The Top-10 Instances of Dramaticized Cannibalism

Cannibalism, to me, is the funniest of all taboos. The fact that a person can also be a meal kind of makes me giggle. This is not to say that I’m one of those hollow-eyed weirdos who, at parties, wonders aloud what human flesh tastes like. But I do sort of smirk when, in movies, a character becomes food for other people. Does anyone else feel this way, or am I the weird one? Who else giggles a little when someone says “What’s for dinner?” and someone else shoots back “Jennifer”?

Well even if I’m the only one who is amused by it, I think we all have a sickening fascination with cannibalism. Why else would we put it in movies so frequently? Indeed, there was a time in film history – about the mid 1970s – when Italian cannibal gore films with titles like “Cannibal Ferox” appeared regularly in grindhouses and drive-ins. We not only liked the “mondo” approach to human gore, but the fact that there were still people on this planet interested in eating other people. It was a reminder, I suppose, of how primitive the human mind still was. Indeed, the genre is still so ubiquitous, there’s an entire catalog of cannibal films online on Indie Film.

So, while we’re all thinking of meals made out of friends, I, Witney Seibold, resident old man, and Geekscape list-maker, thought I’d run down another top-10 list, this time detailing some of the best instances of cannibalism in movies and TV and theater. So sit back, grab and snack (maybe some beef jerky), and let’s get to some gnawing on human bones.

10) “Alive” (1993)

dir. Frank Marshall

Famously the worst film to show on airplanes, “Alive” told the true-life story of a team of Uruguayan rugby players who, on the way home from a match in another country, crashed in a remote part of the Andes. A few were killed in the crash, and the remaining survivors camped out in the snow for weeks, while a few brave souls walked for many, many miles to civilization. The film is inspiring and actually demonstrates the tenacity of the human spirit.

But it’s the cannibalism we all remember. Famously, in order to survive, and low on food in the snowy environment, the survivors had to roast up chunks of the dead. In interviews, the real-life rugby players were pragmatic and kind of regretful. It was snowing, the bodies were well-preserved in the cold, and we needed food. Commonplace desperation. In the movie, it’s treated tastefully (yuk yuk), but with perhaps too heavy a hand, making it a kind of lurid thrill. I saw the film back in 1993, and, like most of my peers, I was just waiting for the cannibalism scene. It’s why we went.

As an adult, you’ll find a quality film. But you’ll also find human eating, and that’s a gory thrill unto itself.

9) “Eating Raoul” (1982)

dir. Paul Bartel

This cult film is one you should have seen. It’s weird, sexy, gross, and delightfully sick. Director/actor Paul Bartel starred in dozens of films in his life, so you probably recognize him. He also directed other cult classics like “Cannonball!” and “Death Race 2000.” And while the cannibalism isn’t fast and furious in the film, the title doesn’t lie when it refers to eating Raoul.

Bartel plays a down-on-his-luck businessman named Paul who can’t get funding for his restaurant. His wife Mary (B-movie icon Mary Woronov) wants to help, but can’t think of anything to do other than prostitution. When Mary is beset by a violent John one day, Paul accidentally kills him in a fit of rage. Luckily for them, a neighbor, Raoul (Robert Beltran from “Star Trek: Voyager”) has the perfect solution. They get to keep the John’s money, and he gets the body. He then sells the bodies to a pet food store. Eventually Raoul ingratiates himself further into their lives, becoming a creepy sexual accomplice

By the film’s end, Paul and Mary have had enough, and they kill Raoul and, uh, well, they eat him. I can’t be giving that away, as the film is called “Eating Raoul.” It’s a playfully ghoulish ending to an otherwise cracked crime flick.

8) “Titus Andronicus” (c. 1592)

Boy, this play has everything! There are several revenge killings, there is manipulation, the main character cuts off his hand, a woman gets raped, has her hands cut off and her tongue cut out, there’s some creepy incestuous stuff, there’s some taboo miscegenation, the main character goes mad, some character masquerade as gods, and, yes indeed, there’s some cannibalism. This is Shakespeare’s only play that has cannibalism, and, perhaps not incidentally, it was Shakespeare’s biggest hit back when it opened. I understand that schools like to feed “Romeo & Juliet” to kids in the hope that they’ll relate to the kids more readily, but something tells me they’d become more excited about The Bard if they sat to read this ultra-violent potboiler instead.

So Titus Andronicus has been slowly going mad, thanks to the vengeful machinations of Tamora, the queen of the Goths. She’s been steadily whittling away at his relatives until they are either dead, mute, mad, or all three. In a final act of mockery, Tamora and her two sons pretend to be gods. When she’s not looking, Titus kidnaps the sons, and, to re-revenge Tamora back, kills them, bakes them into pies, and serves them up at royal court. Yeah, everyone gets to have a few big bites of big meaty pies.

