Description

Cannibal Worlds by Eugenio Ercolani

The films of the “cannibal cycle” exploit what they denounce. They incarnate the problem as they describe it. They tantalise their spectators while pointing an accusatory finger at them, but rarely to themselves. The cannibal genre, like the mondo current that anticipated it, brings the meaning of exploitation to a whole new level, because it’s not exploiting solely the never-dry wells of sex and violence, but the hypocrisy of Western values, all in a whirlwind of violence and depravity that has rarely been touched by mainstream cinema. Without being the first to deal with cruel murders, violence inflicted not only on humans but also on animals, rape, racism, and many other atrocities, of which cannibalism is often not the worst thing we see, these films crossed most of the boundaries that were inconceivable to transgress at the time… in an Italian society then in the throes of bloody internal strife and political violence unprecedented in its history.

To recount how these films were conceived, produced, and directed, and to paint a picture of the context in which they were created, Eugenio Ercolani first went to meet the filmmakers and their teams. He gathered more than 30 interviews, some previously unpublished and others conducted for the occasion, with Ruggero Deodato, Umberto Lenzi, Massimo Antonello Geleng, Sergio D’Offizi, Me Me Lai, Francesco Barilli, Ovidio G. Assonitis, Sergio Martino, Martin Goins, Claudio Morales, Mino Loy, Lamberto Bava, Federico Del Zoppo, Roberto Donati, Massimo Foschi, Fabrizio Merlo, Luigi Montefiori, Zora Kerova, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, and many others.