Cannibal Holocaust evening: Korean DVD discovery

I've been shopping for a DVD of The Brood, which I have owned and sold before and have now decided I need in my permanent collection. Since I have a vested interest in the existence of physical media - I *like* that there are shops where I can buy movies - I try to buy DVDs rather than torrenting them, especially when costs aren't high. The cheapest DVD version of The Brood available comes from Korea, so  I purchased it via eBay the other week. Since there was a discount for shipping if one buys other DVDs, and since Korean DVDs are usually of reasonably good quality (if often void of extras), I poked around the seller's site. I'm presently taking Ernest Mathijs' Cult Movies course at UBC, so I've decided to see as many cult films as possible while the course is going on, especially ones I've previously avoided, and it seemed prudent to see if I could make an interesting bulk purchase.

This, folks, is how I come to be in possession of the Korean DVD of Cannibal Holocaust. And for the benefit of any movie geeks googling "Korean Cannibal Holocaust" for a review, I will now offer a few caveats.

The Korean DVD version I purchased (pictured left) is not widescreen -which most other releases are. It is mostly, but not all, in English, and the portions in Italian - during the scenes with the soldiers in the jungle near the beginning of the film - are not subtitled in English (those of you who read Korean need not worry). It has a rather grainy, VHS-quality image. Optical fogging is used to censor the pubic region, where it appears, similar to what some of y'all might remember on the Japanese VHS versions of El Topo and The Holy Mountain (one might also note that there is a puzzling plentitude of male nudity in the film, so often it's the cricket set that's getting fogged). On the other hand, optical fogging is not used to censor the actual deaths of animals, which the film is notorious for; these do not appear to have been censored in any way. There is a screaming coatimundi being stabbed in the neck (described elsewhere incorrectly as a muskrat, an anteater, and so forth), and several minutes of upsetting turtle gore. There are also spider, snake, pig and monkey deaths. I can't say which version of The Last Road to Hell is used - a film within a film based around "found footage" or such of unfaked Nigerian executions; apparently there are Dutch versions that are longer than those in other countries - but there is certainly some real human death in the Korean cut (though not shot FOR the film - it isn't a snuff film, though that impalement sure looks convincing, doesn't it?). Overall, it's a mediocre but watchable presentation of an immoral and nearly unwatchable film. The censorship is in itself quaint enough (and bizarre enough, that anyone should think pubic hair is more of a threat to public safety than images of people and animals being killed) that it actually adds to the movie's limited appeal.

And now I've finally seen it. There's one less horror movie in the world that I'm afraid of watching. Perhaps I should take a bath...

Oh, that reminds me, while I'm at it, the Korean I Spit On Your Grave, while I'm sure it also has censored pubes, has the castration scene intact, including one big spurt of blood that I didn't recall from the previous version I watched. So that's good.

Happy viewing, folks.