Julie Taymor made a film version of “Titus,” and in it, the pies are heavy, rare and really awesome looking. You’ve never felt so luridly gut-churned at the end of a nearly-three-hour Shakespeare movie before. Even Shakespeare likes human eating. That lends the taboo some class, right?

7) “A Boy and His Dog” (1975)

dir. L.Q. Jones

Another bizarro cult film for your consumption pleasure, “A Boy and His Dog” is a post-apocalypse comedy wherein a horny twentysomething (Don Johnson) wanders the dusty landscape looking for water, supplies, and women to bone, and not necessarily in that order. The twist is that he can have intelligent conversations with his pet dog Blood (voiced by Tim McIntire), who seems to be either psychic, or merely our hero’s hallucination.

He eventually finds a clean, good-looking woman to sleep with, and she leads him to a subterranean society of well-off bourgeoisie types who have become sterile, and who intend to use our hero as a mechanical inseminator. Not quite what he had in mind, our hero escapes back to the surface, only to find his dog starving to death. His girlfriend has proven to be a horrible person, and his dog is the only friend he’s ever really had. The dog needs food… Two birds with one stone…

The cannibalism happens right near the end of the film, but it’s a nice wicked twist. Usually cannibalism in movies is a final desperate act, or the character of a savage mind. In this one, it’s depicted as an act of defiance.

6) “Cannibal Holocaust” (1980)

dir. Ruggero Deodato

I’ve spoken of this film before (as one of the Most Disgusting Movies Ever Made), so I’ll be brief. A group of rich asshole filmmakers venture into the wilds of the Amazon in order to capture cannibals on film, when their real motivation is to torture, rape and kill savages without consequences. They eventually are punished for their asshole-ism when cannibals capture them and eat them alive. Fun times.

The cannibalism is, in “Cannibal Holocaust,” probably the most explicit you’ll ever witness outside of those sick “Faces of Death” videos. It was such a sensation that it spawned an entire Italian subgenre. The filmmakers were taken to court, too; people thought the gory, gory, gory acts on screen were real, and the actors had to be brought to court to prove that they weren’t killed on camera. Think you have a strong stomach? Try this one on for size.

5) “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” (1979)

Stephen Sondheim’s opera is one of the darkest, weirdest, and most dissonant musicals ever written, and I’ve seen “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” It was based on an old British urban myth about a killer barber, a myth popularized in a series of pulp novels. There were a few film versions along the way, but it was the 1979 musical that really pushed Sweeney Todd into the public consciousness.

Sweeney Todd was a man who, wrongfully imprisoned, and having a bone to pick with society, takes to murdering people for fun. He teams up with an equally grim and jaded would-be girlfriend, and they come up with the perfect setup: Todd will lure people to the attic with the promise of a close shave, he will slit their throats, and they will fall into the basement where his girlfriend will prepare the people into pies. It’s such a sweet romance.

Sondheim upped the ante, however, giving Todd a lengthy backstory, and the tragic accidental killing of his old true love. Damn. Tim Burton adapted the musical to film in 2007, and really captured the carnival weirdness of the show, casting Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd. The music is, as I said, weird, but the cannibalism is wonderfully twisted. There are no other musicals with so much murder and human eating. Not even “Cannibal! The Musical” has as much.

4) “Parents” (1989)

dir. Bob Balaban

Michael (Bryan Madorsky) has just moved to a new neighborhood. He hates it. He is a quiet, pale, sickly boy. His parents (Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt) are chipper and cheerful in that insufferable 1950s sort of way. Michael hates school and hates homelife, and is especially suspicious of dinnertime, when his parents serve him meat from the fridge every night. It’s always the same. Eventually Michael gets curious.

“What is this?” he asks. “Leftovers!” his dad cheerfully insists. “Leftovers from what?” he logically continues. His mother chirps in incredulously “From the refrigerator, dear!” He eyeballs the two of them suspiciously. “Every night since we’ve moved into this house, we’ve had leftovers. I want to know what they were before they were leftovers.” His dad looks ashen for a moment, and then, clearly spitballing, replies “Before that… they were… leftovers to be!”

It doesn’t take a very sophisticated genre fan to recognize that Michael has been fed human flesh. “Parents” is an excellent little dark comedy that sends up ’50s idealism and blends it with sickeningly amusing horror. It’s the only feature film to have been directed by comedian Bob Balaban.

3) “Supernatural”

“My Bloody Valentine” episode (2010)

I heard about this one. The show is, as you probably know, another Kolchak lift-off wherein ordinary humans hunt down secret supernatural begins who are up to no good. “Supernatural” is about a pair of brothers who cruise about the country in their souped-up muscle car hunting down the monsters that kill. It’s like a meathead version of “The X-Files,” and the few episodes I’ve seen are quite good. I’m sure there are readers of Geekscape who are much more qualified to write about this show than I.

