Cannibal films are a sub genre of exploitation film made mostly by Italian filmmakers through the 1970s and 1980s. This sub genre is a collection of graphically gory movies that usually depict cannibalism by primitive, Stone-age natives deep inside the Asian or South American rain forests. Even though not all cannibal films show cannibalism on screen, all the movies are connected with the genre by stating that the tribe is cannibalistic. While cannibalism is the uniting feature of these films, the general emphasis focuses on various forms of shocking, realistic, and graphic violence, typically including torture, rape, castration and/or animal cruelty. Similarly to Mondo films, the main advertising draw of cannibal films was the promise of gore, exotic locales, and cruel behavior, and eventually became a popular aspect of Grindhouse culture. The peak of the genre's popularity was from 1977 to 1981, a period that has come to be known as the cannibal boom.

Due to their graphic content, the films of this subgenre are often the center of controversy. Many of the films include genuine slayings of animals, making them a common target of censors around the world. The inclusion of graphic gore and sexual violence has also resulted in censorship.

history :) Movies similar to the cannibal genre certainly were not rare before the 1970s, as rain forest adventure films were often found popular in cinema (such as with the Tarzan movies of the 30s and 40s starring Johnny Weissmuller). Some of these films even included primitive, and in some cases, cannibal tribes, and could be seen as the prototype for the modern cannibal film. One movie that can almost be definitively linked as the predecessor to the cannibal genre is Cornel Wilde's 1966 film The Naked Prey, which involved a white man being chased by a tribe of natives because his safari group offended their chief.

The sub genre as it is known today was officially started with Italian director Umberto Lenzi's 1972 film Il Paese del Sesso Selvaggio (also known as The Man from the Deep River). Man from Deep River was released in New York City as Sacrifice!, and was a 42nd street hit.^[1] This film inspired several other similar films to be made during the late 70s, a period identified by genre fans as the "cannibal boom".^[2] Included in these films are Ruggero Deodato's Last Cannibal World (Jungle Holocaust in the U.S.A.), Sergio Martino's The Mountain of the Cannibal God, and a few films by Joe D'Amato starring Laura Gemser.

A large number of cannibal films were made in 1980, making it the most successful year for the genre. In February 1980, Ruggero Deodato released Cannibal Holocaust, probably the best known cannibal film. Its graphic and unrelenting violence and exploitation is believed to have caused audiences to realize how repugnant most of these films really were, and inevitably, the popularity of the genre began to decline. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), Cannibal Holocaust was an enormous success; it is sometimes claimed to have accumulated a 200,000,000 USD worldwide box-office gross, though this has not been verified and the true gross may never be known.^[3][4] Lenzi would also contribute to the genre in 1980 with Mangiati Vivi (Eaten Alive), and again in 1981 with the notorious Cannibal Ferox (Make Them Die Slowly), but by then, however, the genre was beginning to fade, and only a few other obscurities were made until Mondo film director Antonio Climati was considered to have put an end to the genre in 1988 with the film Natura Contro, which is also known as an unofficial sequel to Cannibal Holocaust (it has an alternate title of Cannibal Holocaust II). Other similar films were made with a straight-to-video release afterward, most notably films by director Bruno Mattei.

The genre is heavily indebted to Mondo cinema, which similarly aimed to shock audiences with exotic customs and graphic violence. A common premise is of the cannibal films is that mondo filmmakers (as in Cannibal Holocaust) or anthropologists (in Cannibal Ferox) from a "civilized" country enter a jungle and runs afoul of cannibalistic natives. Ironically, many have an anti-imperialist slant to them, as in the films, the "civilized" Westerners are the first to perpetrate extreme cruelty and violence upon the natives. The cannibals, in turn, reap revenge by inflicting the same form of barbarism on the Westerners. A few are set in modern urban centers with cannibalism practiced secretly, as in Emanuelle e gli Ultimi Cannibali and Zombie Holocaust.

Directors[link]

Several directors of different nationalities have contributed to the genre, but most did not make more than one cannibal film. The major directors to the genre are:

• Ruggero Deodato, with the films Ultimo mondo cannibale and Cannibal Holocaust.
• Umberto Lenzi, with the films Il paese del sesso selvaggio, Mangiati vivi, and Cannibal Ferox.
• Jesus Franco, with the films Mondo cannibale, Il cacciatore di uomini, and El Tesoro de la Diosa Blanca.
• Joe D'Amato, with the films Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali, Papaya dei Caraibi, and Orgasmo nero.

