“An extremely well-made Euro thriller with welcome social commentary and subtext. Suspenseful, disturbing and graphically violent, the film succeeds in its depictions of both physical and psychological horror…”
DVD VERDICT
Who made it? Directed by Eloy de la Iglesia| Written by Eloy de la Iglesia & Antonio Fos| Director Of Photography Raúl Artigot| Special Effects Manuel Baquero| Music Fernando García Morcillo
Who’s in it? Vicente Parra | Emma Cohen | Eusebio Poncela
If you weren’t watching this the week it came out, you might have been watching…
Unclear release date. Top ten 1972 movies include Diamonds Are Forever / The Godfather / Fiddler On the Roof / The Devils / Steptoe & Son / The French Connection
Production notes and whatnot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannibal_Man
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067732/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cl_sm
What’s it all about?
And we begin! To the accompaniment of some blasting Mariachi horns and some glorious latiny strings, there is no doubt where we are. Well, I mean we could, to be fair, be anywhere in South America. Possibly Spain. In fact, there are certain parts of West London that ring to the Latin beat. So forget I said that.
Because here we are in a very dusty, poor, cheap café and shanty-town world of Franco’s early 70s Madrid.
The credits pan, full of Spanish names, one losing track of all the Pedros, Juans, Martinez’s and Andreas. So we are in dubbed territory, which we’re gonna have fun with. It gives the whole movie a cheap, daytime US soap feel. But don’t let that put you off. There is much broody, chest-hair and gory fun to be had before we hit the Fin.
So the director wants us to know we are in the world Spain’s of the haves and have-nots. Cameras pan across the rich and the poor. Cheap, stone built whitewashed homes skulk and crumble in the shadow of new luxury apartment blocks. Barefoot urchins kick a ball about the building sites while well-to-dos peer from their luscious high-rise balconies.
So let’s join one of the poorer residents. Alone in his crumbling home, he mooches. There really is no other word for his listless pacing, smoking, feet-up idleness.
But he is troubled. The faded bikinied pin-ups tacked to the stone wall are a mild distraction, but nothing more. He is swarthy, open-shirted, five o’clock shadow and tight pants. He has much on his mind, it is clear. And he is being played by, what appears to be Ian Ogilvy auditioning for Wolverine. If you can imagine that.
Then…we spy him from the view of a high-rise balcony. A clean cut chap, the dead spit of the comedy writer Robert Popper, scans the derelict town with some snazzy binoculars. (Btw, if you’re not familiar with Robert Popper, you’re a twit. Stop reading this and watch Look Around You).
The director wants to show off his film-school training so each shot of the listless Ogilvy is clever, abstract, tilted, artsy and thoroughly unnecessary. But heigh-ho.
Ogilvy, bored by his introspection perhaps, finally summons up the tired energy for a meal and heads for soup in a local café. Why soup? Well Ogilvy is something of a soup “connoisseur” working as he does at a local “beef soup factory” where he cleans meaty sluices and sweeps bovine blood from the concrete floor. As Peter Cook once remarked: “It’s not much of a life, is it?”
Ogilvy flirts a little with a waitress of a similar age. She clearly likes him, and what’s not to like? Stubble, sideburns, Farah slacks and a brooding Heathcliffy scowl. That’s Bronte’s Heathcliff. Not this irritating sub-Garfield twat.
She teases him about settling down. To stop running around with young girls. Now we don’t know “how young” the girls are he’s running around with, so we’re not sure if she’s a lusty, frustrated busybody or someone from the Spanish Child Protection Agency. But I don’t think it’s that sort of picture. She gives him some cheap soup – not his favourite luxury brand – and he sips away listlessly.
But hell! Now we get a look-see at his young bit of skirt and it’s clear she’s no toddler (thank the lord) but also certainly someone who could pass for a niece, rather than a partner. Miniskirts, heels, polyester, all very “girly” compared to his flares sideburns and greasy denim. Picture Dennis Waterman going out with Baby Spice.
We join them in a l’il montage on their date, which appears to be the lacklustre-side of romance. Snogging on the subway, whining at each other about marriage plans. He wants to wait ‘til he gets a better job at the factory. Head sluice scrubber, perhaps. Chief carcass disposal executive? It’s not clear what trajectory he is on. There’s not a lot of love lost between these two we sense. If one of her girlfriends should slip her a copy of “He’s Just Not That Into You,” they’d be doing them both a favour.
