hypocrisy in 1980’s film

if you’ve ever seen the 1980’s horror flick Cannibal Holocaust, you know that it is seriously fucked. while it is a bit of an atrocity of a film, it does try to be a “good” horror movie.what do i mean when i say “good?” i mean that the directors tried to convey a deeper meaning through their movie, however gruesome. which is great, and it would have been great, if they hadn’t gotten so caught up in their own shit that they managed to make total asses of themselves.

in the movie, a group of journalists go into south america with the intention of making a documentary about cannibals. you get hints that these journalists aren’t exactly the most honest people early on, but it really shows once they start raping and killing villagers. eventually, after they terrorize the villagers too much, the villagers turn around and eat them, big surprise! the moral? dirty journalism exists and its a terrible thing. great.

but lets take a closer look at a few select scenes. namely, the scenes where the director of the film had live animals killed in cruel and unusual ways. they killed a muskrat with a knife, rather slowly, as it squirmed and screamed. they killed a few monkeys. they shot a small pig. and they pretty much tortured and killed a large sea turtle in the least humane way possible.

so. dirty journalism, shame on you! but did you really have to kill all those animals to get that point across?

just a thought.