Also released as
- Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust
- Kannibalmassakren
- Пекло канібалів
- Holocausto Canibal
- เปรตเดินดินกินเนื้อคน
- 人食人实录
- 残酷食人族
- Канибалски Холокост
Filed under
Cannibal Holocaust
Cannibal Holocaust is a 1980 Italian cannibal film directed by Ruggero Deodato. It is one of the 72 films on the Director of Public Prosecutions' video nasties list, and it was successfully prosecuted for obscenity.
Found footage nineteen years before Blair Witch, and six animals actually died to make its point.
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A rescue party recovers film shot by a missing documentary crew, and a New York broadcaster has to decide whether to air it. That structure is decades early and more rigorously built than most of what followed it.
The target is Deodato's own genre. The documentary crew are the villains: they burn a village and stage the atrocities they claim to be recording, and the film's argument is that the mondo tradition manufactures the savagery it sells.
Six animals were killed on camera to make that argument. A coati, a turtle, a snake, a monkey, a tarantula and a pig. Deodato said later that he regretted it and that his son's reaction changed his mind.
The legal aftermath is usually left out. He was arrested in Italy on obscenity charges and, because the marketing claimed the footage was real and the four leads had contracted to stay out of sight for a year, he was also suspected of having murdered them. He produced them alive in court. The animal cruelty charges stuck.
Banned, seized, prosecuted
DPP 72 · successfully prosecuted
One of the titles the DPP moved on earliest, and among the most seized in the 1983 raids.
UK now Passed 18. The animal killings remain cut and the BBFC has been consistent that they always will be, because the cruelty is real and not simulated
Elsewhere
- Australia refused classification · OFLC · 1981 onward. Refused classification for years. A heavily cut version was eventually passed.
- Italy seized · 1980 to 1984. Seized in Italy on a magistrate's order shortly after its premiere. Marketing that sold the footage as real fed rumours that the actors had been killed, and Deodato has said he had to bring cast members to court; he was never charged with murder. He, the screenwriter, the producers and a United Artists Europa representative were convicted of obscenity and violence and given four-month suspended sentences. In 1984 the courts released a cut print with a VM18 rating.
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Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
Australia
Canada
UK
USA
Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.
Checked 9 Aug 2026
Written about
- Video nasties still banned or cut in Britain
The video nasties still banned in Britain, the ones that remain cut, and the two laws that decide which of them can be sold on disc here.
- The video nasties list and the law behind it
The video nasties list was a Director of Public Prosecutions circular of 72 titles, 39 of them successfully prosecuted under the 1959 obscenity law.
- Films still banned in Britain and the cuts that stand
No list of films banned in the UK exists: the titles still missing whole are held back by standing BBFC cuts, by councils and by rights holders.
- Cannibal Holocaust and the fifteen seconds still banned
Cannibal Holocaust carries an 18 certificate in Britain with fifteen seconds still cut, one slow animal killing held out under the 1937 animal cruelty Act.
- The video nasties panic, 1982 to 1984
How a gap in British licensing law produced a moral panic, a list of 72 films and two video executives in prison.
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