Tag Archives: cannibal films

July 26, 2011 · 3:31 pm

Cannibals, werewolves and tentacles: The web searches that bring you here.

Blog statistics are a fascinating gateway into the collective unconscious. While the identities of those who’ve visited my blog remain anonymous, their mouse clicks remain on record and provide an insight into the topics that interest them most. What occupies people’s thoughts during those moments of procrastination when they are not writing that report for their boss or essay for that class? Cannibals, apparently. More specifically, Ruggero Deodato’s 1980 horror film Cannibal Holocaust, a film that’s still considered controversial after 32 years and, likely due to its continued notoriety, received the most “hits” on my blog. If they’re not seeking information on cannibal films, people are looking into the Canadian teenage werewolves of Ginger Snaps which, as far as I’m concerned, is a much better use of their time.

Periodically, I will write about topics other than horror films, though these topics are as equally strange and macabre. Heinrich Hoffmann’s darkly comedic children’s book Der Struwwelpeter (1845) has garnered a great deal of interest on my blog, as well as the eroticized anatomical art of Jacques D’Agoty and anatomists of the 18th-century. The mythological vagina dentata and Japanese ‘tentacle erotica’ draw a fair amount of interest, as one might expect.

Celebrities and famous artists predictably top my statistics tally. People have searched on marquee names from art history including Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Odilon Redon, and Hannah Wilke (though the latter is lesser known), as well as contemporary visual artists Loretta Lux, Marcel Dzama and Shary Boyle. And, 45 years after her death, Jayne Mansfield still attracts a large amount of attention. I only wrote about her in a post last week, and she’s #22 on the list of “all-time” top searches. Of course, her story is a ‘perfect storm’ for achieving immortality on the Internet: a beautiful, buxom starlet, who reportedly dabbled in Satanism, died young and in most grisly manner (depending on which account you read, she was either scalped or decapitated in a car accident). We are, as a species, a ghoulish bunch.

Here’s the top 30 searches, according to WordPress:

cannibal holocaust 577
ginger snaps 287
holocaust 279
struwwelpeter 253
loretta lux 247
odilon redon 246
max ernst 246
vagina dentata 184
daguerreotype 123
tentacle erotica 109
cannibal 97
jennifer linton alphabet series 94
walerian borowczyk 91
max ernst collage 84
der struwwelpeter 78
hannah wilke 70
contes immoraux 67
drag me to hell 56
agoty angel 49
anatomical art 46
jayne mansfield 45
marcel dzama 43
the descent 40
macabre art 37
drag me to hell old lady 37
best animated movies of all time………… 33
holocaust pictures 33
redon 33
irreversible 28

Now, get back to work…

p.s. One of the funniest web searches I’ve seen to date would be this one: “horror movie with a women who seducing and kill men with her vagina.” Hey, who am I to judge? Incidentally, there is such a film — not surprisingly, it’s Japanese and called Killer Pussy. You’re welcome.

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January 17, 2011 · 4:29 am

Horror Films 101: Overlooked and Obscure Gems of Horror Cinema.

1. Director Bob Clark’s debut feature was the campy and extraordinarily low-budget zombie film Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972). A theatre group is brought to a graveyard located on a remote island by its flamboyant and eccentric director Alan. With the aid of a magical grimoire, Alan performs a necromantic ritual as some sort of elaborate sick joke, presumably at the expense of both his frightened comrades, as well as the deceased buried on the island. His violation of the dead is further compounded when, disappointed by the seeming failure of his ritual, he opts to desecrate a grave — exhuming a corpse named Orville with whom he amuses himself. Needless to say, when the dead finally do rise from their graves, they’re out for bloody vengeance. A strange and darkly comedic film, Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things has a slow build that rewards its audience with a satisfyingly creepy ending.

2. The post-Vietnam/Watergate/Charlie Mansion paranoia of 1970′s America played out in that decade’s horror films. Beginning with seminal genre films like Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), terror was primarily psychological in nature. Claustrophobia, paranoia and mental illness are themes central to 1977′s The Sentinel, a horror film populated by Satanists and other strange, eerie characters. A beautiful but mentally fragile NYC fashion model moves into a furnished Brooklyn brownstone, unaware that the reason for the remarkably cheap rent is the “portal to Hell” that exists in her building. While an impressive list of American actors — including John Carradine, Burgess Meredith, José Ferrer, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Beverly D’Angelo, Ava Gardner and Tom Berenger — appear throughout, its the creepy, nightmarish atmosphere which elevate this film from your typical ’70s Satanic-horror fodder. The film is controversial for its inclusion of physically deformed people to portray the ‘souls of the damned’, a choice by director Michael Winner which does seem exploitative even as it is effectively off-putting.

