Cursed Films (2020): Season 2, Episode 5 - Cannibal Holocaust - full transcript

There is nothing
that you don't want to see more

than this "Cannibal Holocaust."

It's gonna be remembered
forever,

because how much ugly
and disgusting...

You cannot... nothing's more
disgusting and ugly than that.

Once they started
killing things,

I thought, oh,
I'm not sure what this is.

Things like this happen all
the time in the jungle,

it's survival of the fittest!

So now it gets real.
Now it's real.

They were trying
to make this movie



the most real horror ever.

It was real animals.

Talking about political
correctness now,

we, we should all be sent
to jail.

"Cannibal Holocaust"

is a fascinating phenomenon.

It's a problematic film,

to label it as an exploitation
film

is not understanding it.

And at the same time,
elevating it too highly

is equally problematic, I think.

The fact that one cannot
find an easy way out

of interpreting
"Cannibal Holocaust"

is why the film works.



It is exploitative,
on many levels,

and of course, there's the
actual killing of animals,

which is extremely problematic.

And at the same time,
it's a film that points

the finger towards the public
saying, you want violence.

So it's satisfying that,

as it accuses the public
of wanting it.

- I wonder who the real
cannibals are.

It's a very nasty thing
to do to an audience.

It is something that is not
only going to lure you in

with some kind of promise

of a taboo busted

or a forbidden image
being revealed,

that will not only do that,
but after doing that,

say, eww, you wanted
to see that?

The attraction, not only
of "Cannibal Holocaust,"

but all manner of dubious
objects of the period

is they're bad.

And you ought not be caught
in their company.

And for a certain category
of viewer,

to which I proudly belong, uh...

I want be keeping
that bad company.

"Cannibal Holocaust"
has one of the things

that makes Italian genre cinema

so historically relevant,

which is that it assimilated
so much of what was going on

in that period.

Italian genre cinema
is extremely reactive.

There would be a genre,

usually made popular
by Americans.

We would initially try
to reproduce

the same kind of effect.

Find a new interpretive theme.

But the cannibal genre
in itself,

is Italian.

It is difficult
to think of any genre

or sub-genre that
is as disreputable

as Italian cannibal films.

I don't think you can point

to any contemporary equivalent

to the kind of filmmaking

that was going on
in Italy through the 1960s,

'70s, and '80s.

We see horror getting
more and more violent.

Italian society was changing.

The public of the '70s
didn't want capes

and dark towers and castles,

and old counts running around
with candelabras.

The public of the '70s
wanted something real.

We see a lot of films
pushing the envelope

as far as what could be
shown onscreen.

That search for the shocking
element has to do with

kind of what they had to see
on the news,

that idea that violence
was all around them.

And cinema assimilated that.

- Well, what do you think,
Professor?

- That it's not the best way
of establishing peace

with the Yakumo Tribe.

- This is nothing.
Alan did much worse.

Just watch.

When our intrepid
professor is sitting down

at the flatbed reel-to-reel

and reviewing the footage,

immediately, I think of Mick
Jagger and the Maysles

sitting down at the flatbed

and watching the Altamont
footage.

Could you see what was
happening there?

No, you couldn't see anything.

Whether it's another...
It's another scuffle, it was...

- There's the Angel right there
with a knife.

For as long as there has
been a documentary tradition,

there has been a tradition
of falsification.

Going back to Flaherty
and his "Nanook,"

I guarantee you

if you handed an Inuit man
a record,

he would not try to take
a bite out of it.

This is you know, very clearly

something staged for the camera.

There is this entire lineage

of semi-documentary approaches

in fiction films.

Realism ultimately is

whatever aesthetic

people seem to have agreed

constitutes reality
at a given moment.

A shaky camera,

muffled sound,

and a general clumsiness
of approach.

You can look, for example,
at the opening

of "Citizen Kane,"

which gives us this newsreel
presentation

of the life of Charles
Foster Kane.

This is something that,
you know, continues

long after "Cannibal
Holocaust."

And in some ways,
"Cannibal Holocaust"

just represents the logical
endpoint of this.

And it also represents
kind of an inversion

of the Mondo film.

