Keep Telling Yourself It’s Only A Movie: Horror’s Most Controversial Films

7. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

One of the very first “found footage”  horror films, Cannibal Holocaust is a gut punch of epidemic proportions. A group of documentary filmmakers decide to go to the Amazon and make a film about the cannibal tribes that inhabit it. When the filmmakers go missing a rescue mission is mounted and the team recovers the film footage.

While viewing the video you learn the fate of the team and the viewer discovers that the filmmakers were not so innocent. This film caused an uproar when released. This film shows depravity in the form of graphic sexual assaults, brutal violence and real animal cruelty which included killing them on screen.

During the French premiere of the film, director Ruggero Deodato was not only charged with obscenity but also murder due to authorities believing the film is a legitimate snuff film. Deodato rounded up the actors to prove they were very much alive and not killed in the movie.