Third World Cannibal Films

The films listed below are collectively known as "Third World Cannibal Films". They began with Umberto Lenzi's Man from Deep River in 1972, which was basically an Italian version of A Man Called Horse, but substituting a cannibal tribe for the Native Americans in the former film. The scenes of cannibalism in the film were definitely gory for the time but rather brief. However, this early film already included all the ingredients for all subsequent films in the genre throughout the 1980's - gore, nudity, sex, survival, and the added brutality of animal cruelty, which was a deplorable 'shock factor' element lifted from the Italian "mondo films" of the previous decade. All these ingredients would be mixed to shocking perfection with Ruggero Deodato's 1980 film Cannibal Holocaust, arguably the best and definitely the most notorious of the entire sub-genre; followed closely by Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox (aka Make Them Die Slowly) in 1981. Cannibal Holocaust would prove to be an influential film itself, and is generally considered to be the first film cited in the relatively new sub-genre known as "Found Footage Films".

These films listed below preceded the exploitation cannibal films which began in the 1970's. In some cases, they directly inspired and influenced later filmmakers. A direct line can be drawn from Five Came Back to The Naked Prey to Deodato's Ultimo Mondo Cannibale (aka Jungle Holocaust) and Cannibal Holocaust.