They’re on their way home and here’s where poor Ogilvy’s trouble begins. Back of a taxicab, they are face-sucking and snogging and feeling up and fingering like nobody’s business. The cab-driver, clearly a sensitive fellow tired of washing spunk off his leatherette, is having none of it. “This is a taxi! Not a bordello!” Much rowing and yelling ensues. Ogilvy wants to snog in peace, his gal doesn’t want a fuss but Mr Cabbie is adamant. Out you go!
Well they’ll leave, among much huffing and complaining and re-zipping of polyester mini-dresses. But the cabbie wants his fare! Fare’s fair, after all. Nope. You throw us out? We no pay! Now the scuffle gets physical and there’s shoving and grabbing on the street. Ogilvy, in a panic, grabs a nearby heavy rocks and K-POW! Right on his noggin. Down the cabbie goes, in a pool of moans and grue. Oopsie. A little heavy-handed p’raps? But they ain’t stickin’ around for the cops so the coital couple hightail it outta dodge.
Death #1.
And now we get our first caption, for time has passed, the moon has revolved, the earth has turned at it is the next day. Or LUNES, as it’s known in Spain. Monday.
Now I’m no prude (giddy hieghts aside, which make my palms go cold and wet and make we want to vomit my bowels out of my nose e.g stuff like this. Jesus…
But we are at Ogilvy’s place of work, and what a world of carnage it is. Who knew so much cow went into so much beef soup? Well of course, I should have. But being a sheltered little snowflake, I have managed to keep my thoughts free of how Daisy gets to the Campbells tin, gaps in my knowledge this movie has plenty of gusto filling in. Horrendous sights of necks, knives, mooing, splattered white coats, struggling and bloodletting as we tour the killing floor of the local “beef soup” factory. Washings of blood, sluice gates, carving knives, big dead eyes and enough horror to inspire a Morrissey album, a follow up and a 24 night run at Caesar’s Palace.
Ogilvy, clearly fairly junior in this outfit, wheelbarrows cuts and slabs and carvings and raw flesh about the sticky concrete rooms with little enthusiasm. What a place to work. He is clearly distracted in his role as junior “dead cow repositioner,” his mood broken when we get a very odd scene of him summoned to see the “chief” in the office upstairs. What is this about? Is he about to be uncovered as a taxi-driver murderer?
Well no. In a huge anti-climax, poor Ogilvy is merely about to be bored to death by his boss, who is all excited about a new contraption he has leased, to take the stress out of mincing meat. The boss is thrilled by this new doo-hickey and keen that Ogilvy, with all his wheel-barrow pushing experience, is put in charge of this gleaming piece of machinery. Oddly, Ogilvy spends most of the meeting trying to give sly sideways glances at the secretary’s thighs. I suppose he may be frustrated from the night before’s taxi-cab hand-jobbus interruptus.
Oh, and the boss adds, sorry about your burned mum. Which is a very odd non sequitur that is referenced once more and then never again. There might be a “motivation” here for Ogilvy’s aspect and mood, but it’s not getting psychoanalysed by us. We are soon heading back to his white stone house and his irritating pleady fiancée.
On the way home Ogilvy bumps into a spindly posh chap walking his dog. Do we know his face? He looks familiar. Hey! This is the Robert Popper lookalike with the binoculars from the opening credits! Do we sense some homoerotic flirting from Popper, interested as he is in greasy desolate Ogilvy and his beef-soaked denim? Hmm. Could be…
But enough of that (we’ll meet more of him later) because the news is out! Spanish newspaper headlines scream “CAB DRIVER MURDERED!” Or possibly “SLAIN!” That seems to be a more tabloid word. People are always SLAIN in tabloids.
But this is bad news for Ogilvy. He’s in the frame for the murder if the cops investigate. He chooses to debate “what to do” with his youthful fiancée. Sadly for him however, she’s the honest and sweet type whose first suggestion is to go to the cops and confess. Ogilvy wants none of this, knowing as he does it’ll be 20 years in a Madridian slammer. They fight. They argue! They debate! Confess! Hide! Confess! Run away! Confess! And so on. They escape coming to blows physically by coming to blows metaphorically as they end up having sex instead. And what odd, almost silent, motionless sex it is. A clock ticks throughout, incredibly loudly. I didn’t go to film school so I don’t know what this means. But tick tock, dick cock, on it goes.
