in many cannibal films. Cannibal Holocaust The most controversial and most infamous movie of the genre was Cannibal Holocaust. Ten days after the premiere in Milan, the film was seized by Italian authorities and director Ruggero Deodato was arrested on the belief that his film was a real snuff film. Facing life in prison, Deodato was able to bring all the actors onto a television show and demonstrated in court how some of the special effects were accomplished. The charges were dropped, but because of the still extremely explicit content, the courts still banned the film because of the real cruelty towards animals. Deodato was ultimately held on charges of obscenity and animal violence. Four years later, in 1984, Deodato was able to overturn the courts' rulings and the film was unbanned. Ironically, that same year, the United Kingdom, Norway, Finland, and Australia banned Cannibal Holocaust; all four have since repealed the ban, though the U.K. version has several minutes of edits. It is sometimes claimed that Cannibal Holocaust is still banned in over 50 countries worldwide, though this can only be verified for a handful of nations. In 2006, Cannibal Holocaust made Entertainment Weeklys Top 25 Most Controversial Movies of All-Time list, landing at number 20. Video nasty Several of the films landed on the U.K.'s infamous video nasty list. They are: Man from Deep River (1972) The Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978) Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Devil Hunter (1980) Cannibal Ferox (1981) Cannibal Terror (1981) See also Extreme cinema Found footage Splat Pack References Citations Sources Book (French) Les mondes cannibales du cinéma italien ... d'Umberto Lenzi à Ruggero Deodato, Daniel Bastié, ed. Ménadès, 2019. Exploitation films Film genres Italian films by genre Ethnic and racial stereotypes Obscenity controversies in film Films about cannibalism 1970s in film 1980s in film