High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Cannibal Holocaust is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Ruggero Deodato from a screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici. Filmed in the Amazon Rainforest and dealing with indigenous tribes, it was cast mostly with United States actors and filmed in English to achieve wider distribution. Francesca Ciardi and Luca Barbareschi were among the leads as native Italian speakers to qualify the film as European for distribution on the continent. The film reportedly grossed $200,000,000 worldwide at the box office.