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\begin{document}


\title{A Short History of Cannibal Films}

\author{Florian Cramer}

\date{January 23, 2006}

\maketitle




\section{Il paese del sesso selvaggio / Mondo Cannibale 1}

Umberto Lenzi, 1972

Story: Reporter flees to an outback area in Thailand, first gets 
taken prisoner and tortured by the village tribe, then becomes a member
of it, marries a tribal woman and ends up as the chief of the tribe.

Riff on adventure movies, Robinson Crusoe topic

Not yet a cannibal film in the strict sense. 

Elements of every cannibal movie:

\begin{itemize}

\item fake authenticity 

(German dubbing and text contradict each other)

\item white people come to a tribal area

\item ritual rape

\item tribal female nudity

\item animal slaughter

\item eating guts


\end{itemize}

White male character as the observer, camera, alter ego of the audience:
Duplication of camera perspective and character perspective.

Only the enemy tribe consists of cannibals. Racism: Cannibals have
darker skin. His wife is the most Western-looking woman in the village.

Sex touristic fantasy, man on the search for an obedient wife -- as
evident in the title ``the country of savage sex''.

Me Me Lai: TV game show host in England, later actress in Lars von
Trier's ``Element of Crime''

Classical ``exploitation movie''



\section{Mondo Cane, 1962}

Shock documentary film, the first of its kind. Juxtaposition of strange or
disgusting cultural habits both in Western and in indigenous cultures,
combined with a dark sarcastic commentary and a sweet Muzak-like film
score (by Riz Ortolani). Most of the footage was staged. 

Catholic ``vanity'' mood of the film: ``It's a dog's world''.

Its formula has been used by countless other shock documentaries -- like
Faces of Death --

Precursor of the cannibal movies in several respects:

\begin{enumerate}

\item branding: movies were marketed as ``Mondo Cannibale'' in most of
Europe.

\item topic of savage rites and cruelty, both in Western and tribal culture

\item common themes: animal slaughter, digusting food, tribal nudity,
indigenous ``savage'' cultures

\end{enumerate}

Cannibal movies replace outward perspective with an inward
(character-based) perspective. Relation between ``document'' and
``fiction'' becomes more openly doubtful and speculative.

\section{Mondo movies}

``Mondo'' title gets synonymous with taboo-breaking films, including
underground movies and porn.


\section{Ultimo mondo cannibale, 1977}

Second cannibal film by Ruggero Deodato. A man has an airplane crash in
the jungle, ends up as a prisoner of a cannibal tribe and in the end
manages to flee.

Mindanao: Island of the Philippines. Anthropological literature says
that cannibalism does exist there, but only as ritual cannibalism
performed by the priest-leader of a tribe who has to eat killed enemies.
Depiction of cannibalism in the film is therefore entirely fictitious
and a Western fantasy.

In first Mondo Cannibale film: Ripping out tongues: ripping out language

Second Mondo Cannibale film by Ruggero Deodato: Almost a silent movie

First: Classical iconography of the white man voyeuristically observing
cannibals, and being both fascinated and disgusted. 

Same topic of captivity and exotic sex attraction. Same actress Me Me
Lai.

Role of the observer and the observed do switch: The cannibals observe
the white man.

Flying: Allusion to cargo cults -- as depicted in Mondo Cane.

Stereotype of animal cruelty.

Crocodile ``abortion''. Tenor: It's a cruel and savage world.

But: Westerner turns into the rapist.

The Westerner doesn't turn into savage chief like in Umberto
Lenzi's film (who rips out tongues), but actually into a cannibal himself.

Similarity to Icarus and Goya: Mythology inscribed into cannibal movies.

Ambivalence of the film: Is the rape scene pornographic and voyeuristic,
or is it an unembellished depiction of colonialism, or both?



\section{Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals}

Cross-over of cannibal and softporn movie.

Joe d'Amato, director of horror, softporn and hardcore porn movies such
as ``Man-Eater''. Creator of the ``Black Emanuelle'' series, a rip-off
of the French ``Emanuelle'' softporn movies. This film is part of the
series and combines it with the cannibal genre.

Cannibals move from the tribal into the Western urban space

But the roots of cannibalism are still in the outbacks and have to be
``investigated'' there. 

Topic of diamond smuggling: Recurs in Jess Franco's Mondo Cannibale 4. 
Punishment of the white perpetrators: The jungle/cannibals as a
purgatory, catholic themes. Cannibalism as exorcism and punishment of
sins.

In fact, the woman who gets rescued in the
end is a virgin who grew up in a catholic mission in the jungle. 

None of the cannibal movies tell of expeditions to \em{fight}
cannibalism, but they always are ``research'', ``journalism'',
filmmaking: Duplication of the cannibal movie watching into the cannibal
movies themselves, self-referential voyeurism.


\section{Cannibal Apocalypse}

Cross-over of action and cannibal film.

Rip-off of Coppola's ``Apocalypse Now'': ``Apocalypse domani'',
``apocalypse tomorrow''.  Contains elements of Romero's zombie movies,
too.

U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam catch a virus that turns them into
cannibals. Back in the U.S., they infect the whole population.

Revenge movie: Napalm bombing of Vietnam results in cannibal
bombing of New York. Revenge of cruel nature against cruel culture.

Cannibal movies: Sleaze version of the ``dialectics of enlightenment''.

Cannibal moves almost entirely into the Western urban space.

