Cannibal Man - Lisa's Review

So Cannibal Man kicks right into a messy scene in a abattoir where cows are being prepared for meat sale. Its all very bloody and messy but they are already dead so there are no death scenes to be had. If you eat meat, you kinda of have to be ok with this, if not, then there’s no point in eating meat and being hypocritical about it. I completely abhor animal cruelty and unnecessary suffering for any reason, but accept we kill animals for food. As a river of blood runs through the abattoir we see a worker, who we later learn is our main character – Marco, getting tucked into his lunch. Pretty strong stomach there then.

The main action starts as Marco and his girlfriend Paula are taking a taxi ride and get rather amorous in the back of the car. The taxi driver takes exception to this and asks them to get out. Marco is having none of it and comes out with the corker of a line “Haven’t you ever been with a girl before? What are you? Some kind of homosexual?” Oooooh dear.

A scuffle commences outside of the car and while the driver is giving Paula a slapping (that her father never had time to give her apparently) Marco hits him over the head with a rock and kills him.

As we progress, we sense Paula is regretting what happened and after what looked to be a very weird love scene (how either of them got anything from all the open-mouthed groaning and not much else, who knows…) we tells Marco that she wants to go to the police. He is obviously not too keen, so after a bit of a row he kills her too.

For some odd reason, he decides to confess to his brother Steve, who also wants to go to the police, oooh dear, a kind of pattern is forming. Steve however doesn’t want his life being ruined by Marcos faux pas, so his head meets with what looks like a rather large spanner (on a plus point, as his corpse is being dragged away, I note he has a rather lovely belly).

Here my copy of the film buggers up and the picture freezes so I can’t watch any more. I tried everything possible from forwarding chapters to just plain fwd and it not having it. When I eventually get a picture back, I can hear what’s happening about 20 minutes in advance of what I’m watching. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Sorry got to come back to this one.

I was actually quite enjoying this one. It looked like it was shaping up to be a nice little movie. I will get my hands on another copy and finish my review sometime in the future.

So I'm back and ready to finish my review.  Something that is interesting is how my reviewing changed.  I used to do what it seems is more of a plot synopsis, which you really don't need, so I'm glad at least I've cut it down a bit... so where were we...

So as the movie progresses, we have more of the same and we realise why Marco works in a abbatoir.. an excellent means of disposing of bodies.  This brings me to the rather odd naming of this movie.  No-one is murdered for food.  While disposing of the bodies in the abbatoir, the human flesh is ground down and mixed with animal meat and packaged for human consumption.. that's as cannabalistic as we get.

As I watch the movie it becomes clear the main focus is the friendship Marco forms with a posh young man called Nestor.  It is quite apparent that Nestor is gay although this is never discussed or openly admitted throughout the movie (although there are some very obvious scenes which mean it never really has to be discussed).  To me it appeared that Marco is struggling with his own sexuality, hence his connection with Nestor and his frustration being focused in altogether the wrong directions.  He doesn't have much in the way of money, promise or a life.

Nestor is a bit of an odd character.  He lives in an expensive new development that overlooks Marcos's appartment and he spends his time spying on him with binoculars.

The movie is more concerned about this blossoming friendship than the gory murders which have taken place.  Its a character piece if you will.  It moved in a completely different direction than I first expected.

I can't say I loved this movie, or even liked it to a great degree as it was a very odd mix of storylines to me, but it was far from bad and was not one of the more trying titles on the list.  

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The Cannibal Man - Will's Review

Well, that was an incredibly gay movie; not 'Gay' in a derogatory 'South Park' way, but in a 'That movie was blatantly about homosexuality' way.

What it wasn't about though, was cannibalism; more specifically, it wasnt about a (much less the) Cannibal Man - while the killers victims are turned into meat (or, more specifically, soup), we never see anyone eat it, and our main character actively avoids eating it...
The film opens, very abruptly, with a slaughterhouse scene, in which some cows (already dead, or at least stunned) are hung and bled - the red stuff flows in rivers here, but its obviously footage of a genuine slaughter house so, although you may find this offensive, if you eat meat (I do) I suggest you STFU - this is not the 'animal snuff' of the last few weeks - this is life! I am an animal lover, but I'm also a carnivore, I would consider myself a hypocrite if I turned away.