Deodato has never made a secret

of the fact that he took
a lot of inspiration

from Jacopetti
with "Mondo Kane,"

and with the "Mondo" movies,

which maybe now we could define
as kind of,

a sort of a mockumentary.

The women are very pretty,

and very nonchalant about
matters of love.

For centuries they have played
a sport on these beaches

which is very popular here,
too, man-hunting.

- But they definitely
intertwined reality

and staged reality.

But they're always looking
for some kind of realism,

shocking, absurd, grotesque,

With "Cannibal Holocaust,"

you see the search for some
kind of realism within it.

What has happened!

Help us!

"Cannibal Holocaust"
really is the original

"Blair Witch Project," for sure.

This is fuckin' crazy shit!

Right after the movie
premiered at Sundance,

somebody on our website said,
hey, I saw the movie,

have you ever seen
"Cannibal Holocaust?"

I definitely hadn't seen it,
so they sent me a VHS,

and I told-you know, and he...

You know, the guy told me
the setup, and I was like,

holy crap, that sounds exactly
like "Blair Witch."

And obviously there are
distinctions between

"Cannibal Holocaust" and "Blair
Witch," after watching it.

The original idea that Dan
and I came up with

in the early '90s,

was inspired by pseudo
documentary-type movies

and TV shows that really
scared the crap out of us.

Like, "The Legend
of Boggy Creek."

- And then there was a show
called, "In Search of..."

that you know, had a Bigfoot
episode, and there was...

And it seemed to be like there
was a Bigfoot documentary

you know, every other week
when I was a kid.

To have eluded us for so long,

Bigfoot must understand men
very well.

The burden will be on us
to understand him.

- You watch an old rerun
of "Unsolved Mysteries,"

Like, if it's the right story,
man, that's some creepy shit.

I think what makes those
things scary

is that they're presented
as real.

They're presented as news.

- Montgomery College film
students Heather Donahue,

Michael Williams,
and Joshua Leonard,

were reportedly shooting
a school project

about a local myth called
"The Blair Witch."

- After three days of searching,

local officials will continue
to look for...

- Cut. Beautiful.

They used techniques
that you've only seen

in documentaries and newscasts,
and you know,

we-our brains are accustomed
to like, oh, okay,

this is real, so we were like,

I wonder if you could
do that now.

Like, do something where,
you know,

basically make a fake
documentary and make it scary.

I'm lucky that I never watched
"Cannibal Holocaust"

until after "Blair Witch,"

because I would not have made
"Blair Witch" if it was...

If we had seen
"Cannibal Holocaust."

Robert Kerman was
a classically trained actor

who, like a lot of independent
actors

had a very hard time
finding work

in theatre and film,

and commercials and television,

and had a very easy time
finding work in sex films.

He worked for Roberta Findlay
a lot.

- All right,
I won't need you for now.

And please hold my calls.

Who else would employ
him to be in a film?

You've told me that he
is the star of uh,

"Cannibal Holocaust,"

whatever that may be.

I can't imagine
how he got that job.

What do you remember
about Robert Kerman?

- Well, he of course was one
of the New York crowd,

and he was very serious
about acting,

and he thought he was
a great actor.

- Oh, Honey.
- Oh, come on, get outta here.

He also thought
he was wildly attractive,

and good-looking.

I found that to be amazing.

Oh, you turn me on.

- An amazing self-deception.

He wasn't much of a lover.

You're not speaking
personally, you mean on...

- No, not... oh God, no.

Oh! Oh!

I'm gonna be sick.

Um... no.

Onscreen.

The greatest shock, to me,

was finding his face

in three, four shots

in "The Goodbye Girl."

That seems to be the greatest
accomplishment.

I feel like he definitely
was sad

that he would be remembered for

having sex on camera,

and being in
"Cannibal Holocaust."

Which is worse?

- In... he,

not that I can speak for him,

but I would venture to say,
based on his interviews,

being in "Cannibal Holocaust."

I was 18-years-old,
18 and a half.

We were a bunch of young kids.

Excited, ready to kill
to get a role.

And, you know, I didn't even
read the script.

They said, do you want to do
a movie in Colombia?

In this little town,

I think it was called Leticia,

and they liked me and the other
guy,

the guy with white hair, blonde,

blondish-white hair,
that is in the movie,

I forgot his name now,
I'm going blank.

