The Cannibal Film Festival
If God didn't want people to eat people, why'd He make ’em out of meat?
—Flanders & Swann, The Reluctant Cannibal
We all know how I get about the cannibal thing--I'm just that kind of anthropopha-guy. I've steered clear of the zombie movies, the werewolf movies, and the vampire movies here, trying to maintain focus on cannibalism, per se. Even leaving those out, there are a lot of cannibal movies. The thing is, most of 'em aren't really very good. Here are a few that rise to the top...
- Ravenous--A trope on the story of the Donner Party, with a wendigo thrown in for good measure. A disgraced soldier is sent off to a remote outpost in the West, and ends up "rescuing" the sole survivor of a trapped wagon train party, who promptly proceeds to kill off, and eat, the rest of the outpost. There's a lot that's remarkable about this movie: Antonia Bird's direction is superb, and Robert Carlyle gives a great performance as the enigmatic and anthropophagous Colonel Ives.
- Hannibal--No cannibal film festival would be complete without the inclusion of the celebrated Doctor Lecter. But which outing? This isn't the best of this series of films--that'd be Silence of the Lambs--but for pure man-eating fun, this one gets the nod. Anthony Hopkins is in top (maybe over-the-top) form as "Hannibal the Cannibal", as is Gary Oldman as the horribly mutilated Mason Verger. Julianne Moore does a passable Jody Foster imitation, plus you get to see Lecter chow down on Ray Liotta's head, all directed, ably, by Ridley Scott. Don't miss those man-eating pigs, either.
- Cannibal (aka "")—
- Eating Raoul--One of my favorites. Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel are the Blands, a pretty boring Los Angeles couple living in an apartment building full of swinging bachelors, and who need funding for their restaurant. One evening, an obnoxious swinger wanders into their apartment by accident, misinterprets Mary's efforts to fend off his advances as "playing hard to get", and winds up with his skull fractured when Mary clobbers him with the frying pan. It transpires that this hapless fellow represents an opportunity and a problem: his wallet is loaded with cash, but how to dispose of that inconvenient body? The Blands discover that they can kill two birds with one stone, as it were. They proceed to put ads in sex papers in an effort to take the scale up on this fortuitous discovery, but the plot thickens when a cat burglar named Raoul stumbles onto their scheme and wants to get in on the action...
- Parents--Michael is a normal kid, growing up in the suburbs in the 1950s. The only problem is his nightmares and his increasing nervousness around his parents. There's an awful lot of meat in the freezer, and some of it looks a little...odd. Bob Balaban directed this very dark comedy, starring Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt as the folks. Creepy and entertaining.
- Cannibal Ferox--Well, OK, this isn't really a good film, but you've just gotta include one disgusting Italian cannibal movie, and for my money, there isn't one more disgusting than Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox (aka Make Them Die Slowly). Inside a space of 93 minutes, you get decapitation, castration, mutilation and lunch, although this one might well make you lose the latter. Lenzi is a master of the disgusting, and he's done quite a few of these, including Eaten Alive, and The Man From Deep River.
Honorable (and/or dishonorable) mentions to The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Fried Green Tomatoes, Soylent Green, Wendigo, Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal: The Musical, Jungle Holocaust, Mountain of the Cannibal God, Cannibal Hookers, Cannibal Apocalypse, Blood Diner, and Cut and Run... Further film festivals can be found here.
Now, what's for dessert?