Anyway the point of this scene (apart from some cheap shock value) is to introduce us to our main character, Marcos, who works at the slaughter house (which we find out later is actually a soup factory) and, it seams, is the kind of guy who will casually munch on his sandwich while watching cows be drained... lovely!

His causality around cow blood aside, Marcos seems like an okay guy; he has a girlfriend (although her parents don't know it), is well liked in the local cafe (especially by Rosa, who makes it quite clear that she fancies the pants off him) and lives with his brother, who is currently out of town on business (He's a lorry driver)

His home is a vertual slum shack on a patch of sand inhabeted mostly by football playing children and stray dogs - dispite it's ramshackle appearance, it's quite nice on the inside, although obviously the home of bachelors; the wall behind the sofa is decorated by with pin-ups!

So far, so "What is he on about 'that was a gay movie'" ah, but you haven't met Nester yet! - Nester is a rather wealthy, tight trousered gentleman, who lives in the posh apartment block overlooking Marcos' shack - more specifically, overlooking the roof-light of Marcos' shack. The first time we meet him he is watching Marcos with binoculars,while it is implied (but only implied mind) that Marcos is reclining on the sofa, knocking one out over the aforementioned pin-ups!

After Marcos gets into a row with a Taxi driver (the driver doesn't approve of Marcos and his lady getting amorous in the back of his cab) he ends up accidentally killing the driver while the driver is hitting Marcos' girlfriend.  The sensible thing to do at this point would be to go to the police, but Marcos is afraid that his financial position will work against him (no good lawyer = no justice) and so he decides not to.

His life then spirals out of control as more and more people find out about the murders, and he in turn dispatches each one.

In the middle of all of this Nester is incessantly flirting with him at every available opportunity - although he genuinely doesn't seem to notice, thinking that Nester just wants to be his buddy - even when he gets invited to a late night pool at a private club, where Nester pushes him in playfully, then plays splashy-splashy games, buys him a drink, and showers with him!

The gayness is never explicitly stated aloud though, and I can't help but wonder if (despite the swimming scene) it was intended to slip under the radar in a less aware time (in much the same way that Victorian England, seemingly with one mind, managed not to notice the rampant homoeroticism in Oscar Wild's "The Picture of Dorian Grey").

The "cannibalism" (Such as it is) comes in when Marco's finally finds a way to get rid of the bodies (cheap ass perfume and room deodoriser can only cover so much) - he takes them (one carrier bag full at a time) to work, and drops them into the grinder - plastic bag and all (and presumably, teeth, bones hair and all). Luckily for him, the bits of plastic don't even seem to be noticed (much less affect sales) so, by simply avoiding soup from his company, he remains The Not-Cannibal Man!

It's a quirky, slow-paced, character piece as much as anything, and the blossoming "friendship" between Marcos and Nester as as influential to the movie's off-kilter (but not odd) ending as any of the murders - it's a crying shame that the voice performers involved in the English dub (epecially the lead) were such terrible actors, as it was an interesting, and otherwise good, little movie. I would reccomend this one, but not to gore hounds - slaughterhouse footage aside, the image on the DVD cover is the goriest shot in the film.

Body Count: 6
Boob Count: 1 pair
Animal Body Count: 5*
Most Memorable Death: The one on the DVD box (fuck you, art department)

*real cows, drained when stunned or possibly already dead, but if the native-on-a-stick from Cannibal Holocaust counted as a human death, despite the actual killing not being seen, then these count too...

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WEEK 14: The Cannibal Man

Alternate Titles : The Apartment on the 13th Floor, La Semana del Asesino, Week of the Killer

Year: 1978

Reviews / Author Comments due: 27/08/2011

DPP Status: Successfully Prosecuted

BBFC Status: Passed with 3 seconds of cuts in 1993

IMDB: The Cannibal Man

Wikipedia: The Cannibal Man

DVD: US Import

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