David Sage

Cannibal Holocaust

An American film crew disappears in the Amazon rainforest while filming a documentary about indigenous cannibal tribes. The team consists of Alan Yates, the director; Faye Daniels, his girlfriend and script girl; and two cameramen, Jack Anders and Mark Tomaso. Harold Monroe, an anthropologist at New York University, agrees to lead a rescue mission in hopes of finding the missing filmmakers. In anticipation of his arrival, military personnel stationed in the rainforest conduct a raid on the local Yacumo tribe and take a young male hostage in order to negotiate with the natives. Upon arrival, Monroe is introduced to his guides, Chaco and his assistant, Miguel. After several days of trekking through the jungle, the rescue team encounters the Yacumo. They arrange the release of their hostage in exchange for being taken to the Yacumo village. Once there, the group is initially greeted with hostility and learns that the filmmakers caused great unrest among the people. The next day, Monroe and his guides head deeper into the rainforest to locate two warring cannibal tribes, the Ya̧nomamö and the Shamatari. They encounter a group of Shamatari warriors and follow them to a riverbank, where Monroe's team saves a smaller group of Ya̧nomamö from death. The Ya̧nomamö invite the team back to their village in gratitude, but they are still suspicious of the foreigners. To gain their trust, Monroe agrees to bathe naked in a river, where he is joined by a group of Ya̧nomamö women. The women lead Monroe from the river to a shrine, where he discovers the skeletal remains of the filmmakers with their film reels nearby. Shocked by what he sees, he confronts the Ya̧nomamö in the village, during which time he plays music from a tape recorder. The intrigued natives agree to trade it for the filmmakers' surviving reels of film. Back in New York, executives of the Pan American Broadcasting System invite Monroe to host a broadcast of the documentary to be made from the recovered film, but Monroe insists on viewing the raw footage before making a decision. One of the executives first introduce him to Alan's work by showing an excerpt from his previous documentary, The Last Road to Hell, after which she informs Monroe that Alan staged dramatic scenes to get more exciting footage. Monroe then begins to view the recovered footage, which first follows the group's trek through the rainforest. After walking for days, their guide, Felipe, is bitten by a venomous snake. The group amputates Felipe's leg with a machete to save his life, but he dies and is left behind. Upon locating the Yacumo in a clearing, Jack shoots one in the leg so they can easily follow him to the village. Once they arrive, the crew proceeds to intimidate the tribe before herding the natives into a hut, which they burn down in order to stage a massacre for their film. Monroe expresses apprehension about the staged footage and the treatment of the natives, but his concerns are ignored. After he finishes viewing the remaining footage, Monroe expresses his disgust toward the station's decision to air the documentary. To convince the executives otherwise, he shows them the remaining unedited footage that only he has seen. The final two reels begin with the filmmakers locating a Ya̧nomamö girl, whom the men take turns raping against Faye's protests. They later encounter the same girl impaled on a wooden pole by a riverbank, where they claim that the natives killed her for loss of virginity. Shortly afterwards, they are attacked by the Ya̧nomamö tribe as revenge for the girl's rape and death. Jack is hit by a spear, and Alan shoots him to prevent his escape. After filming the natives mutilate Jack's corpse, the group is cornered, and Faye is captured by the Ya̧nomamö. Alan insists that they attempt to rescue her. Mark continues to film as she is stripped naked, gang-raped, beaten to death, and beheaded. The Ya̧nomamö then locate and kill the last two team members as the camera drops to the ground. Disturbed by what they have seen, the executives order the footage destroyed as Monroe leaves, pondering "who the real cannibals are".