Ruggero Deodato dead – director of ‘most controversial film ever’ Cannibal Holocaust who inspired Tarantino dies aged 83

LEGENDARY director Ruggero Deodato who made the most controversial film in cinema history has reportedly died aged 83.

He was most famous for horror flick Cannibal Holocaust – which saw him tried for murder in Italy, and inspired Hollywood moviemakers Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone and Eli Roth.

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Ruggero Deodato has reportedly died at the age of 83Credit: Getty

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He directed controversial horror film Cannibal HolocaustCredit: Wikipedia

Deodato had a long career, starting as a highly regarded assistant director for Roberto Rossellini.

He also worked as number two to Sergio Corbucci on influential spaghetti western Django.

As a solo director he made more than 30 movies but was most famous for 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust.

The gruesome film featured scenes of sadomasocism and real animal slaughter, sparking controversy around the world and screening bans in several countries.

It was the most notorious movie to be banned as part of the “video nasties” moral panic of the 1980s.

But it also won Deodato a cult following including Tarantino who cited him as one of his influences.

Respected Italian news sources including Il Post reported he had died today.

Cannibal Holocaust remains one of the most shocking and controversial films ever made.

The plot features an academic who heads into the Amazon forest in search of a missing documentary crew who are feared to have been eaten by a tribe.

He discovers the film they recorded before their grisly deaths – which is claimed in Deodato’s movie to “authentic” documentary footage.

It shows how they burned down a village, raped a tribeswoman and manufactured scenes of brutality before the locals got their revenge.

Deodato later claimed he improvised most of the story on location in the jungle in Colombia.

He recalled in one interview: “Tomorrow we’ll impale a girl, tomorrow we’ll kill the unfaithful wife… tomorrow we’ll kill a pig, because a crew member is fed up with eating fish!” 

Notorious scenes include a tribesman sucking a monkey’s brains, and US actors disembowelling a turtle.

One actor reportedly cried after the shooting harrowing unsimulated slaughter.

To make it even more convincing, the director got the actors to agree to vanish for a year.

It sparked outrage after its premiere in Italy in 1980.

Police seized all the copies and prosecuted Deodato for killing his actors.

Facing 30 years in jail, he had to ask the missing cast to appear in court to prove they were still alive.

Instead he received a suspended jail sentence for obscenity.

The film remained banned for years and was did not get a certificate from UK censors until 2001.

But its notoriety helped it find a cult audience worldwide.

And fans hailed it as the precursor for the “found footage” genre of horror films including The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield.

“Cannibal Holocaust is essentially the granddaddy of found footage films,” said Hollywood scriptwriter Jed Shepherd.

“It’s one of the first films to use its own infamy to promote itself.”

Deodato himself claimed The Blair Witch Project “copied my idea… but as a film I didn’t like it”.

He also claimed Oliver Stone copied his village burning scene “almost exactly” in Vietnam war classic Platoon.

Deodato also said his most famous film was meant to be a dig at the exploitative violence shown in Italian news media of the time.

He recalled: “It was really the animal violence that was the problem with Cannibal Holocaust.

“Because of that, they couldn’t help but ban it – without that, it might have passed uncut.

“But at the time I had to do something shocking to get noticed.

“I couldn’t kill real people so the animals got killed, but all the animals were eaten, they didn’t just die for the film.”