Actors[link]

Like directors, few actors are cannibal genre regulars. The three actors who appeared in three cannibal films (the most by any actor) are:

• Robert Kerman in Cannibal Holocaust, Mangiati vivi, and Cannibal Ferox.
• Ivan Rassimov in Il paese del sesso selvaggio, Ultimo mondo cannibale, La Montagna del Dio Cannibale, and Mangiati vivi.
• Me Me Lai in Il paese del sesso selvaggio, Ultimo mondo cannibale, and Mangiati vivi.

Other popular cannibal genre actors are Giovanni Lombardo Radice, a mainstream Italian actor; Laura Gemser, an Indonesian model turned actress in Italy; and Carl Gabriel Yorke, who played the most infamous character of the cannibal genre, Alan Yates in Cannibal Holocaust.

Films by year[link]

Censorship[link]

Because of the content, the cannibal genre is one of the most controversial genres of film. Many of the films were once banned in the UK and Australia, and most are forced to be cut before public display. Several are still banned in countries all around the world. Only two films of the genre (Schiave Bianche: Violenza in Amazzonia and Zombi Holocaust) have been rated R by the MPAA for the uncut version (the R rating for Zombi Holocaust has since been surrendered, and the film is now unrated in the United States).^[5][6]

The most controversial aspect of the genre is the real animal killings, featured in several cannibal films. Most of the films also include graphic scenes of rape and other sexual violence.

[edit] Cannibal Holocaust

The most controversial and most infamous movie of the genre was Cannibal Holocaust. Ten days after the premiere in Milan, the film was seized by Italian authorities and director Ruggero Deodato was arrested on the belief that his film was a real snuff film. Facing life in prison, Deodato was able to bring all the actors onto a television show and demonstrated in court how some of the special effects were accomplished. The charges were dropped, but because of the still extremely explicit content, the courts still banned the film because of the real cruelty towards animals. Deodato was ultimately held on charges of obscenity and animal violence. Four years later, in 1984, Deodato was able to overturn the courts' rulings and the film was unbanned.^[7][8] Ironically, that same year, the United Kingdom, Norway, Finland, and Australia banned Cannibal Holocaust; all four have since repealed the ban, though the UK version has minutes of cuts.^[8] It is sometimes claimed that Cannibal Holocaust is still banned in over 50 countries worldwide, though this can only be verified for a handful of nations. In 2006, Cannibal Holocaust made Entertainment Weekly's Top 25 Most Controversial Movies of All-Time list, landing at number 20.^[9]

Video Nasty[link]

Several of the films landed on the UK's infamous Video Nasty list. They are:

• Il paese del sesso selvaggio (1972)^[10]
• La montagna del dio cannibale (1978)^[10]
• Cannibal Holocaust (1980)^[10]
• Mangiati vivi (1980)^[10]
• Il cacciatore di uomini (1980)^[11]
• Cannibal Ferox (1981)^[10]
• Terror Caníbal (1981)^[12]

References[link]

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (July 2007)

Robert Charles Kerman (born December 16, 1941), also known as R. Bolla, or Richard Bolla, is an American actor. As R. Bolla, he appeared in well over 100 pornographic films, most famously Debbie Does Dallas (1978). He also appeared in the sequel, Debbie Does Dallas II (1981), but in a different role, that of a trucker.

Kerman's breakthrough into the mainstream came in 1979, when he featured alongside Alain Delon and Robert Wagner in The Concorde ... Airport '79, in the role of Dulles Controller. In the 1980s, he starred in several Italian horror films, including Ruggero Deodato's exploitation classic Cannibal Holocaust, and Umberto Lenzi's cannibal films Mangiati Vivi and Cannibal Ferox. But he remained active in pornography throughout the first half of the decade, with notable roles including Lawyer Quim in Liquid A$$ets (1982), and Fritz von Holenwohl in the Henri Pachard directed Public Affairs (1984).

In 1985, Kerman broke into television, with his role as an Attorney in an episode of Hill Street Blues, and supporting roles in two episodes of Simon & Simon. Two years later, he featured as a CID Agent alongside Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman in the thriller No Way Out (1987), the same year that he was cast in an unnamed role in an episode of Cagney & Lacey.

Most recently he could be seen as a tugboat captain in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and as Dr. Monroe in the drama short Vic, directed by Sage Stallone.

Awards[link]

• 1981 Adult Film Association of America Best Supporting Actor for Outlaw Ladies (tied with Richard Pacheco)^[1]
• 1983 Critics Adult Film Awards Best Supporting Actor for Devil in Miss Jones 2^[1]
• 1997 AVN Hall of Fame^[2]
• 2008 XRCO Hall of Fame^[3]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Robert Kerman at the Internet Movie Database
• R. Bolla at the Internet Adult Film Database
• R Bolla at the Adult Film Database

This article about a pornographic actor or actress is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Tim Lucas (born May 30, 1956) is a film critic, biographer, novelist, screenwriter, blogger, and publisher/editor of the video review magazine Video Watchdog.

