6. Cannibal Holocaust
I remember thinking this soundtrack was odd. If you listen to it independently of the film, it’s obviously an astoundingly brilliant piece of music with this weird mix of orchestral and electronics. I don’t know what Riz was smoking when he came up with this (or why Deodato let him do what he did) but I’d quite like some of it. It’s a really odd, difficult film to watch and I think the soundtrack tempers some of that. So I actually think that if you’d had a proper full on crazy horror score with all the stabs it would have been too hard to watch. Because it is so fucking brutal I think the soundtrack makes the film more bearable. I bunked off school to watch it. Back then you could hire whatever you wanted from the video shop. We wagged school and watched Last House On The Left and Cannibal Holocaust. Fucking boom. 14 years old. A life changing afternoon. It is unpleasant and I don’t know if I really liked it when I was young. There are so many ways that this film can offend you but the woman impaled on the stake is just… horrible. It’s an important film though. It’s probably the first found footage film. All of that genre owes Cannibal Holocaust everything.
