It's turning out to be a great year for sickos (complimentary), as another controversial horror classic is making its way onto the big screen in a newly restored 4K special edition.
Grindhouse Releasing is bringing Ruggero Deodato's notorious found footage faux doc Cannibal Holocaust to theaters nationwide ahead of an eagerly awaited 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release. The new release comes fully uncensored and restored in its native 16mm aspect ratio, as audiences have never seen it before.
Released in 1980, Cannibal Holocaust follows four young documentary filmmakers who experience brutal death at the hands of a South American tribe of flesh-eaters. Immediately censored and banned in a number of countries for its graphic violence, animal cruelty and allegations of snuff filmmaking (which Deodato famously had to refute in court by proving the film's stars were alive and well), Cannibal Holocaust remains one of the most infamous and influential films in the genre, and if you can stomach it, it's well worth watching as an important piece of horror history and precursor to the found footage boom of the 21st century.
Grindhouse Releasing owner and Academy Award-winning film editor Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker, Send Help) has the following to say of the new restoration of Cannibal Holocaust, which had its world premiere at Beyond Fest last year:
“It's a whole new and perhaps even more powerful experience watching the movie this way, with the alternating aspect ratios […] This is essentially the same way we constructed Orson Welles' long-unfinished masterpiece The Other Side of the Wind.”
Cannibal Holocaust comes to select theaters across the nation starting this Friday, May 29, with a sneak preview at the Alamo Drafthouse in St Louis, MO. Horror fans local to the Mahoning Drive-In, PA can also catch the 35mm theatrical version of Cannibal Apocalypse as part of Exhumed Films' “Cannibal Apocalypse” extravaganza on June 26 and 27, that also features screenings of Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox aka Make Them Die Slowly, and Joe D'Amato's Antropophagus (see details below).
Look out for more on the new physical media release on Cannibal Holocaust as we get it.
