Cannibal Holocaust

Anthropologist Dr Howard Munroe mounts an expedition into the Amazonian jungle to discover what happened to a four strong team of documentary film-makers led by Alan Yates. After various encounters he and his guides succeed in establishing contact with the cannabalistic Yanomano, whose settlement contains both the skeletons of Yates's team and several cans of their undeveloped footage.

Back in New York, Munro screens the team's footage for the TV executives who commissioned their documentary. In the process of watching the film we discover that Yates and his cohorts were vicious opportunists who staged all manner of cruel spectacles for their cameras – rape, torture, even perhaps murder – before finally inciting the Yanomano to extract a terrible revenge.

As Grindhouse releasing, keen to re-release Cannibal Holocaust theatrically on the back of it's new found fame post-Blair Witch Project, put it "this is the one that goes all the way". It's not a snuff film – if by snuff we mean the deliberate on-camera killing of humans – but it's probably the closest anything non-underground/illegal has got to that unholy grail.

Footage culled from the 60s mondo documentary Africa Addio, which presents real summary executions, shows real human deaths. While one might wonder about the ethics of presenting such as entertainment, the crucial point is that no one was killed solely for the camera.

All the other killings, perpetrated by the film-makers themselves, are of animals. Munroe's guide Felipe sticks a muskrat – "tonight we eat meat" – while Yates and his team butcher a turtle and shoot a wild pig. Distasteful and hard to justify? Yes, Adequate grounds for banning the film or allowing it to be released only in severely cut form? Not unless one is going to be consistent and start banning all those old westerns where horses would often be killed after tripwires used to get them to fall on cue had broken their legs.

One doesn't have to be Peter Singer to realise that our attitudes towards other animals are inconsistent. How many of those who object to Deodato's film will happily eat meat, wear leather and place a bet on the Grand National?

But I digress…

Cannibal Holocaust is a challenging, troubling film. Unlike the likes of Cannibal Ferox, which do seem to exist solely to foreground gory excess, it at least tries to say something. The problem, of course, is that in using the techniques of the mondo film it rapidly becomes that which it had intended to condemn.

Even away from the death footage, it's worth noting how Munro's partisan intervention in the conflict between the Shamatari and Yanomano tribesmen – he shoots some of the former to gain the confidence of the latter – seems out of character and imparts an element of moral relativism that rather reduces his ability to function as the voice of morality and decency.

As it is, one respects the performers for their dedication to a dubious cause – or the pay packet at the end of it at any rate – and Deodato for his astute use of raw, rough and ready pseudo-documentary stylings to overcome technical limitations.

Cannibal Holocaust is the cliched "gaze into the abyss", incarnated on celluloid. But just why is it so popular and enduring? Will the idea of snuff eventuate its concrete existence? And how many of the mainstream millions who went to see Blair Witch were tantalised by the prospect of seeing real death on film?