Biography and early career[link]

Lucas, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the only child of Marion Frank Lucas, a typesetter and musician, and the former Juanita Grace Wilson; his father died six months prior to his birth, on November 14, 1955, of a congenital heart ailment at age 33. He subsequently spent most of his childhood in the homes of various relatives and caregivers, seeing his widowed mother only on weekends, when she took him to drive-in theaters.^[1][2] After publishing single issues of two fanzines, he became a film critic and cartoonist for Norwood High School's newspaper The Mirror while still a freshman. He began writing professionally at the age of fifteen, when his first reviews were accepted by the influential fantasy film review Cinefantastique. He served at one of the magazine's midwestern bureaus for the next ten years.

Though Lucas never formally graduated high school, he succeeded in placing an essay in Purdue University's literary quarterly Modern Fiction Studies on the occasion of its Autumn 1981 issue, dedicated to British novelist Anthony Burgess. Jokingly, Lucas has described this accomplishment as his "honorary doctorate" because his letter of acceptance was addressed to "Dr. Timothy Lucas." His article, The Old Shelley Game: Prometheus and Predestination in Burgess's Works, was subsequently anthologized in Modern Critical Views: Anthony Burgess (1987, ISBN 0-87754-676-2), a collection "of the best criticism available upon the novels of Anthony Burgess" in the words of its editor, Harold Bloom.

Video Times[link]

It was in 1984, while reviewing Betamax and VHS releases for the Chicago-based magazine Video Times, that "Tim pretty much invented video reviewing as a genre distinct from movie reviewing,"^[3] innovating the way in which home video releases are generally reviewed today. While other writers at the time preferred to review only the films, without venturing any comment whatsoever on their presentation, Lucas focused on how films were being treated by this new medium: the transfer, the picture cropping, the completeness of the source element. Pleased with his work, the editors of Video Times hired him to edit and co-author a series of twelve paperback video guides published in the summer and winter of 1985 by Signet Books. Of these, he wrote the introductions to all twelve and the entirety of four: Movie Classics, Horror, Science Fiction & Fantasy and Mystery & Suspense. The books, his first as a published author, were formally credited to "The Editors of Video Times" with Lucas receiving credit only on the copyright pages.

Video Watchdog[link]

In October 1985, Video Times published the first installment of a new Lucas column, Video Watchdog, in which he investigated the changes made to various films (usually horror, cult and fantastic) when they appeared on video. With the dissolution of Video Times in 1986, the column resurfaced as a shot-on-video featurette, hosted and narrated by Lucas, in Pacific Arts Corporation's one-shot video-magazine-on-video experiment Overview, produced by Michael Nesmith. Video Watchdog was subsequently reborn in the pages of the Fangoria spin-off Gorezone, where it regularly appeared from 1988 to 1992. These early Watchdog columns were later collected with other relevant material in The Video Watchdog Book (1992, ISBN 0-9633756-0-1).

With his wife Donna Lucas, Lucas launched Video Watchdog as a separate magazine in June 1990 with a focus on extremely detailed articles that made it a key source of serious film criticism. Video Watchdog added full color covers with #13 (September/October 1992), increased its frequency from bimonthly to monthly with #55 (January 2000), and changed to a full interior color format with its 100th issue (October 2003). The magazine's unique approach to reviewing home video releases has since been widely adopted as the norm, especially by online critics. Its contributors include many renowned authors of film reportage and also fiction, including Kim Newman, Ramsey Campbell, David J. Schow and Douglas E. Winter.

Video Watchdog won the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award as Best Magazine every year from 2002 through 2006, the first five years the award was presented. The magazine's 20th Anniversary issue was published in June 2010. More recently, director Quentin Tarantino praised Video Watchdog in the pages of the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano as "l'unica rivista di cinema autorevole al mondo" ("the only reliable film magazine in the world").^[4]

Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark[link]

Lucas's critical biography Mario Bava All the Colors of the Dark (ISBN 0-9633756-1-X), a vast work thirty-two years in preparation, with a special introduction penned by Martin Scorsese, was published in August 2007 by Video Watchdog. This 800,000-word mammoth received words of praise from such filmmakers as Guillermo del Toro and Joe Dante. It also won numerous awards. It was honored as Best Book of 2007 by The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards and the Sex Gore Mutants website, as an Independent Publisher Book Award Bronze Medal winner in the Performing Arts category, and The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films recognized Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark by having actor John Saxon present Lucas and his wife Donna with the rarely-presented Saturn Award for Special Achievement. In November 2008, the book also received the International Horror Guild Award as the best Non-fiction work of 2007. In the aforementioned Il Fatto Quotidiano interview of 2010, Quentin Tarantino hailed Mario Bava All the Colors of the Dark as "the best book on films ever written."

