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The 80s list is looking strong. Before I throw in a backing for a different film, I'd like to make a case for Cannibal Holocaust. Hopefully it can garner another backing and make the final list because it's one of the most impactful horror movies I've ever seen. I understand that it's not for everyone, but hopefully it will be judged on its merits and not purely on taste.
First off, I think it would be good to add breadth to the lists. Not many exploitation films have made it (because they've been beaten by better films), but this one transcends exploitation via self-satirization and irony. It also serves as a transition from 70s grindhouse to an era of "proper," and generally respectable, horror that took off in the 80s. If you're put off by the real animal killings, which is totally understandable, hopefully the assurance that all the animals were consumed by the natives, as they regularly did, helps alleviate that.
Regarding the film, its story and its execution, I find it to be truly unique and impeccably executed. I'm amazed that the real-life natives are almost better actors than the actors. I have no idea how Deodato accomplished that. It's one of the reasons the movie feels so real. That, and the intermixing of Animal Kingdom-style footage and mondo real death video (which, as part of the storyline, is a "faked" documentary), causes the line between reality and fiction to blur to the point that the viewer is subconsciously confused, and the acted violence becomes significantly more disturbing that it would have been otherwise. This is a stroke of genius by Deodato.
The story is brilliant, consisting of two excursions -- the second team setting out to solve the mystery of the first team's disappearance, a story which is revealed incrementally via footage that the second team found. The footage revealed that the true horror was just as much due to human nature, of which the exploitative and, eventually evil, Westerners are bound to, as it was to the cannibalistic nature of the natives. It should also be mentioned that the found footage aspect of this film predates the "original" found footage film, The Blair Witch Project, by nearly 20 years, and that it was so well executed that Deodato was actually tried in a criminal court for suspicion of killing his actors.
Cannibal Holocaust outdid all of its subgenre predecessors, both in intelligent storytelling and execution, and effectively killed off the cannibal subgenre. After this one, there will never be a need for another one.
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