by John Gray

Created on: November 01, 2007

Since the dawning of cinema to our present time, audiences and directors alike have always been attracted to the horror movie. The human fascination with fear seems to strike an evolutionary chord in which the horror movie exploits, albeit from a safe distance. However, from all of the various sub-genres of horror, none is more shocking and damn right disturbing, than that of the cannibal flick.

The cannibal genre is obviously closely related to its zombie counterpart, of which the classic Night of the Living Dead by George A Romero (1968) was the first to present the image of cannibalisation, for which it was initially criticised for. The cannibal film was undoubtedly influenced by such images, but the true cannibal film goes much further in its sheer repulsion of the senses than this.

The cannibal genre boomed in the 1970's and early eighties at a time saturated in b-movie horror and exploitation films, in which the cannibal genre readily incorporated itself into. Italian directors Umberto Lenzi and Ruggero Deodato were amongst the earliest and still best known director's of the cannibal genre, between them they are responsible for a host of movies so shocking that they border on the unwatchable.

Lenzi's debut, Il Paese del Sesso Selvaggio or The Man From the Deep River (1972) from shriek show, is generally labelled as the first film in this genre, which helped to lay down the foundations of plot, acting as a blueprint in which others could follow.

The general themes of most cannibal movies follow groups of so called "civilized" western anthropologists or scientists as they penetrate deep into the jungles of Africa or South America and come into contact with native cannibals. The common features of all these films include unwonted barbarity, scenes of rape, torture and extreme physical cruelty, often depicting actual real life violence to animals, a strong factor in such films censorship issues.

Lenzi's debut, although shocking, featuring the usual animal cruelty and scenes of extreme violence familiar to the genre, is nothing in comparison to his Cannibal Ferox or Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, from Grindhouse releasing, which is arguably the most shocking movie ever made, whose utterly disturbing credits includes a woman raped and beaten to death, an unborn foetus dragged out of a woman before she is beaten to death, yet more rape, mutilation, extreme animal cruelty and other horrors too graphic to include here.

The merits of such films obviously have there critics,

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