Videodrome[link]

Lucas' most recent work of nonfiction, Videodrome, a study of the 1983 David Cronenberg film, inaugurated the new Studies in the Horror Film line from Centipede Press in September 2008. The book is an amalgam of Lucas' previously unpublished production history, written in 1983, and new chapters encompassing essay, criticism, and personal memoir.

Blogs and columns[link]

From October 2005 to February 2009, Lucas supplemented his editorial duties with Video WatchBlog, an essay blog that touches on film, music and literary as well as personal subjects; NoZone, a DVD column for the British monthly Sight and Sound; and frequent contributions of liner notes, audio commentaries and archival materials to DVD releases. Video WatchBlog received the Rondo Award for Best Website/Blog in 2007 and Best Blog in 2009.

On January 1, 2012, Lucas launched Pause. Rewind. Obsess., a new blog designated as his screening diary.

Other writing[link]

Other film-related books featuring his work are The Book of Lists: Horror (edited by Amy Wallace, Del Howison and Scott Bradley), Nebula Awards Showcase 2009 (edited by Ellen Datlow), If Looks Could Kill (edited by Marketa Uhlirova), The Famous Monsters Chronicles (edited by Dennis Daniel), Horror: Another 100 Best Books (edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman), The BFI Companion to Horror (edited by Kim Newman), The Shape of Rage: The Films of David Cronenberg (edited by Piers Handling), The Eyeball Companion (edited by Stephen Thrower), The Hong Kong Filmography by John Charles (with a foreword by Lucas), José Mojica Marins: 50 anos de carreira (edited by Eugenio Puppo) and Obsession: The Films of Jess Franco.

From 1988 to 1992, Lucas contributed a number of comics stories to Stephen R. Bissette's graphic horror anthology Taboo, including three stories that formed the genesis of his first novel, Throat Sprockets, two ("Throat Sprockets", "Transylvania mon amour") illustrated by Mike Hoffman and the last ("The Disaster Area") drawn by David Lloyd. Lucas' other Taboo stories were "Sweet Nothings" (illustrated by Simonida Perica-Uth) and "Blue Angel" (illustrated by Stephen Blue).

In 2006, Lucas became a published poet when he placed several poems in the Manchester, England-based journal The Ugly Tree. They appeared in issues #13 ("The Breakfast Bell", "Mario Bava" and "Think of the Things You Could Drop in Black Ink") and #14 ("Crapulous Elektra").

Novels[link]

Lucas has also enjoyed critical success as a novelist. Throat Sprockets (1994, ISBN 0-385-31290-3), the fulfillment of an uncompleted graphic novel serialized in Taboo, is about a man whose life is altered by a chance encounter with an erotic and disturbing film of mysterious origin. It was singled out as the year's best first novel in Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and was chosen by novelist Tananarive Due for inclusion in Horror: Another 100 Best Books (2005, ISBN 0-7867-1577-4). In October 2006, Rue Morgue magazine included Throat Sprockets on a list of 50 essential alternative horror novels. A film adaptation is presently in the works as the author's directorial debut.

After completing work on his Bava magnum opus, Lucas ended his decade-long hiatus from fiction with The Book of Renfield: A Gospel of Dracula (2005, ISBN 0-7432-4354-4), a complement to Bram Stoker's Dracula that focuses on the character of Renfield and how the circumstances of his tragic past predisposed him to become the ideal pawn for the Lord of the Undead.

Lucas has since written a third novel, The Only Criminal, another "graphic novel idea written in classic novel form," but it remains unpublished.^[5]

Screenwriting[link]

Since the completion of Mario Bava All the Colors of the Dark in 2007, Lucas has devoted his free time to pursuing a career in screenwriting. He wrote his first scripts in the late 1980s with two exploratory drafts of Naked Lunch written as a favor to writer-director David Cronenberg. These unproduced drafts introduced the idea of combining scenes from the novel by William S. Burroughs with scenes from the author's personal life, including the infamous "William Tell incident," which Cronenberg retained when writing his own screenplay for the feature film produced in 1991. Lucas' screenplay The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes (co-written with Charlie Largent), a comedy about the filming of Roger Corman's 1967 film The Trip is currently optioned by Metaluna Productions for director Joe Dante.