I had an agent, that told me

that Ruggero Deodato
was looking for an actress

for the movie
"Cannibal Holocaust."

- I was young and stupid,

and so I decided to do this
movie because I was young,

and really stupid.

- I'm Carl Yorke,
I played Alan Yates

in "Cannibal Holocaust."

I flew to Leticia,

which is down on the Amazon
River,

and then once we land in that,

I get to be in
"Cannibal Holocaust."

All right! All right!
Let's go!

We landed in Leticia,
and then they put me in a boat,

drove me up the river to go
to the set,

and-and one thing that floated
by was a dead monkey,

and then a human leg floated by.

I kinda thought the monkey
was real.

I didn't know that the leg
wasn't real.

It was a fitting introduction,
I'll put it that way.

I flew with Lusa Barbareschi.

He was a lovely guy, Luca.

Francesca,

you know, she was very easy,
she had fun.

We all tried to have sex
with her,

but nobody succeed.

I think he was
hoping that we would get close.

But it didn't happen.

The first night,
I got to read the script.

You know, as an actor, there's
these times where you're...

they ask you to do something
that you normally

wouldn't do in your life.

The first time you read
a script,

when you get to one
of those things,

you tend to, I tend to,

I will go maybe into a little
bit of denial, like,

maybe we don't have to do
this scene, you know?

Um, the rape scene
was one of those.

- I think we got one!
Grab her!

I didn't want
to do that scene, and I um...

- Look what we found!

- I woke up that morning,

and I told everybody I was sick.

I was actually trying not
to go to school that day.

I was hoping that Mom would say
you can stay home from school.

Because I didn't wanna shoot
that scene.

And um...

- but I did.
- Ah!

What a spectacular
actress she was.

- Do you want me to keep
shooting or what?

And she also, you know,
went along with the rape.

This was a scene
that upset everyone.

And so everybody was very
tense, and...

because Ruggero was very
aggressive at this point,

was screaming to everyone,
and uh, to Carl,

to-to Perry, he wasn't happy.

And it was a difficult scene.

And so I went mad.
And I, and I bit him.

Shut up!

- And he went around saying,
oh, she's biting me,

she's biting me!
Ohh! Ohh! Oh!

And then Francesca, who
was playing my girlfriend...

- Jack! What do you want
to use it for?!

A porno film?!

Pulled me off of this girl,

and I sat down right in the mud.

And the mud went squirtin'
right up my ass.

- And then at this point,
I became really crazy,

I started beating him.

- Ah!
- Stop it!

Bam! Bam! Bam! And then
threw it in the mud.

- She clipped me in the chin,
and she chipped my tooth.

That was another thing
that pissed me off,

'cause I'm an actor,
I'm vain, you know?

I'm like, oh, you fuckin'
chipped my tooth?

- Oh! Ah!
- You're bad!

- I-I have to say that
that girl,

she was, I think, 14.

- It's one test after another,
who am I?

Am I a rapist?
Um, no.

Am I a guy who can...

pretend to rape somebody?

If you pay me.

And they were payin' me,
so I pretended.

The love scene.

That was a whole
different problem.

Before we did it,
Francesca said,

let's go out in the jungle
and practice this, you know?

Like, for real.

- Yeah, I told him,
why don't we try...

Why don't we try for real?

Carl was a really lovely boy,
he was really nice.

- You know, I'm not taking
my pants down

out there in the jungle.
I see what's out there.

I'm-I'm... uh, you know.

- He passed? Oh my God.

No, I tried, but at the time,

I was trying to fuck
everything that was moving.

And we do it the first time,

and my first thought is,

God, I hope we don't have
to do this again.

And Ruggero goes, cut!
Okay, this time...

and then he pulls me aside,
and he says, this time,

when you take her shirt off,

I want you to show her tits
to the camera.

Okay.

I can do that.

So as I'm taking her shirt off,

she says, what are you doing?

And I'm like, Ruggero
said I needed to show

your tits to the camera,
and she goes,

well, fuck Ruggero,
I don't wanna...

I don't want him to show my...

I don't want you to show
my tits to the camera.

- He took her off into
the jungle

and screamed bloody murder
at her.

He-you know.

So the jungle has this canopy,
right?

So all these gigantic leaves,
way up there.