But, for the purposes of cannibalism, I do have to mention one particularly disturbing instance of it in “Supernatural.” At the episode’s outset, a pair of lovey-dovey teenagers, probably about 15, both on their first date ever, meet for some chaste romance. They go to a drive-in where they hold hands. They begin kissing a little. Then they begin making out in a fashion that seems all too disturbingly violent. They resolve to retire to his place, where they’ll continue their sexual maneuvers, which would ordinarily be expected, but seems, I dunno, a little off for these two. They make out some more, they nibble and bite. He bites into her skin and draws blood. He steps back, shocked at his own actions. She winces in pain. They make eye contact. She then blithely offers some of her arm…

Cut to the next scene. The teenagers are dead, having munched at each other until they died. We eventually learn that the apocalyptic horseman Famine is behind this twisted little date, but while we’re watching it, it hits you in the gut. It’s weird, sick, disturbing. Lust, romance, and cannibalism are all, ofr a brief moment, compressed into one. Eesh.

2) “Hannibal” (2001)

dir. Ridley Scott

Ridley Scott’s clunky, 9-years-after-the-fact sequel to “The Silence of the Lambs” is kind of misguided, and way more lurid than the original. Rather than deal with the subtle intellectual back-and-forth between a young inexperienced FBI trainee and a razor-sharp serial killer who may or may not be attracted to her is abandoned in the face of protracted revenge plots, man-eating pigs, and Gary Oldman in some of the most disturbing makeup you’ll see in a movie. Hopkins reprises his role, and gives his all, but by 2001 he started to teeter into oddball territory. Jodie Foster would not return, being replaced by Julianne Moore.

Hannibal Lecter is, of course, famous for killing his victims, and eating them over a nice glass of wine. We never saw him in action, as it was scarier just to hear the stories. In “Hannibal,” though, we see him in action. I don’t think this is as scary, but it does make for one of the most disturbing and bizarre cannibalism scene in all film. Near the film’s climax, Lecter has brought all the players of the drama to a dinner table, including Clarice’s boss, played by a lecherous Ray Liotta. Lecter has drugged Ray Liotta, and has removed the top of his skull, exposing his brain while he is conscious. Lecter cuts off a bit of his brain and throws it into a Foreman grill. Liotta mentions that it smells good, and Lecter feeds a bit to him.

EW! EW! EW! Oh man, did I ever squirm. The sight of Liotta eating his own brains made me wince and feel a bit nauseated. The eating of an animal brain seems weird and dodgy to me at the outset. A human brain, doubly so. But your own brain? Ack. I haven’t ever barfed in a theater, but a scene like this would make me come close.

1) “Soylent Green” (1975)

dir. Richard Fleischer

More people know the twist ending of “Soylent Green” than have actually seen the film. This is a pity, as it seems to soften the blow when you’re watching it for the first time. For those who haven’t seen this sci-fi classic, let me run it down.

It is the future, and we’re following the exploits of a poor working class cop named Thorne (Charlton Heston). Overpopulation has run rampant, resources have dwindled, suicide is encouraged, and people live exclusively on government-sanctioned protein crackers called Soylent. There are various flavors of Soylent that come in special color codes. Soylent yellow is made from plants, for instance. The most popular cracker, the meat-flavored one, is Soylent green, mined from deep-sea fish factories. All the animals, by the way, have died.

While investigating a murder, Thorne, of course, uncovers a shadowy conspiracy involving the production of Soylent crackers. The secret? Well, you know what it is. Just fill in the blank: “Soylent Green is ____________!” How chilling to think, though, especially as human population has just surpassed 7 billion, that institutionalized cannibalism might be in our future. I’m in real trouble, too, ’cause I love crackers.

Editor’s Bonus Entry:

“Cannibal: The Musical” (1993)

dir. Trey Parker

This one is probably Matt Kelly and Jonathan London’s favorite cannibal film, created by South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone long before the success of South Park and currently available on DVD by Troma. The movie follows the real life story of Alferd Packer, a prospector accused of cannibalism during the winter of 1873-1874. Sure, a biopic was made in 1980, but it’s this hilarious musical that Geekscapists will remember.

Memorable scenes include a fluid-spewing cyclops, Japanese Native Americans, surprisingly good musical numbers, a lot of fudge and singing Canadian fur trappers. Parker and Stone were college seniors when they put together this piecemeal production (and the result is pretty piecemeal), be we’re willing to overlook the production limitations and loads of historical inaccuracies simply for the loads of laughs and charm this movie provides.

Witney Seibold is a walking meal from Los Angeles. He has his own very-occasionally updated movie review ‘blog called Three Cheers for Darkened Years! where he reviews almost every new film he sees. The rest go up on Crave Online, where he is half the voice of The B-Movies Podcast, and tries to teach you a thing or two about movies in the Free Film School. He also just started a new li’l show called The Trailer Hitch with William Bibbiani, where he MST3Ks his way through movie trailers. Read all his output, and you’ll be smarter.