Kannibaalien polttouhrit

Ten days after its premiere in Milan, the film was seized by the Italian courts and director Ruggero Deodato was arrested and charged with obscenity. He was later charged with murdering several actors on camera and faced life in prison. The cast had signed contracts requiring them to disappear for a year after shooting to maintain the illusion that they had died. Deodato contacted Luca Barbareschi and told him to contact the three other actors who played the missing film team. When the actors appeared in court, alive and well, the murder charges were dropped.

The snake that bites the jungle guide in his boot is said to be venomous. It is actually a boa constrictor, a non-venomous snake that kills its prey by constriction.

The Grindhouse Releasing (USA) and Siren Visual (Australia) DVDs/Blu-rays omit the United Artists Europa logo in favor of a text crawl regarding the film's violent content: "The following motion picture contains intense scenes of extreme violence and cruelty. As distributors of this film, we wish to state with absolute sincerity that by no means do we condone the artistic decisions employed by the makers of this film. However, as firm believers in the constitutional right of free speech, we do not believe in censorship. To quote Thomas Jefferson, 'it behooves every man who values the liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasion of it in the case of others.' Therefore, we are presenting CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST for the first time in its uncut, uncensored original form, with all sequences photographed by the filmmakers, however offensive and repugnant, presented fully intact. What you will see will definitely shock and offend you. Nonetheless, it should be viewed as a disturbing historical document of a bygone era of extreme irresponsibility which no longer exists, and, hopefully, will never exist again. 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' - George Santayana"

The Grindhouse Releasing re-release, as well as the 2005 DVD, features a scrolling warning before the film from the company stating that the film is uncut and uncensored and while they do not support the "artistic decisions" of the film, they do support free speech. It also plays part of Riz Ortolani's music score in the background.

Edited into Through Eyes of the Dead (1999)