Get ready for a trip to the green inferno, a reading from which you might not emerge in one piece. Eugenio Ercolani, author and documentary filmmaker, has been working for years on Cannibal Worlds: the most comprehensive and in-depth book devoted to an inherently scandalous genre: Italian cannibal movies.

The films of the “cannibal cycle” exploit what they denounce. They incarnate the problem as they describe it. They tantalise their spectators while pointing an accusatory finger at them, but rarely to themselves. The cannibal genre, like the mondo current that anticipated it, brings the meaning of exploitation to a whole new level, because it’s not exploiting solely the never-dry wells of sex and violence, but the hypocrisy of Western values, all in a whirlwind of violence and depravity that has rarely been touched by mainstream cinema. Without being the first to deal with cruel murders, violence inflicted not only on humans but also on animals, rape, racism, and many other atrocities, of which cannibalism is often not the worst thing we see, these films crossed most of the boundaries that were inconceivable to transgress at the time… in an Italian society then in the throes of bloody internal strife and political violence unprecedented in its history.

352-page hardcover book with selective varnish, and hundreds of color photos.