Self-referentiality of the moviegoer: The moviegoers is not metaphorical
any more, but literal. And he even watches his own film, i.e. a war
action movie just like ``Cannibal Apocalypse''.

Repetition of the theme of ripping out one's tongue.

New York: mythical city of Cannibal movies, as the ``other'' of the
tribal outbacks. Almost all Italian cannibal movies start from New York.
Here, NY turns into the jungle. Jungle as self-image of Western
civilization. 

Dialectics is perfectly reversed here: Cannibals move from the outbacks into the
urban space and take over civilization. There is still the exotic and
primitive ``other'' of the virus. 


\section{Zombi Holocaust}

Tasteless -- for sure. 

Genre of Italian ``Holocaust'' movies in the late 1970s/early 1980s
(Released under different titles in Germany.)

Cross-over of zombie and cannibal film.

Classical horror b movie plot: Mad scientist operates people into
zombies on an island that is populated by cannibals. In the end, the
cannibals overthrow the mad scientist.


\section{Porno Holocaust}

Zombie / porn movie cross-over by Joe d'Amato, director of ``Emanuelle and the
Last Cannibals''.

Rhetoric of sensationalism and taboo-breaking. B cinema of
transgression.


\section{Cannibal Holocaust}

``Holocaust'' title becomes ambivalent: (a) sensationalist like in
``Zombi Holocaust'' and ``Porno Holocaust'', (b) subversion of that
sensationalism because it actually turns out that it is a film about a
genocide -- but it's a genocide of Westerners against indigenous tribes.

Ambivalence visible in the opening credits: Combination of film title
and music. Title gets even more obscene through the sweet music. Music
is by Riz Ortolani, composer of the Mondo Cane score.  Film uses it as a
citation: And it turns out that it is actually a reflection of Mondo
movies. It manages to be a Mondo-style sensationalist exploitation
movie and a critical reflection of Mondo movies at the same time.

``Citizen Kane of the cannibal movies''. Complex, multilayered
film-in-film plot, excellent camera work, excellent realism in the
acting 

Film was cast with porn actors.

``Blair Witch Project'' is a rip-off of Cannibal Holocaust.

Narrative layers:

\begin{itemize}
\item TV reporter

\begin{itemize}
\item Alan Yates' camera team
\end{itemize}

\item TV reporter
\begin{itemize}
\item Anthropologist 
\begin{itemize}
\item Footage found in Yates' camera
\end{itemize}
\item Anthropologist
\end{itemize}

\end{itemize}

Includes all themes of a cannibal film. Even tops them all:
Three rapes, one impaling, cannibal orgies. One of the most violent
films ever made.

Ambivalent depiction of both Westerners and cannibals, with the
exception of the anthropologist as the audience alter ego/observer.

Massacre in the village: Probably influenced by ``Apocalypse now''.

Exploitation movies about exploitation movies, adressing the topic of
exploitation on multiple layers -- both performative and reflexive

Manages to be both sleaze and reflection of sleaze

Cannibal Holocaust -- Pasolini, Salo. I personally prefer it to Salo
because it's not an ``art'' movie and thus doesn't provide a reassurance
that it's all just a critical reflection.

Destruction of the film material: Another self-reflexive point.
Anticipates censorship of the film itself. Film was banned in almost 60
countries, according to IMDB the world record.

\section{Mondo Cannibale 3}

Last official film of the Mondo Cannibale series. Shot by Spanish trash
cult director Jess Franco, with Italian actors. 

Story: A researcher and his family make an expedition to cannibal
territory. The mother gets killed, the father escapes with an arm
chopped off, but the daughter is made the new goddess and queen of the
cannibal tribe.

Picked two longer scenes: The family being attacked on its boat, and a
speech of the tribal chief.

Cannibal genre turns into camp. Cannibals are white Italian actors in
fantasy makeup.

Psychedelic/experimental gore scene.

Compare to Kurt Kren's 1964 experimental film of a performance by Vienna
Actionist Otto Muehl.

Speech of the tribal chief: Dada Sound poetry.

Remarkable in two respects: Cannibal film as the heir of transgressive
underground aesthetics, experimentalism and weirdness in a genre film.

On the other hand: Demasks the colonial stereotyping in the experimental
arts. I.e. sound poetry and body art as colonial projections of a primitive
other, liberation from Western civilization through approaching one's
one exoticist stereotype. Common pattern of both transgressive art and
cannibal movies. 

The film shows that you end up always being yourself: There are
Italians, and Italians with paint in their faces. Franco's film, in its
trashiness, exposes the full stereotypical logic of the genre.

\section{The Treasure of the White Goddess}

Marketed as ``Mondo Cannibale 4'', this film is not a cannibal film
strictly speaking. There are no cannibals and no cannibalism in it.
But at the same time, it's like a sequel to the previous film which shoes
what happened after the arrival of the white goddess of the non-white
tribe.

Story: Liana and her father live in the djungle as gods of a local
tribe. The tribe hoards a big diamond treasure. This is why they have to
repeatedly fight off Westerners who invade their territory in search of
the diamonds. One expedition is sent by Liana's mother, and she falls in
love with one the expedition members. This creates troubles with the
tribe, but in the end, the whites get expelled.

(Very tame) soft sex movie, with nude Katja Bienert as its main attraction.
Riff on Tarzan movies, too.

Comparison: German  ``Liane'' soft sex movies from the 1950s.

Interesting plot twist in the end: Film subverts the whole colonialist
pattern of the white goddess. 

Jess Franco Schlussdialog: Cargo-Kult.

\end{document}
