There Will Never Be Another ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ — and Now It’s Screening in Its Definitive Edition

Editor and film preservationist Bob Murawski tells IndieWire about creating a 4K restoration of the most controversial horror film ever made.

In 1980, Italian filmmaker Ruggero Deodato directed what would become one of the most shocking and controversial movies ever made, “Cannibal Holocaust.” The story of an anthropologist who journeys into the Amazon in search of a trio of young documentarians who have vanished, it’s a pioneering found footage horror movie (large portions of the second half of the movie consist of the documentary footage the missing filmmakers left behind) that did many of the things more famous films like “The Blair Witch Project” did first, and did them better — few horror movies can match “Cannibal Holocaust” for its unnerving technical skill, horrific ideas, and visceral impact.

“Cannibal Holocaust” also met with controversy from the moment it was released, due both to its incredibly graphic violence and its cruelty against helpless animals — the latter of which was, unfortunately, not faked. While there’s a conceptual purpose to the animal footage — it conditions the audience to buy everything in the movie as real, which makes the later staged human horror almost unbearable — it’s morally indefensible and makes “Cannibal Holocaust” as difficult to champion as it is unquestionably important in the history of filmed horror.

Nevertheless, the movie’s influence and filmmaking acumen are undeniable, and any serious horror enthusiast needs to grapple with its provocations. There’s no better way to discover or revisit “Cannibal Holocaust” than in a new 4K restoration from Grindhouse Releasing, a company that has devoted itself to creating the best possible copies of films from cinema’s fringes (two years, ago we championed their exquisite restoration of the exploitation classic “Hollywood 90028“).

Grindhouse’s Bob Murawski, an Academy Award-winning editor (“The Hurt Locker”) who works frequently with director Sam Raimi, supervised the restoration and swears with 100 percent certainty that the new master of “Cannibal Holocaust” is the best that has ever been created. “This will be the definitive release of “Cannibal Holocaust” from here on in,” Murawski told IndieWire. “Not only are our scans superior — they were done on the finest equipment by L’Immagine Ritrovata lab in Bologna, whereas the scans for all the other releases were done on inferior equipment in a facility in Rome — but our release will also contain three versions of the film.”

The first version restored is the original uncensored theatrical cut as it has always been seen, with the “Green Inferno” documentary footage within the movie sourced from the 1.85:1 35mm blow-up of the 16mm footage. The other two versions of the movie have never been seen: a “Special Edition,” which presents the “Green Inferno” footage scanned from the original 16mm camera negative displayed in its original square aspect ratio of 1.37:1 for the very first time, and what Murawski calls “a particularly surreal third version that we’ll unveil the details of later.”

The Special Edition is particularly noteworthy, and the motivation behind it has an unusual origin. “A few years ago, I worked on ‘The Other Side of the Wind,’ the legendary unfinished film by Orson Welles,” Murawski said. “‘Cannibal Holocaust’ often gets credit as the first found footage movie, but actually Orson did it first, almost ten years earlier. And it’s a film that also mixes film formats — 16mm and Super 8mm footage, which is supposed to be documentary footage from the 70th birthday party of an aging director played in the film by John Huston, and 35mm footage, which is the narrative feature he is working on.”

In finishing the movie, Murawski and his partners made the decision to present the 35mm footage in 1.85, and the documentary footage in its native aspect ratio of 1.37. “I felt the decision was very successful, so I thought I’d create a version of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ using the same concept,” he said. “It makes the contrast between the search party 35mm narrative and the 16mm film-within-the-film even more striking. And it allows the audience to see about 50 percent more image area in the documentary footage.”

The new version offers further proof of Deodato’s gifts as a craftsman. “The full-frame images are beautifully composed,” Murawski said. “After seeing them, I believe that the shots were composed for full aperture. Much like ‘Evil Dead,’ which for years was presented in a cropped 1.85 blow-up, until a few years ago, when at Sam Raimi’s request we scanned the original 16mm camera negative in full aperature and presented the movie the way he composed it when he shot it — 16mm full-frame without any thought of a standard 1.85 theatrical framing.”

