---

The Madness of Bill Dobbs: A Tale of Snuff Movies and Cannibal Cults

By Sean Pearce 

---

Eaters is regarded by some as a flawed masterpiece and an underground classic. To others, it is vile, racist, ethically bankrupt, and derivative.

It makes for peculiar viewing. The plot follows the formula of the Italian cannibal movies for which director Bill Dobbs had an unashamed fondness. An anthropological expedition into the Amazon jungle encounters and brutalises a tribe of ‘savages’ in the name of science, and find themselves pursued, captured, and finally gruesomely eaten alive.

(The film was originally going to be released as Dark-skinned Cannibals of the Tropics, though thankfully someone more enlightened than Dobbs suggested the title we now have. It almost goes without saying that Dobbs has been unanimously described as a completely unrepentant racist.)

Eaters is a movie with a mythology around it. Dobbs himself famously went insane shortly after release, and no less than three cast members died during location shooting (in what may be a rare flash of good taste, Dobbs chose not to use the footage of the unfortunate actress Lisa Springer’s fatal accident in the film), and, in a strange echo of Cannibal Holocaust before, Dobbs was briefly investigated by the authorities on suspicion of producing a snuff film. However, it was later revealed that Dobbs had in fact bribed an FBI agent into launching the investigation as a publicity stunt – it worked. (Continue Reading…)