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Films have always been there for entertainment, but every so many years there's one or two that push the limits. Sex, drugs, nudity, reckless violence, gore, monsters, destruction, rebellion and chaotic mayhem. These things are what Exploitation films were typically known and loved for. They shocked viewers with their fearless approach to macabre taboo's that earlier films didn't dare touch. It's no surprise that this genre was later to give birth to the sub genre known as: Cannibal Films.

Cannibal Films were full of enough disturbing and taboo imagery to keep viewers feeling grimy for weeks, giving safe assurance that the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree. Most cannibal films typically consisted of taboo scenes of rape, abuse, torture, castration, and even actual on-screen animal slaughter . It was this promise of mindless gore and cruelty that served as the allure for the films. The films really became popular around 1977 through to 1981, and due to their graphic content they were the center of a lot of controversy. Many of the films were once banned in the UK and Australia, and most are still forced to be edited before public display. Several films remain banned in countries all across the world.

The man who originally coined the genre was an Italian film director by the name of Umberto Lenzi, with his film Man From Deep River released in 1972. However, the concept of cannibal films only began to catch on in 1977, when Ruggero Deodato released his film; Last Cannibal World, a precursor to his controversial 1980 film Cannibal Holocaust. The film begins when an affluent American entrepreneur and oil-prospector crash-lands on the Philippine island of Mindanao, and is soon after captured and held captive by a violent, and cannibalistic tribe known as the Tajedoes. Many similar films were released soon after including Deodato's more popular Cannibal Holocaust in 1980, Umberto Lenzi's Make Them Die Slowly! in 1981, all the way to the more recent Cannibal Terror released in 1981 by Alain Deruelle.

While a sequel was eventually filmed, it goes without saying that Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust was the most controversial yet most influential film of the genre. In fact, just ten days after it's premier in Milan, Italian authorities seized the film and arrested Deodato under the suspicion that the film was a real-life "snuff film." The authorities demanded all the movie's actors to come forward before the eventual release of the director. The film remains banned in countries all across the world.

Today, we can still see instances where the Cannibal Films have influenced modern and past, mainstream films. Movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and more recently Wrong Turn , all possess traits belonging to these daringly controversial films. Other movies such as The Silence of The Lambs have shown similar traits as well...like of course, cannibalism! While the pure, unedited gore and pure brutality of these films also shares roots with the sub genre.

So why watch a Cannibal film? Well, no one's making you - but as Hannibal Lecter once said: "As my mother always said, and your mother probably says too, it's important to try new things..."

Learn more about this author, Anthony Ford.
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