First, the plot of Turbulence is as simple as it is poorly executed. A ‘death metal’ band led by the famous Slade Craven. The band’s last performance takes place on a plane, but the armed satanic hijackers impose as Slade, hijack the plane, wait til 10 million people log on to the newsfeed and then attempt to crash the plane in order to release the dark angel. They are foiled by Slade, who lands the plane with the help of a superhacker, who knows how to fly because of endless hours of flight simulators.

Obviously contrived and utterly unrealistic, it shares a number of similarities with Snakes on a Plane, even to the extent that video games are good enough practice let you land a plane. However, the campy, excessive humor of Snakes is in no way present in Turbulence, making the film unenjoyable and dry. Here is at least a first clue to the difference between the two films; Snakes is tongue-in-cheek, while Turbulence seems to take itself seriously.

We don’t believe in, nor do we need to believe in, the diegesis of an exploitation film. We know that these tings are completely out of touch with reality. What we do need, is that the film does not believe in its own diegesis either. This is a difference from the typical B-movie camp enjoyment, such as Plan 9 From Outer Space, where we enjoy the feeble attempts of proper diegetic creation. However, exploitation films depend on providing us with the exploitation subject, and knowing winks at the audience are part of this genre. In this way, there is a distinct metafictional dimension to exploitation films – a metacommunication which functions to reassert the common ground between film, filmmaker and viewer.

In Turbulence, this meta-dimension is completely missing. Instead, it seems as if the film expects us to take it as seriously as we would a Hollywood blockbuster, something it is clearly not. The narrative ends up feeling ridiculous because of this, as there is no metafunction to let us know this is simply an exploitation film.

Secondly, Turbulence does not truly have any real exploitation qualities, as its representation of ‘death metal’ is far from the actual music. The music is more like bad mid-90s industrial/goth music and it is clear that Slade is a caricature of Marilyn Manson. Unfortunately, rather than relishing in this subject matter, the film mocks the music and so does not present the fans with what they might enjoy. Because of this mocking, the film ends up falling flat on its face in attempting to engage with a genre it so clearly misrepresents.

What interests me the most about the film is really the way that the eroticism functions. Clearly, one of the reasons for watching the film is the attraction of the sleaze – the naked girls, the lesbian scenes and so forth – but as much as male sexuality is gratified by the film, it is just as much ridiculed and deconstructed.

The plot is basic enough, but provides an entry into the discussion of male desire in the film. However, this is spoiler filled, so read on at own risk. The killer, disturbed as a child by seeing a friend die due to a doll, sees women as dolls of flesh and blood, and kills them to punish them for his childhood trauma. His inability to view women in a normal way, leads him to a warped sense of reality and so he kills them, subsequently caressing their naked bodies. The original Italian title I Corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale literally means “the corpses bear signs of carnal violence” carnal being as much meant in the erotic sense here.

But it is not just the killer who has a warped sense of sexuality – in the small town where the girls go to relax, a group of guys serve as comic relief in their overly macho behavior and their talk of what they want to do with the girls. “8 legs, 8 titties and 4 asses” as one of them says. Yet, for all their desire they never act on their impulse and seem mostly pathetic and comic.

Even at the hippie/orgy place, where two guys get a girl stoned and fondle her breasts, she takes control by demanding that they get naked before she does and when she leaves, their chase ends in a pool of mud and their aggressive chants of “I’ll kill that bitch” turn hollow and childlike.

All the males in the film – with the exception of the doctor – are presented as pathetic creatures who are unable to handle their desires. The film thus problematizes male desire while it simultaneously plays up to the male desire by presenting naked girls in lesbian interaction. It is this conflation of narrative and material existence which is so typical of exploitation films, and Martino’s film here is a good example of this.

Cannibal Holocaust thus enacts and stages itself – it narrates the violence visited upon indigenous people, while itself being just such an act of violence (mostly symbolic, but still). Seen in this light, the actual killing of the animals is necessary, though certainly not defensible. On the other hand, if it is legitimate to kill animals to eat them, turn them into clothes, feed them to themselves and so on, why is it wrong to kill them to make a film? Is film worth less than a pair of leather shoes?

In this way, Cannibal Holocaust is a commodity which questions our commodification of everything – from animals to indigenous people’s culture. The plot of the film, is that a group of ruthless documentarists travel to ‘the Green Inferno’ of the Amazonas to show Western culture how some people still live, just a few hours flight away from what is cast as the greatest pinnacle of civilization – symbolically represented by New York. The Green Inferno thus stands in contrast, but also in parallel to the concrete inferno of New York. There are several shots of New York that are similar in structure to the shots of the jungle, thus inviting us to see the two places in the same way.

The documentarists disappear and an anthropologist is sent to learn what has happened to them. What he learns is shocking; they were killed, but they were killed because they raped (and filmed) the natives, pillaged and burned the natives’ village in order to enact a conflict between two tribes that did not exist. The film reels that are recovered seem extremely realistic, and is obviously the cause for much of the outrage.

However, despite the violence it documents and the fact that all the material (except the last when the documentarists are killed) is staged, the TV network wishes to air the documentary. The anthropologist shows them the horrors contained within the reels, and they decide to burn the reels. However, the reels are not burned, but instead sold – thus playfully suggesting that we have seen actual, real footage.

However, it is this last turn of events – that the material is too horrible – which poses a difficult question for the spectator. Not because we may believe that the footage is real, but rather because it questions the act of viewing and even making such material. The film unabashedly presents us with exactly what we want to see: barbarous natives, barbarous westerners, blood, gore, nudity, sex and it is all fascinating in its repulsive glory.

The film squarely shows us how much we want to exploit and commodify and consume such spectacles, no matter what the price. The actual killing of the animals is precisely one such price, and therefore could not have been faked. But if we want to see such things, can we blame the people who make it? I don’t believe that Deodato is trying to escape or deny his part in this exploitation/commodification culture, but he questions the difference between his film and various other products, be it documentaries, news or any other text which draws its fascination from showing that which is taboo or transgressive. Deodato reveals the hypocrisy by explicitly stepping into the hornet’s nest, so to speak.

Cannibal Holocuast is not offensive, I would argue, because of the depictions of violence, rape, gore and so forth – although to some extent this is part of it, of course – but instead it offends because it is what it represents. There is no abstraction, no metaphor, no critical distance or reflection. Instead, the film conflates its own material existence with its artistic subject of commodification and exploitation – it is exploitation and commodity because of a belief, I would argue, that it is not possible to exist or stand outside of the structure it wishes to criticize.

Such a view of criticism is implicit, I believe, of most exploitation films and is the reason why so many people turn away from them, and find them offensive – even if what they depict is no longer offensive. It is not ‘good taste’ in Bourdieu’s sense, to enjoy texts that revel in their own economics of desire and deny that any form of cultural expression can stand outside of the demands of cultural, economic, and political reality.