Ruggero Deodato once again to feed the Amazon. Cannibals planned for production.
May 5th, 2008 by Bryan White
Re-exploring the horror movies of the 70’s and 80’s has been the hip thing to do in recent years with everyone paying tribute to their favorite movies. It’s astonishing to me that it has taken this long for someone to get the balls up to go back to one of horror’s most savage and notorious periods of filmmaking, the Italian cannibal movie. Inspired by the third-world savagery of Mondo shockumentaries, Italian exploitation directors challenged the well-defined boundaries of good taste by serving up the innards of drug-smuggling scumbags and award-hungry documentarians to entire tribes of South American bushmen. By the time the credits rolled, more cubic feet of intestines had been eaten and more real-live animals had been butchered in an exploration of just how far a horror movie could go before audiences were thoroughly turned off.
I say someone had the balls to go back, but that someone isn’t a modern film school student turned new wave of American horror superstar. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the genre’s most notorious, most innovative directors, Ruggero Deodato, who pretty much stuck a flag down in the Amazon in the name of Italy and let Cannibal Holocaust knock-offs pale in comparison. Mr. Deodato is coming back to the fold with a new cannibal flick, simply titled Cannibals. Back in the day, Cannibal Holocaust was a pretty convincing piece of filth. Decent special effects pushed it into a genuinely uncomfortable space that has been explored by the most daring horror hounds since its release in 1980. Considering the quality of even the most low-budget special effects today, I’d say that Ruggero could be standing on the precipice of a truly nasty looking gut muncher that makes even the most jaded fans of torture porn squirm.
Back on Friday, Bloody Disgusting revealed the sales poster for Ruggero’s latest gore epic. Drop by their site to check out a larger version of the poster. What you’re looking at is not an actual poster for the movie, it’s really just a sales poster which means that the movie probably hasn’t rolled an inch of film yet and that all they had is a script. Details on the film are slim so stay tuned for future updates. I’m going to be watching this one closely.
pssst… look for a certain David “Don’t Call Me Mister” Hess in the credits… it’s out of the bag now, but you heard it first on the MANOR Christmas special last year!
The original working title was Cannibal Metropolis. Here’s what Deodato had to say about it back in ‘06:
“It is a very strong story, and is completely different from the first movie. It is set in the city and it is about how different everything is now. Once, in Rome, it was only Roman people, but today it is also Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi, Russian, South American—it is mixed, just like in London. For Roman people, it is very strange, but this change is a good thing, I like it. You see, it is incredible to see one street that is all Chinese. It is just like BLADE RUNNER now—if you remember, in that film there are [parts of the city] that are all Chinese shops. So I wrote one story about this cultural change, and I hope that it is possible to shoot this movie. I call it CANNIBAL METROPOLITANA .”