And it's echoing off
of the leaves.

Everybody heard it.

- He was shouting and screaming
like you can't imagine.

You know, something like
really was abusive.

Abusive, so if you can
say something

about Ruggero Deodato,
he was an abusive director.

- And she's fighting,
and fighting and fighting,

and then, boom,

here comes the moment
where she starts crying.

And as soon as he got
her crying,

he knew he got her
where he needed her,

brought her back as soon
as he could.

We did the next shot,
the next uh, the next take.

She came back very somber.

Boom, let's do the love scene.

- He has never been discreet,
this guy, never.

- Well, I was not prepared,

this-this hard experience,
no, I wasn't.

- I knew that I-I had to be
naked at some point,

I knew that it was going
to be a rape scene,

but please, you be discreet.

"I see, I promise you,
I promise you."

And then he went too far,

and so I was really
disappointed that I...

It was a disaster.

The feeling of this-of this
movie has been a disaster

all my life.

He's a bit rude, Ruggero.

Ruggero is the cowboy
of the film, you know?

Let's shoot, let's make the
scene in which he fucks her,

let's do-you know,
it was very basic.

Ruggero's a basic man,
he's not um...

uh, super intellectual.

And then comes this
moment where Ruggero says,

I want you to shoot this pig.

So the challenge was,
can I um...

can I say no to the director?

And he's like, we're gonna eat
that pig tonight, you know?

You can-it's okay to shoot it,
we're gonna eat it!

I...

I-I don't wanna say that's
the way he manipulated me,

but I told him I wouldn't kill
him, and I...

So I can't do it.

But Luca, you know,
Luca grew up on a farm,

it was no big deal for him.

He was like, yeah,
I'll shoot the pig.

- I shot the little piggies,
you know,

this scene is real.

Killing a pig is not
nice to watch.

But people eat ham every day,

so somebody has to kill the pig.

Ten years ago, I had to call
DIGOS with the Secret Service,

because I was having a show
in Venice,

and 200 madmen with dogs,

of course, they are all
against animal killing,

they put poster all over Venice
saying,

let's kill Luca Barbareschi.

And honestly, this was
a bit annoying,

because you never know if,
you know,

it's enough one crazy
that shoots you,

and that's the end.

And you should be careful about

what future regrets you pick.

Do you think that was
a future regret you did avoid?

- Absolutely.

And I...

I can only measure against
the other people in the movie.

One of 'em being Perry.

He's the one who did the turtle.

I don't think he was happy
with the fact

that he did some of that stuff.

Yeah?

Uh, at the turtle.

He was doing for real,

I never imagined
he was doing for real.

Never, never,
could imagine it was so...

Never, nobody was thinking
something like this.

Of course it is an abuse.

Isn't it not?
It is the most enormous abuse.

It's an enormous abuse.

You cannot have an abuse
more than that.

You're imprisoned in the jungle,

and you have to assist
in the killing.

My God.

I don't want to remember.

You don't want to talk about it?

- No! No.

We flew home together
to New York.

I saw him one more time when
I was still living in New York,

and um, and that was it.

- No, he doesn't talk about
the film anymore,

because he was involved
in everything, in everything.

I think "Cannibal Holocaust"

has become the film that
represents animal slaughter,

but it's actually got
a far kind of deeper,

and-and kind of richer
tradition in cinema.

I mean, we see it right back
at the start of cinema,

with Edison's electrocuting
an elephant.

It obviously happened
in a lot of westerns,

with the "flying W,"
which was a trip wire,

which used to trip over
the horses,

and they used to die
when that happened.

Another famous example
is something

like "Apocalypse Now,"

and that scene of the water
buffalo getting killed

at that ceremony.

In "Cannibal Holocaust,"

especially with the turtle
scene,

we see that...

turtle completely eviscerated.

The animal slaughter
in exploitation films

becomes another set piece.

The focus on animal slaughter
has always diverted attention

away from the kind of colonial
discourses that existed

in this film, and you know,

the racism,
and the treatment of women.

- The animal killings are...

something that,

not without justification,

people focus on.

And the function that they
serve is obvious,

because the film
is attempting to give a...

simulacra of reality,

and when you see the viscera

of a tortoise slithering
around...

that then adds an additional
level of verisimilitude

to the butchery of humans,

which, to the best
of my knowledge,

did not actually happen.

