It is a particularly gruesome & controversial "horror movie" about some young film makers who go to visit a cannabalistic tribe and then guess what, they get eaten   Interestingly, it is probably one of the first mocumentary style films.  A local theater playing it soon.

I am a pretty big horror film fan, but not all types of horror.  I like to be scared.  I like the suspense & tension.  I enjoy cheesy B horror films for the fun of it and films w/ cool special effects etc.  Love different types of zombie flicks, supernatural thrillers,  80's creature features etc.  I like a lot of different types of them.  

But I tend to shy away from movies that prominently feature...realistic, sadistic torture & the like.  Example, Hostel, Saw, the Audition.  I've never seen any of these films b/c the previews give the impression that they would be disturbing w/ no beneficial thing to balance it out.  

I also don't like some slasher movies.  Holloween was great.  It was more about terror and suspense, it wasn't focused on gruesome portrayal of death.  Most of the Jason films, however, were unecessarily gruesomme.  I really don't enjoy seeing, actually seeing, a young woman being stuffed in a sleeping bag & then swung into a tree to death, or like in Scream when that girl got hung up in the garage door by her neck

I dunno...

for those who have seen it, do you wish you hadn't.  

Or do you think it was of no benefit & you those 2 hrs would have been better spent doing something else?  

Or, was there some good reason to see it somehow??  Perhaps something about the movie helps one deal w/ the gravity of the reality of death or something???

In before the cannibal pics.

If you don't like Hostel, then you wont like this. It is supposed to "look" like a snuff film. It does a very good job at times! If you are not up to seeing several rapes and a young girl impaled through her vagina, then stay away, far away.

It actually is very well done, way better then Blair Witch.  The film is very entertaining, but very very graphic and gory.  Some animals are killed (for real) in the movie, some people don't particularly care for seeing such things and are easily offended.  I think it was an absolute great movie..but I like esoteric horror/gore films.

Or just watch it here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8139367795876917425#

I second the notion that you will probably not enjoy this film if you are not into gore.  I saw it and thought it was pretty decent but I dont really think it is for the faint of heart when it comes to certain things like rape and a pretty realistic scene where a guys gets his "junk" removed.

I haven't seen the film yet, but I read about it in the book "Killing for Culture".  It talks a lot about the film and others that were portrayed as snuff films, as well as other portrayals of realistic death on screen.
Not to hijack, but the "snuff film" phenomenon is interesting.  There are no actual snuff films that anyone knows of, but it may become a self fulfilling prophecy.  People talk about the legend of snuff films enough and someone is going to make one just to fulfill the legend.  The legend creates the reality in this case.
If sick shit like that is appealing, it also recommends a Japanese film called "Flowers of Flesh and Blood", which is supposed to be the closest thing to a realistic snuff film you can find.  Supposedly it was initially investigated by the FBI until they figured out it was just a film.  After reading the book, I wanted to watch both movies, but I haven't gotten around to it.

Great book either way, I recommend it.

Pete

That scene literally made me laugh until I was crying.

I've had the displeasure of seeing CH in the theatre. I went with a group of what i could only say were hardcore horror fanatics. One of them actually won a drinking/trivia contest against members of troma hosted by the legendary Lloyd Kauffman. We have all seen stuff like the faces/traces series, necromantic, zombie, ect. There was a shared reaction of stunned silence that lasted about 30 minutes after the movie was over. It was that good.



The hostel/saw/ect genre focuses alot on the build up of terror to a gruesome outcome that everyone in the theatre knows is coming. Shot of gruesome torture device, shot of sadistic killer, 5 minutes of victim trying to escape in futility, gruesome death. Its a repeatable pattern designed to build up tension and release it. Its geared toward the 15 minute attention span of morons.



CH is way different, there isnt much build up, and its done in a very realistic manner. Much of the gore is presented matter of factly, as part of the customs and traditions of a native population, part of the horror is portraying that stuff as foreign to westerners. Then there is the stuff the film crew does, that is just way over the top. The film was way ahead of its time, and today now that much of entertainment is focused on so called "reality", CH is still very relevant.



The movie is one of those things you will never forget, and the " ba-chew-chew-chewww" sound from the score will haunt you. See it.

Just curious,
if the film is supposed to be as if it were shot by the people in the movie, then who is supposed to be doing the filming when everyone is being eaten etc by the cannibals?  

Its amazing that there are really people like that, that eat others...  I don't mean like some freak incident like jeffery Dohmer, or the Donner Pass, but like a whole culture where this is normative...  

So, what is the point of these brutal rape & mutilation scenes?  Are they to be enjoyed somehow by someone who isn't a sociopathic sadist?

There is a movie called Savior, not a horror.  It is about the war in Bosnia/Serbia.  A very powerful film, about loosing and regaining your humanity.  There are some scenes in there that are a little hard to watch, but in the context of the movie, it is all justified somehow.  Like, you are a better person for having seen the film, even though there were some really awful parts to it.  

Is there any moral to cannibal holocaust or is it just shocking disturbing shit to watch?


BTW, I saw the Texas Chain-saw Massacre last night for the first time.  That film was something to see.  It was neither scary nor gory.  A little suspenseful.  The acting was horrible, the cinema-photography was ridiculous in many parts.  It was down right funny in some parts.  I guess it was made by some college kids or what?  The...scenery, the sets and props were fantastic, for a low budget film.  Definitely worth seeing once in your life.  The funniest part was at end where that black trucker got out of his truck & walked towards that screaming blond & how he turned around when he saw leather face and got back in the truck.

You need help

You just have to watch it, answering any more questions would give away the whole story. Consider yourself warned however. I do not enjoy the "faces of Death" type movies, because I don't like the thought of using somebody elses pain and death for my amusement. Good old fashioned horror OTOH is great!

It was great, but then again I am a huge fan of cannibalism

The moral is that television rapes and mutilates your mind. The premise is that the film crew "fakes" alot of things in their documentary in order to get good footage. I think we can all think of an example of that.

That is a wierd thing to say, but I am reading the book Dinner w/ a Cannibal and am finding it tremendously entertaining.  Check it out.

I skipped the film.