me all of about thirty seconds to pull up with a simple search of their student resource sub-site):

This 1979 Italian cannibal horror film was not submitted to the BBFC at the time of its original production, presumably because no distributor felt that it was likely to be acceptable for classification at that time. Instead, a version of the film that had already been slightly pre-cut by its distributors was released on video in 1982 without a BBFC certificate. At the time there was no formal requirement that videos should be classified by the BBFC, with the result that a number of small and enterprising companies exploited the loophole by releasing strong horror films onto the video market without submitting them to the BBFC. Not only did the lack of video classification mean that material that had been cut or rejected by the BBFC (or which would not have been classified by the BBFC) was freely available. It also meant that such material was available to persons of all ages, including children.

It did not take long before the Press launched a campaign to ban unclassified horror cassettes, which were now being termed 'video nasties'. In response, the Director of Public Prosecutions drew up a list of videos that he believed were obscene under the terms of the Obscene Publications Act. Some of the 'video nasties' in fact turned out to be comparatively mild and a handful had even received BBFC cinema certificates. In a number of cases the sensationalist marketing of the films and their lurid packaging artwork was actually worse than the content of the films themselves. As a result, titles were periodically removed from the list as and when they were found Not Guilty by the courts. However, there was a hard core of nasties that would certainly have posed major difficulties for the BBFC had they been submitted for classification. Cannibal Holocaust was one of the strongest titles on the list.

Cannibal Holocaust recounts the story of a film crew searching the South American jungles for a missing team of young documentary film-makers. Although they never find the missing crew members, they do uncover some camera equipment and unopened film cans. When the footage is returned to New York, a professor is hired by a TV broadcaster to help assemble the found footage. He swiftly discovers that the film crew were in fact frauds, illicitly fabricating footage by perpetrating atrocities on the local people and wildlife. As the film proceeds, we are shown the final footage taken by the missing crew as the local people take their terrible revenge.

Cannibal Holocaust was not formally submitted to the BBFC until 2001, largely because its reputation as a 'video nasty' and its long history of prosecutions for obscenity seemed to preclude the issuing of a BBFC certificate. When it was submitted for video and DVD release the BBFC examined the film very carefully in terms of its own published Guidelines.

The film's presentation of strong sexual violence infringed the Board's strict policy on rape and sexual violence which states that 'Where the portrayal eroticises or endorses sexual assault, the Board is likely to require cuts at any classification level'. Furthermore, in common with a number of Italian films of the same period, the scenes of cruelty to animals were clearly unsimulated and deliberately orchestrated by the filmmakers. UK law prohibits the public exhibition of cinema films if animals were cruelly mistreated during their making and the BBFC applies this test also to videos and DVDs.

Nonetheless, the BBFC recognised that the film, although strong, could be made acceptable, subject to the removal of the above scenes. The distributor therefore agreed to make five minutes 44 seconds of cuts to remove unacceptable elements, after which the film was passed '18' for video and DVD release. Cuts were required in eight individual scenes, four scenes of sexual violence and four scenes of animal killing.

In 2011, ten years after its previous examination, the BBFC was asked to take a second look at the film for DVD and BluRay release. Whilst recognising that the film still retains its power to shock and offend, the Board concluded that the scenes of sexual violence that had been subject to reductions in 2001 no longer warranted cuts at the adult level. Careful examination of the scenes in question showed there was limited detail of nudity and therefore little eroticisation. Furthermore, the scenes were often chaotically filmed, with hand held cameras, and/or featured frequent cutaways to the reactions of horrified onlookers. Their likely effect was to horrify and disgust the audience, rather than to eroticise or endorse such activity in the real world.

In terms of the scenes of animal killing, the BBFC concluded that one of the four scenes cut in 2001 still required intervention because it clearly showed an animal being made to suffer in a cruel fashion. The killing in question, in which a small mammal has its neck cut with a knife, is quite protracted and the animal is seen to struggle and scream as it bleeds out. However, careful inspection of the other previously cut scenes revealed that the animals in question were killed quickly and cleanly. For example, the notorious scene in which a turtle is killed shows the turtle's neck being cut with a single rapid blow, instantly severing the spinal cord and killing the animal immediately. These scenes were not, therefore, in breach of BBFC policy, which prohibits 'cruelty' to animals but not the killing of animals, providing that the killing is swift. In each case, the animal's body is seen to twitch after death but this was considered to be a post mortem reaction, akin to a headless chicken running around a farmyard. The BBFC recognises that some viewers may find the scenes of animal killing offensive or upsetting, not least because of the nervous reactions on display in the animals' bodies or body-parts after death. However, the scenes do not breach the terms of BBFC policy, itself based on the Cinematograph Films Animals Act 1937. It was acknowledged that the decision to cut these scenes in 2001 was primarily the result of the disgusting nature of the sequences, as well as the history of the film as a DPP-listed 'video nasty', rather than the result of a strict application of policy. Removing these sequences would be inconsistent with the BBFC's decisions to permit quick clean kills in several other films, such as Apocalypse Now.

Accordingly, in 2011, Cannibal Holocaust was classified '18' after 15 seconds of cuts to one scene of animal cruelty. The consumer advice states that the film 'Contains strong sex, sexual violence, bloody violence, and animal slaughter'.

Source: http://www.sbbfc.co.uk/CaseStudies/Cannibal_Holocaust

[Mike T]

Haven't seen a review for that yet aside from the one on AVM which doesn't have screen caps or go into much technical detail.

I finally got the review section of AVM to load, after it appearing to be offline for a while, and I had a brief scan of the "review". Whilst Troy's undeniably a decent-to-good genre writer, without bringing anything else to the table, objectively he's one of the last online reviewers I'd consider a "go to" for technical prowess when it comes to the home video side of the equation. But what really staggered me with that review was this statement:

It has been brought to my attention that at least one sequence of animal violence was trimmed by the British Board of Film Censors in even the full strength edit; not knowing the film in great detail, I cannot say if this is true...

Whatever happened to basic, rudimentary research in the name of writing a review? The fact that the BBFC insisted on one small cut to the complete version of the film is common knowledge across most corners of the online genre community on the internet. I started this very thread four months ago about the fact, with a link to the BBFC website and the details of their decison! Even everyone's favourite rabid advertising shill forums announced the fact as part of their beat-up in advance of the film's release (see link).

Making a blanket statement on what one "believes" to be the truth, against an overwhelming wealth of easily verifiable (and correlating) facts from multiple sources, doesn't really do a reviewer any favours when it comes to credibility or reliability as a source of factual information. TBH, I was embarrassed to see such a thing written...

[Mike T]

I must admit, I like the colour schemes more on the Shameless disc -- but I'm not so convinced by the loss of picture detail (look at Kerman's stubble in the close-up pic between the two versions; there's detail in the Grindhouse image and none in the Shameless capture). However, detail seems variable between different sequences; it's there in the Grindhouse in some examples and not in the Shameless version, and vice versa in other. Plus, these are SD captures, so...SD = meh. I was never real thrilled with the killing of the coatimundi, so I might actually go the Shameless BD*!

* which also has subtitles for the full Italian track (which the Grindhouse version didn't). Hopefully there's lossless audio on there to bring out the best in Ortolani's score.

[Ian Jane]

DVD Beaver's got a comparison between the Shameless DVD and the Grindhouse DVD here.

There are some pretty significant differences in the color and grain structure. Be curious to see how the Blu-ray stacks up. Haven't seen a review for that yet aside from the one on AVM which doesn't have screen caps or go into much technical detail.

[Todd Jordan]

Hoarder.