Once we started killing things,

I started bringing my passport,

and all my money,

and my plane ticket with me,
every day, to the set.

I wasn't sure if I...

This was a snuff movie or not.

I didn't know...

what their intention was.

It feels like about
as close to a snuff film

as you wanna see.

I mean, these guys did kill
a turtle,

so maybe they really...
Did these people really die?

Like, what the hell?!

How the hell did they make
this movie, you know?

- Pretty powerful stuff, huh?

- To use that contract

between filmmaker and audience,

and take advantage in some ways

of the audience's credulity

is part of the game being
played.

I know that there was some
kind of fuss kicked up

by the Mercury Theatre

"War of the Worlds" broadcast
in 1938,

which is using some
of the same tactics

as does "Cannibal Holocaust."

This is Orson Welles,
ladies and gentlemen.

Out of character,

to assure you that
"The War of the Worlds"

has no further significance
than as the holiday offering

it was intended to be.

- But I don't know to what
degree an audience of 1980

who saw "Cannibal Holocaust"

thought that they were watching

human lives snuffed out
on camera.

I would guess there was
certainly a...

smidgen of the audience
that did.

- Four youngsters who never
came back.

- Yes, the agreement was that
we have to hide ourself,

with the-and we don't have
to show in any other movie

for a certain period of time.

- Well, the plan was to tell
that we really died.

- He said, okay, everybody
thinks it's uh, it's real.

That you have been-this
is a real documentary.

He wanted to market the film

as if it was a snuff movie.

- I mean, "Blair Witch"
is a different story,

because it was a different time,

and obviously we hadn't killed
the filmmakers, but...

with "Cannibal Holocaust,"

the filmmakers basically hid
the actors,

and I think that's part of why
they got into trouble.

- I think it was like a real
court case and stuff,

like, right, he had to like,
prove himself in court

that they-that you know,
of just the techniques,

and the actors had to like,
come out and actually like,

you know, show themselves.

So I don't really know
much about that story.

And I generally don't talk
about it,

but I will this time.

This is what I'll tell you.

I didn't sign anything,

and they never brought me
into court.

I think it's a brilliant
sales idea.

- Uh, no, no. Um...

a lot of elements,

a lot of elements that
are tied to the trial,

that return in many interviews,

are often part of that
wanting to...

create a legend,
basically, you know.

What we do know, for a fact,

is that there was indeed
a hearing

that involved Sergio D'Offizi,
the cinematographer,

the producers, Deodato.

The thing they were accused of
was uh,

The film was removed
from theatres completely.

The film, you know, had to be
literally cancelled.

- I was very happy.
I was so happy that the...

That the movie has been banned,

so that nobody could see it.

- That series of events really
kind of changed

the course of Deodato's career,

and pretty much everybody
who participated in the film.

- Hey!

- We find the cannibal genre
to be the last big phenomenon.

Italian cinema was a giant

and then the giant dies.

It doesn't die softly
in the night.

It dies shouting,
and screaming, and kicking,

and that's how Italian
genre cinema died.

In the jungle with people
being ripped apart.

- That it is a film.

It's only rock 'n' roll.

One day I went to see
Alice Cooper.

And I was shooting,
you know, in film.

And I shot part of the concert.

Then I went back in the editing
room,

and I-we couldn't match
the singing and the lip.

I did the clap, can't you see?

We go slowly,
you know the Moviola,

I was really rr-waa-waa-wah!

And it was out of sync.

How can Alice Cooper sing
out of sync?

Then I realized he was
not singing.

He was faking.
It was all recorded, the show.

And it's only rock 'n' roll.

So I think,
"Cannibal Holocaust,"

it's only rock 'n' roll.

It is the something
that I regret the most,

of course.

And uh, apart to have
to deal with myself

for a long, long time,

to have been part of this
"Cannibal Holocaust,"

so I never know
if I'll ever forgive myself

uh, to be in the movie.

- I can't understand
the reason for such cruelty.

When you watch
"Cannibal Holocaust,"

what do you feel?

Nobody's ever asked me that.

Um... wow.

That's a good question.

Well, the first word that
came to mind was "awful."