When they awake, sadly Ogilvy’s fiancée has not changed her mind about confessing all to the cops. Ogilvy is still having none of it, more desperate now. “Police only listen to the rich!” he says. Which seems harsh, but still. He calms her down. He puts his hands around her…neck. Oopsie. Much squirming and gurgling as Ogilvy strangles his fiancée. Her eyes bug out, she strains and writhes. But to no good. He ain’t going to choky for no dame, goddamit. She falls to the floor.
Death number #2. You’re gonna need to keep count here.
Now. A conundrum. One dead cabbie being scoured for fingerprints in a morgue is one thing. But a dead fiancée on the kitchen tiles? Not great. Ogilvy picks her up and, with a careless “donk” on the head as they brush past a spanner hanging on the wall, he shoves her lifeless corpse in the bedroom. Phew. Hopefully, that’ll be that. A hahahahaha etc.
MARTES. Or “Tuesday” to you and me.
Ogilvy is back at work. An older chap is joining him on a slow, West Wingy walk-and-talk, sharing stories about life in the beef soup business. But it wouldn’t be a chat without mentioning the stinking stench of Ogilvy’s charred dead mother during her recent “accident.” Hmn. Tact is clearly not a skill prized in the abattoir as much as hacking a cow’s neck open.
But here, here! Look, it’s the new machine the boss promised. Now this looks as little like a modern beef-mincer as you could imagine. A huge grey box with beeps and lights and knobs, it would be more at home in the laboratory of Scotty from Star Trek. Or perhaps Obadiah Blank.
The older chap gives Ogilvy a once over on the machine he is now in charge of integrating into the business. It’s not tricky, to be frank. Open a door, shove in bits of dead cow, close door. Press “auto mince-o-matic” and off it goes, grinding and churning like Beyoncé at a butter farm. We see clear tubes fill with “gravy.” It’s a technological marvel, sure. But sigh. Even less for Ogilvy to do, now he doesn’t even need a wheelbarrow. But that’s progress. (See England in 1760 and the sudden rise in unemployment).
Home, and Ogilvy is bothered by the corpse of his fiancée taking up half the divan. So he shoves her under the bed. That’s better. What could go wrong?
But knock-knock? Who’s this? It’s his flatmate. And brother. He scuttles him out of “Corpseville” and hurries him to the café where they share a drink. But something is up with Ogilvy, and all the flirting from the waitress is not going to snap him out of his troubled mood.
Well you can’t keep a secret like a double murder for long, so Ogilvy pours his heart out to his brother. Maybe he will understand?
Nope, of course not. He’s not a nut-job. Another big fight, as older brother pleads with Ogilvy to turn himself in. This is becoming something of a theme, and Ogilvy has no time for it. Grabbing up the spanner from the rack, still tangled with his dead fiancée’s hair,
Ogilvy decides to really “explain” himself to his brother and BOOM. BASH. BONK. SQUIRT. SCREAM. THUD. The brother goes down in a heap, spanner sticking out of his face.
Death #3.
Wednesday. Or rather, MIERLOLAS.
Back from another day in the cow-slicing trade, Ogilvy (now with 2 stinking corpses getting warm and maggoty in his boudoir) bumps once again into the sexiest dog walker in town. The flirting is heavier now, Popper clearly wanting some stubbly denim action from his neighbour. But hey again, Ogilvy is keen to get home to mop up the leaking innards. But…knock-knock? Oh who is it now? It’s getting more tiresome than Noel’s House Party. It’s his sister in law. She’s looking for her brother. Has Ogilvy seen him? There are some sweaty errrms and uhhms… What can he say? She wants to check the bedroom for him but Ogilvy distracts her. She asks for an aspirin and some water, taking advantage of the fussing about in the kitchen to burst into the bedroom, hoping to find his brother with a surprise wedding gift perhaps?! No. Just a dead body.
I’ll give you a quid if you can tell me what happens next?
Correct! Ogilvy grabs up a cleaver and it’s a huge juicy slice across the poor woman’s neck. Very leaky, very sloppy, very “blood all over the place.” Blimey, he’s only gawn and done it again.
Death #4. Sigh. Surely there can be no more?
