Holocaust Cannibal: The Third Cut — Holocaust Cannibal: The Third Cut(Blu Ray)

With his punning stage name, New Jersey resident Bill Zebub has achieved cult notoriety for his promotion of independent movies of dubious taste and heavy metal. If you’re a fan of both, this Blu-ray release of his 2014 horror might be a passable hour and a half.

It’s hard to say which came first, the riff on the name of the 1980 Italian horror Cannibal Holocaust, or the idea of a latter-day tribute to Nazisploitation movies that could help Zebub push the taste envelope. This low-budget horror isn’t pro-Nazi—they suffer repeatedly throughout—but it’s crude blend of humour and sexual violence that treads a difficult line past its lack of plot to a gratuitous resolution.

A surreal opening, backed by a song from Angizia, has the credits roll over footage of a topless woman writhing on a woodland floor with a particularly rubbery snake. The credits have a tongue firmly in cheek as they introduce Zebub as director, executive producer, sexiest and most modest man on Earth. Following that, some hokey greenscreen and a random free-falling man in a suit is all the set-up that’s needed.

Escaping the end of World War II, a plane full of Nazis heads to Argentina, only for engine failure to strand them on an island populated by vicious cannibal natives. The first stagey encounter between a moustachioed Nazi and a native doesn’t end well for the interloper. Nor do the successive skits that follow, where survivors fall foul of various perils, including each other, the natives, a man-sized ball of fur (alright, Bigfoot), and a giant plastic spider.

More than once, the women (later labelled as ‘FemiNazis’) have to undress before meeting their fate, often with extended fight scenes with appallingly dull naked choreography in the middle. Zebub likes to linger, particularly on flesh, and the majority of Holocaust Cannibal’s run-time of full-frontal nudity, prosthetic mutilation and rape, is in slow-motion. If it ran at full speed and avoided repeat angles (freely crossing the 180), the film probably wouldn’t make 30 minutes. That could be the fourth cut.

In between, some impressively repulsive attempts at gore on a shoestring wisely go with high ambition and lashings of blood. Expect close-ups of stabbings, repeated genital mutilation, the removal of blood-soaked entrails, plucked eyeballs and even an impaled brain. Along with the prolonged simulated sex, it all looks pretty repulsive in the bright, naturally lit digital frame.

The early credit that “This movie was entirely shot in New Jersey” barely breaks the film’s illusion. Sometimes, during a slo-mo fight, watching the digital blur of that monotonous green backdrop is the best part. The low budget has inevitable consequences, including continuity issues as arm bands slip, dirt is left on clothes from previous takes, and in one late scene, a boom sits proudly in shot. The quality probably isn’t helped by Zebub taking a lead role as the rubber-masked Nazi general Hansel. He and Lydia Lael (Greta) engage in some stand-up interludes (“Stop being a grammar Nazi”), with jokes at the expense of American culture as much as Nazi ideology.

At the end, there’s an attempt to knit all the skits together, make more sense of the title, and explain a hitherto curious lack of cannibalism. Obviously, it’s suitably bad taste and topped off with an obligatory slow-mo fight.

Holocaust Cannibal is likely to be most enjoyed by fans of European metal. The extended fights form videos for lengthy tracks from bands including German extreme metal group Bethlehem, Austrian avant-garde folk metallers Angizia, and Ukraine’s pagan black metal wielders Zgard. As the truth of what’s stalking the Nazis becomes clear, the score switches to songs from Israeli metal band Orphaned Land.

Impressively, the Blu-ray release is packed with over 2 hours of ‘Bloops’ - more than bloopers, these extended scenes give an insight into problems with prosthetic penises, cameramen lobbing inflatable spiders, and Zebub directing his naked cast. You’d have to be a real completist to sit through them, but then there’s also ‘Film Fest,’ a five-minute Q&A with the director and some stars from a screening in Horrorhound talking through one of what he jokingly calls his “dysfunctional family movies.”