Spectres of War in Cannibal Holocaust

This chapter talks about Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust as the first of the Italian flesh-eating films since Man from Deep River that was shot in the same area of Leticia, Columbia in which its story is set. It mentions Cannibal Ferox, a film that drew on cocaine trafficking and was inspired by the actual narcotics trade within Colombia and specifically Leticia's role as a trading port. It also examines the US theatrical poster for Cannibal Holocaust, which boasted that the production was actually filmed in the Amazon jungles. The chapter analyzes the use of a legitimate location with illegitimate representations of their inhabitants that allowed Cannibal Holocaust to ground its own fake-documentary in a neorealist sense. It discusses how Cannibal Holocaust touches on thematic ideas that would have been better suited to a Southeast Asian locale.