According to an interview in the Oregon-based fanzine Sinister Press, Lucas spent most of his off-magazine time in 2008 and early 2009 scripting Me and the Orgone, based on Orson Bean's 1971 book about his experiences in Reichian therapy, and also The Weight of Salt and Soul, an original screenplay based on the life of Ishi written in collaboration with the artist Diane Pfister.^[6][7]

In August 2010, Lucas' work went before the cameras for the first time when his original short film script The Baggage Claim was filmed in Monessen, PA at The Factory Digital Filmmaking School of the Douglas Education Center, with Irene Miracle directing and Tom Savini and Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni starring.^[8] (Given its provenance, the project was widely mistaken by online sources as a horror film, but Lucas has described The Baggage Claim on his Facebook page as "a romantic film with fantastic elements.")

According to his Facebook page, Lucas returned to The Factory in November 2010 to direct a promotional trailer and dialogue scene for a proposed feature film adaptation of his novel Throat Sprockets, executive produced by Robert Tinnell. The dialogue scene, a self-contained six-minute short adapted from the novel's "Transylvania mon amour" chapter, features Christopher Scott Grimaldi as Ad Man (unnamed in the novel) and Brandy Loveless as Nancy Reagan. The short had its World Premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, Quebec on July 18, 2011, as a lead-in to the documentary Jean Rollin - Le Reveur Égare.

Lucas is presently developing the Throat Sprockets feature project and Scars & Stripes, an original horror script, with Ernest Dickerson set to direct the latter.

Other awards[link]

In 2007, Lucas won in three different categories of The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards: Best Writer, Best Magazine (Video Watchdog, its fifth annual win in this category) and Best Website (Video WatchBlog). He continued his winning streak as Best Writer in 2008 and 2009. With his wife and business partner Donna, Lucas was inducted into the Monster Kid Hall of Fame at the Rondo Awards ceremony in May 2011.

Sources consulted[link]

1. ^ Lucas, Tim. Autobiographical notes in The Famous Monsters Chronicles (Fantaco, 1992).
2. ^ Lucas, Tim. Autobiographical notes in Video Watchdog no. 50 (Mar./Apr. 1999).
3. ^ Kehr, Dave. Blog entry on DaveKehr.com (Dec. 23, 2005).
4. ^ Pontiggia, Federico. Il Fatto Quotidiano, "Kechiche, Venere d'Oro" (September 9, 2010, p. 17).
5. ^ Lucas, Tim. Video WatchBlog, "Going Back To My Criminal Ways" (December 10, 2005).
6. ^ "Dracula's Doorman: Tim Lucas' Book of Renfield" in Sinister Press no 3 (Spring 2009).
7. ^ Lucas, Tim. Video WatchBlog, "Waffling About Watchdog, Weight & Woodstock" (June 19, 2009).
8. ^ Pacheco, Jared. Joblo.com. "Genre Legend Tom Savini signs on to star in short horror film Baggage Claim (June 3, 2010, http://www.joblo.com/arrow/index.php?id=22439).

External links[link]

• Video Watchdog website
• Video WatchBlog (Tim Lucas's blog)
• Pause. Rewind. Obsess. (Tim Lucas's screening diary blog)
• Bava Book Update Blog
• GreenCine Daily profile

Riziero "Riz" Ortolani (born September 4, 1931 in Pesaro, Italy) is an Italian film composer.^[1]

In the early 1950s Ortolani was founder and member of a jazz band of national Italian renown. His first score he wrote for the 1962 Paolo Cavara and Gualtiero Jacopetti pseudo-documentary Mondo Cane, whose main title-song More earned him a Grammy and also was nominated for an Oscar as Best Song.

The success of the soundtrack of Mondo Cane led Ortolani to score films in England and the United States such as The 7th Dawn (1964), The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), The Glory Guys (1965) and The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966). Another world famous track was his main-title for the movie O Cangaceiro (1970).

Ortolani scored all or parts of over 200 films, including German westerns like Apache's Last Battle (Old Shatterhand, 1964) and a long series of Italian giallo, spaghetti westerns, Eurospy, exploitation and mondo films.

Other films Ortolani has scored include Il Sorpasso (1962), Io ho paura (1977), Castle of Blood (1964), Anzio (1968), The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom (1968), Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso (1972), Africa Addio (1966), Addio Zio Tom (1971), House on the Edge of the Park (1980), Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and first series of famous La Piovra (Octopus, 1984).

Scores of Riz Ortolani have recently been featured in Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 (1999), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) and Drive (2011).

References[link]

External links[link]

• Riz Ortolani at the Internet Movie Database
• Free scores by Riz Ortolani in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)