The creepy cast of 1977's "The Sentinel."

3. Hong Kong director Fruit Chan serves up a dubious feast in Dumplings (2004). Originally released in a reduced, 37-minute long form on the pan-Asian horror omnibus “Three… Extremes” DVD, Chan’s film has been reissued in its original, 91-minute length with additional subplot and alternate ending. In Dumplings, the aging actress Mrs. Li seeks out the dumplings of “Auntie Mei” that allegedly contain a secret ingredient which offers eternal youth. The nature of this “ingredient” is revealed early in the narrative, a fact which makes the desperate vanity of Mrs. Li all the more grisly. Darkly comic in parts, Chan offers a tongue-in-cheek commentary on Chinese culinary culture and the socio-economic class divide still present in modern-day Hong Kong-Kowloon.

Mrs. Li (Miriam Yeung) consumes the titular "Dumplings" in Fruit Chan's gruesome film.

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September 24, 2010 · 9:13 pm

The horror films I probably won’t watch, and why.

The viewing of a good horror film can, at times, be likened to an amusement park ride. There’s suspense, action, usually a few laughs, and more than a few moments that’ll make you shriek or jump in your seat. At its conclusion, when the evil characters receive their final comeuppance, you’re rewarded with a heady chemical cocktail of endorphins. Thanks for riding Satanic Cannibal Cheerleaders from Outer Space, kids. Please exit to your right.

As a horror film aficionado, I’ve watched and thoroughly enjoyed films that featured copious amounts of gore. I would not classify myself as a gorehound, but neither do I shy away from imagery I know to be disturbing or taboo in nature. These are, after all, the mainstay of horror cinema.

That being said, I do have my limits. Blood, gore and flesh-eating zombies are one thing. Cruelty and sadism that serves no greater purpose in a film than base titillation — that’s quite another. And that is where I draw the metaphoric line in the sand. Whereas the gruesomely authentic torture scenes in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth were unpleasant to view, these scenes provided an important counterpoint to Ofelia’s dark fantasy world in which she sought refuge from the very real brutality of her step-father. Torture for its own sake, however, is something I prefer not to witness.

I have compiled a list of films that, quite frankly, I doubt I will ever watch. Then again, never say never…

Film still from “Cannibal Holocaust.”

1. Ruggero Deodato’s infamous Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Filmed with handheld 16mm cameras in a cinéma vérité documentary-style that proved so convincing that the Italian authorities seized it and charged Deodato with making an actual snuff film. No actors were harmed in the making of this film, but several animals (including an unsuspecting sea turtle) were literally butchered and dismembered before the camera. I don’t need to see that. I don’t need to see a woman raped, tortured and impaled to death on a stake, either.

Film still from Pasolini’s “Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom”

2. Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) directed by the Italian poet, filmmaker and famed provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini. There’s much critical praise amongst cinema’s illuminati for the films of Pasolini. This one, his last and most controversial offering, was based upon the writings of the Marquis de Sade and Dante’s Inferno. While not officially a horror film, it includes scenes of torture, sadism and sexual depravity so thoroughly disturbing that, according to Wikipedia, “Salò was named the 65th scariest film ever made by the Chicago Film Critics Association in 2006.” Pasolini takes his audience on a merciless and unblinking trip through the Circles of Hell. Suffice to say, the Circe de Merde sounds like an especially unpleasant place.

3. The August Underground Trilogy (August Underground 2002, Mordum 2003, Penance 2007) created by the Pittsburgh-based film production/special effects/design company Toetag Pictures. These are simulated snuff films that, based solely on their description, read like a game of one-upmanship amongst gorehounds. One can just imagine the filmmakers snickering: “Does your film have rape, murder, dismemberment, necrophilia, pedophilia and infanticide? ‘Cause ours sure does…(snicker).” A big, juvenile gross-out contest that I can live without experiencing, thanks.

4. The mondo-style films Faces of Death (1978), and it’s imitators Faces of Gore and Traces of Death. See above.

Gratuitous rape scene from “Irreversible.”

5. Irreversible (2002) directed by Gaspar Noé. A cheap trick by a cheap director who opts for the shock-value and little else. Pass.

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