After rearranging the corpses on the bed so they aren’t quite so stare-y, Ogilvy needs some well- deserved air and to get his thoughts together. Outside he goes, only to find – yep, you guessed it – the creepy dog walker once again. This time he appears to be turning from Robert Popper to a Buffalo Bill type from Silence Of The Lambs, played memorably by Ted Levine. Flirting still, he convinces Ogilvy to join him for a drink at a nearby bar. Some passing cops don’t like the look of these two shifty so-and-sos (and who can blame them), so they get hassled by the pigs, as we used to say in the 80s. Popper is left alone as he is clearly wealthy (remember? Police only listen to the rich) but Ogilvy is made to present his “papers.” Tch, one rule for camp dog walkers, a whole other rule for quadruple murderers.
JUEVES (That’s, I think Thursday. Keep up).
We’ll do the next one quickly as you’re getting the idea.
The only startling thing about this 5th repetitious carve-up is that, for reasons passing understanding, suddenly the dubbing vanishes and we get subtitles instead. This rather comically demonstrates the huge difference between the actor’s voices and their dubbers. Proposterous nonsense.
Anyhoo, it’s his fiancee’s dad. He’s looking for her. Is that her purse? Oh for fuck’s sake…and it’s a delicious Cleaver to the face, a la Bay Of Blood, and down he goes. Delicious.
Death #5.
Surely that’s the lot? Well let’s keep going and see what happens…
Well now all the slaughter-house beef-soup preamble comes into play for our Ogilvy has an idea. He begins to use his daily jobbing skills to start chopping up the body parts. In the dead of night, a very suspicious Ogilvy arrives with a small sports holdall. To the gleaming machine he scuttles and then starts loading the dead body parts into the mincer. Mmm. Nice. Disposed of successfully, and now with a plan of sorts, home he goes to continue the chopping. Few more trips to the mincer and he should be home free. What this will do to the flavour of the soup does not appear to be a big concern to our hero.
VIERNES (That’s Friday to you people).
Morning once more at the café. Popper is back, asking probing questions that are unsettling our hero. (Hero? Ed). Plus the meaty offal in his holdall is causing Popper’s dog to get a bit jumpy and sniffy. Ogilvy brushes him off as he’s late to fork a load more Father In Law into the mincer.
On his way home, Ogilvy realises that his house is going to be whiffing like Fred West’s greenhouse if he’s not careful, so we get a delightfully comic scene as he turns up at the local Pharmacy.
In a not at all suspicious manner, he orders – in a scene reminiscent of The Two Ronnies – 4 bottles of cooking-odour spray. Oh and 10 bottles of “whatever cologne” the pharmacist has.
Believe me, the pharmacist is not off loading any Calvin Klien or Chanel. This stuff looks rank and cheap and stinky. But of course, exactly the sort of old-lady over-powering scent Ogilvy needs if he is to fumigate his apartment.
Wild dogs greet Ogilvy as he returns to his door, whiffing as they clearly are the rotting maggoty stench of rotting fiancée.
He sprays the house, he scents the furniture, the whole stink clearly being too much for his delicate nostrils. Time to head out while the smell settles. And where better than back to flirting in the café.
And what flirting it is! Rosa – clearly with a pash on our hero – is all too keen to cook him up some supper, resulting in a rather stirring moment when she splashes milk and eggs on his jeans and then proceeds to slowly wipe his thigh in a manner Emmanuel would have considered “a bit much.” But Ogilvy can’t been jumping into bed with Rosa, as much as he might want to. He has a good 1.5 dead bodies left to chop up and mince. Focus, man! Focus!
The movie has now fallen into a predictable pattern of café/soup/interruption/murder/mince-meat and dog-walker flirting. So it’s time for some more dog walker flirting. Now Popper appears to be making progress as an offer of “coming back to my apartment for a swim” goes down famously. As famously in fact as Rosa was promising to do about 2 scenes ago.
So off in Popper’s Porsche and to his luxury apartment when the whole sketch goes rather soft gay porn. Lots of bare chests and frolicking and swimming trunks and manly showering and flesh and lustful gazes. Hell, they even toss a beach ball back and forth at each other for fuck’s sake.
Which brings us. Inevitably, to SABADO. Sabado night being all right for fighting. Or murdering café staff (spoilers).
So Ogilvy, for the last time we hope as this motion picture is asking the audience to deal with a hell of lot of repetition, is heading back to work with another holdall full of body parts. Regretfully however he stumbles across the Spanish touring cast of West Side Story: Leather jackets, finger clicks, sleeveless t-shirts and greasy quiffs, they ain’t happy that Ogilvy has gone all “up in the world” from his humble roots.