Restoring “Cannibal Holocaust” was a painstaking process that began with simply getting the original materials from the film so that they could be properly scanned. “The first step was persuading the producers to let us transfer the elements from the lab in Rome to our preferred restoration lab in Bologna,” Murawski said. “They are very resistant to shipping original elements, as you might imagine. But I knew it was imperative in order to achieve the best results.”

Once everything was scanned, the hard drives were shipped to Murawski and he proceeded to assemble the materials into a complete master. “While reviewing the materials, I discovered quite a bit of alternate footage and decided to create the third version,” Murawski said. “It was very difficult to locate the audio for those alternate takes, but I kept ordering various nebulously-annotated items on the inventory lists until I found what we needed.”

Murawski was also determined to find the longer, original version of the “Last Road to Hell” sequence for the new release, since it had been missing from the conformed negative for decades. “It required months of searching, but the people at the lab finally found it in one of the foreign-release elements,” Murawski said. “Then it was a matter of assembling the three versions and turning everything over to my colorist Andrew Drapkin for 4K assembly and color grading. A very complicated process, given the jigsaw puzzle of elements and film formats.”

Concurrently, film restoration expert Marcus Johnson was working on the full restoration of the 35mm footage to make it as clean and pristine as possible, and sound supervisor Jussi Tegelman was working on the restoration of the audio. “With three different versions, it was a huge, complex job for everyone and took many years,” Murawski said, noting that the process started in May of 2021 and the restoration is just now starting to make its way around festivals and revival houses. (It will screen at the Roxy Cinema in New York on Monday, July 6.)

For Murawski, the restoration is the culmination of over 30 years of watching and thinking about “Cannibal Holocaust.” “I first learned of the movie around 1988, reading about it in an article written by Chas Balun in Deep Red Magazine,” Murawski said. “I think it was called ‘The Last Cannibal Movie You’ll Ever Need to See.’ I finally saw it a couple years later, on a bootleg VHS tape made from a Japanese laserdisc release. It was certainly shocking, but I was impressed by the unique narrative stucture and the skilled filmmaking.”

Years later, in 1996, Murawski and his business partner Sage Stallone were in Rome acquiring the elements for then-new Grindhouse Releasing’s first releases. “I discovered that our Italian sales agent Nicola Vinci handled ‘Cannibal Holocaust,'” Murawski said. “Sage hadn’t seen it, so he gave us a VHS to watch in our hotel room. The next day, we licensed the movie for North America.” That was the beginning of a years-long process trying to get the movie shown.

“None of the independent theater chains we worked with would touch it,” Murawski said. “When ‘The Blair Witch Project’ became a huge hit in 1999, we tried again because ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ was getting mentioned. Theater bookers were now familiar with the title and interested in it, but once they actually saw the movie they refused to return my phone calls!” Given those reactions, Murawski is a bit shocked to see that the movie has entered the mainstream to a certain degree.

“It’s regularly featured in ‘Ten Most’ lists from publications like Entertainment Weekly,” Murawski said. “And we even managed to get it on the shelves of Best Buy. So now we’re back on the road with theatrical playdates for the ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ 4K Special Edition in cities all over the U.S. and Canada.” In spite of the movie’s improved reputation, Murawski is still happy to report that he’s getting resistance from “some of the more sensitive (or maybe sensible) bookers. I wouldn’t have it any other way!”

Now, the plan is for “Cannibal Holocaust” to play the movie in theaters as long as there is interest, and then Grindhouse will release a super-deluxe 6 disc UHD box set, which Murawski says “will be the final word on ‘Cannibal Holocaust.'” That said, Murawski hopes people will make an effort to see the restoration on the big screen. “Grindhouse Releasing is firmly committed to playing our films in movie theaters. It’s always been our first priority since we started 30 years ago.”

In addition to the “Cannibal Holocaust” Special Edition, this year Grindhouse is also premiering new 4K restorations of Palmer Rockey’s mind-bending lost film “Scarlet Warning 666,” and Marc B. Ray’s 1972 horror classic “Scream Bloody Murder,” the very first movie to be labeled “Gore-nography!”

“Cannibal Holocaust” remains singular even among these titles. As Murawski concluded, “It’s the most controversial movie ever made. There will never be another ‘Cannibal Holocaust.'”

The “Cannibal Holocaust” Special Edition will screen on Monday, July 6 at the Roxy Cinema in New York.