RIP Ruggero Deodato

[Drunk Monk]

Ruggero Deodato, Director of the Notorious Horror Film 'Cannibal Holocaust,' Dies at 83

The realistic "found footage" movie depicted murder, mutilation, torture, gang rape and animal slaughter and was banned in several countries.
Ruggero Deodato, the Italian director behind the gruesome and controversial 1980 film Cannibal Holocaust, died Thursday in Rome, the Il Messaggero newspaper reported. He was 83.
Made in the style of a documentary and shot in Colombia, Cannibal Holocaust starred Robert Kerman and employed purported “found footage” taken by a sadistic American film crew during an expedition into the Amazon jungle to locate indigenous tribes.
It depicted murder, mutilation, torture, gang rape and animal slaughter and was banned in several countries including Deodato’s own, with Italian authorities seizing his film and destroying prints shortly after it hit theaters.
Deodato was put on trial for murdering actors and faced 30 years in prison, but he produced the supposedly dead men in court, and the charges were dropped (the actors had signed contracts to disappear for a year). He was fined for obscenity, however.
Deodato said he made Cannibal Holocaust in response to sensational news reports about terrorism seen on Italian television at the time. And in a 2011 interview with The Guardian, he defended the scenes of animal cruelty.
“In my youth, growing up, I spent a lot of time in the country close to animals and therefore often seeing the moment of their death,” he said. “The death of the animals, although unbearable — especially in a present-day urban mindset — always happened in order to feed the film’s characters or the crew, both in the story and in reality.”
He told The Telegraph in November that “all the animals were eaten. They didn’t just die for the film.”
Deodato got a cameo as a cannibal in Eli Roth’s Hostel Part II (2007), and the American horrormeister used Cannibal Holocaust as inspiration for his own cannibal film, The Green Inferno (2013).
Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone have also cited him as an influence.
Born on May 7, 1939, in Potenza, Italy, Deodato worked as an assistant director for Roberto Rossellini on Il Generale Della Rovere (1959) and Escape by Night (1960) and for Sergio Corbucci on the spaghetti Westerns Django and Ringo and His Golden Pistol, both released in 1966.
He made his directorial debut on Hercules, Prisoner of Evil (1964).
His résumé also included Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976), Jungle Holocaust (1977), The House on the Edge of the Park (1980), Body Count (1986), The Barbarians (1987), The Washing Machine (1993) and Deathcember (2019).

I have D00M to thank for exposing me to Cannibal Holocaust…specifically ED. It’s one of the worst retinal raping films ever. So many scenes you can never unsee including some of the most horrific violence upon animals and one of the most twisted rape scenes. No redeeming value whatsoever. Thanks ED. Thanks a lot. 

NOT recommended for anyone, D00M or otherwise.

[Greg]

I'm happy to say I missed two-thirds of the ED Eye rape trifecta. Necromantic stays with me. (Didn't we see Necromantic 2, as well?)

[Drunk Monk]

I wish it was only a tri. What is #3? Sinful Dwarf? Ed repeatedly raped DM’s retinas. Now that I reflect upon it, it was a cinematically abusive relationship. 

ED did show both Necromancer films to me. And I’m still traumatized.

[Greg]

I was going with Cannibal Holocaust, Sinful Dwarf, and Necromantik.

Was Necromancer your Auto-Correct acting up again?

[Drunk Monk]

Indeed. My spelchuk is my ghost writer.

I guess you weren’t there for ED’s epic Yeti-gf-party-harsher Tetsuo. That was one of D00M’s finest moments.

In all fairness, Ed did introduce me to some excellent cinema like Jodoworski’s Santa Sangre. Been meaning to rewatch that. He also introduced me to Miike.

[King Bob]

I was there for Tetsuo and the drill penis. And Sinful Dwarf.

[Drunk Monk]

I was there for Tetsuo and the drill penis. 

Such was D00M.