Nerds That Geek Movie Review: 'Cannibal Holocaust'

Written by Scott Edwards

With people’s attention span dwindling over the years, if you are going to make a film or movie, you have to be able to keep the audience’s attention for over ninety minutes. That has proven to be difficult for many film makers, but it is the worst for documentary film makers. Wanting to make a documentary about something as boring as SPAM (my favorite canned meat) or how an amoeba is able to reproduce that people will watch, well, you have to spice it up a notch. It is interesting to see how far people will go to get the viewership that they believe their films deserve and while some film makers do it the right way, there are others that are willing to take the next step to make sure they become a household name.
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After news of an American documentary team not making it back from their latest film hits the wire, Professor Harold Monroe agrees to make the trek down to the ‘Green Inferno’ to try and find them.  Arriving in the rain forest of the Amazon, Monroe is greeted by his guide who will be able to take him deeper in than anyone has ever made it before. Chaco has good news for the professor as the local military has been able to help them with safe passage through the treacherous forest with a prisoner of the Yacumo tribe. Being able to get access to the village, Monroe takes note that they are not too happy about having the white men there as something has happened to destroy their trust. But that is not all he finds as he spots relics from the film crew that are being held onto by the tribe.

Moving further into the forest and trying to find the Yanomamo (Tree People) tribe, Monroe and Chaco are shocked to see that they are welcomed a little, but once again with suspicion about what they are doing there. Monroe believes that if he can get the tribe to accept him as only an observer, he may be able to find out a little bit more about what happened to the film crew. After taking a bath with some locals, Monroe is shocked to see that he has found the answer that he was looking for. Seeing the mangled bodies of the film makers off the banks of the river, Monroe sees that the Yanomamo is keeping the film canisters from the Americans that invaded their land. Gaining the trust of the tribe by partaking in a human dinner, Monroe is able to bring the film back to the states for development.

As the network is ready to capitalize on the hard work that Monroe has put into finding out what happened to the Americans in the Amazon, Monroe is shocked when he sits down to see what the film crew was actually up to in the forest. Watching what director Alan, script writer Faye and cameramen Jack and Mark do to the Yacumo village, he has no idea what the group has in store for their grand finale. As the film continues to play and watching as Alan and his team lay claim to the jungle with their dominance, seeing a local being shot and burned alive is too much for the professor to accept. Wanting to distance himself from the overall project, Monroe is forced to show the executives of the network what was really going on behind the scenes and even they did not expect to see how low the documentary crew would go in order to get a once in a lifetime story.

It has been many years since I have seen this movie and when I first saw it, it was on cable so I did not get the full effect. Seeing it again, well, wow, I am even more blown away by what was playing on the screen. The film crew of Alan, Faye, Jack and Mark were asking for something bad to be coming their way throughout their trip to the Amazon and thinking that they were gonna win an Oscar for what they were doing, I am glad they got what was coming to them. Even though Monroe was not able to find the crew alive, he was able to find out what happened to them and is left to question several times who the true savages were. This is one of those movies that makes you wonder if things like this are actually happening when advanced civilization visits those who have not moved on with the world and I can say I hope not, because when they acquire fire arms, nobody around them will be safe. With indigenous tribes, a low use of technology, an evil film crew, guns, dead bodies, an unaired documentary, questions about morals and of course people being eaten, this movie does a great job in delivering the frights of what could happen in the jungle with all of the small things that could go down, as well as showing us the horror that comes with being the snack for a cannibalistic tribe that you piss off. Stay Scared.

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