Now. This I missed. Are these other soup-factory workers? Irritated and betrayed that “one of their own” should be in charge of the magical mincing machine? I don’t know. But there’s some of that tiresome bully “throw the bag to one another” antics that – having been bullied at school – I recall simply having to stand and wait out until the idiots got bored. You’re meant to chase the bag from thug to thug as they laugh and toss it between them. But Christ, who can be bothered. A little suspense as they pull at the zip – maybe half a fiancée and a third of a father-in-law might spill out all over the dock (as the Mayor of Amity Island once said)? But no. Ogilvy grabs his bag and he’s off. Back to work to feed his family into the great contraption.
We have about 30mins left. Where the hell is this going?
This time, as Ogilvy scoops loved ones into the machine, his colleagues start questioning his behaviour, his odd hours, his holdall and his general suspicious as all get out behaviour. They check his bag. Is he stealing meat? Well, I mean LITERALLY the opposite. But they let him go. Despite the machine owners reporting “odd substances” in the mixture. Hmn.
And now, at LAST! We get the feeble explanation of the movie title. For what should Ogilvy rather predictably do but turn up AGAIN at the local café and ask for a bowl of beef soup. “This one you will like!” Rosa reassures him. As, it urns out in the most predictable twist in the world, he is now chowing-down on his own manufactured soup.
Yep. He’s spooning in mouthfuls of delicious brother, aromatic spoonfuls of fiancée, chunky bits of father-in-law and delicious slivers of sister-in-law. Yum. Overcome with disgust, understandably, he spits it all out and runs from the café, all queasy and sweating.
So if you were hoping for a movie about cannibalism…that was it. That was the bit. Rubbish.
But we have a few more minutes to wrap up this nonsense so, hell, why not have…yep! Popper the dog-walker turn up one more time! Oh do fuck off mate.
DOMINGO. Sunday.
Given this movie is also known as “Week Of The Killer,” SURELY we must be in the last gasps of this silly flick. Well, we are.
There isn’t much more to wrap up. We need another murder – obviously, it’s been minutes since the last one – and we need some kind of redemption perhaps. Or maybe a dark 1970s ending where Ogilvy goes on to another town to murder more innocent family members? (See Michael Winner’s “Death Wish”)
Well it’s Sunday. Rosa is all dressed up for church. She makes excuses with her café boss. With a lot of Spanishy arm waving she says she’ll be back after mass. Hmn. We don’t know much Rosa, but with all the dairy thigh massaging, we are not picturing her as the nun type.
Nope. Here she is at Ogilvy’s house. She has turned up for a quicky. Clearly the eggs and milk moment has got her pulse racing and she fancies a bit more of that swarthy Dennis Waterman action.
Which would be fine…but what’s that smell? Kitchen cleaner mixed with Estee Lauder Youth Dew? Something’s not right.
But that’s not going to stop her so she and Ogilvy get it on and there is some on-the-couch sexy time, afternoon-delight whatnot. They have sex, in other words. They smoke. She dresses. She wants to “air” the spare bedroom (oopsie!) and wants to open all the doors and windows. Ogilvy is having none of it and tries to distract her. (Can you see where this might be going?)
As she gazes around the grotty stone home, she spots knives, blood spots, machetes, holdalls, spanners… Something is rotten in the state of Madrid. She tries to leave. Ogilvy knows she has seen too much. He pleads with her to stay. She struggles. And…
Well yep, we’ve death #5.
Banging her head against the wall, her eyes go a bit crossed and down she goes. Blimey, this mincer is going to need extra batteries.
Now Ogilvy is finally losing it. Five deaths? He only wanted to make a decent beef soup, goddamit! Out he goes into the city, prowling, walking, funky music, angles, off focus. We’re in twisted Saturday Night Fever territory: Rock, jazz, Hammond, wah wah guitar. He stumbles about. Lost. Desperate. Alone. And responsible for 5 murders and at least half a main starter course.
We end, as expected, with the dog walker once more. His guiding light, his guardian angel, his potential gay-lover. Whatevs.
Back to mine? And off they go to his palatial high-rise flat. It’s lush, it’s rich, it’s swanky. It’s exactly how the “other half” live. They drink. They lounge. Ogilvy spots a fancy pair of binoculars. What’s this..?
Oops. He gazes out, focusing and re-focusing on the street below…only to find that his house is in direct view of the apartment. Popper has seen it ALL! Oh shit.
Are we about to face murder #6? “You can’t get away with it!” Popper cries. Ogilvy smashes a glass, lunges at Popper! Another murder? No…NO!
Ogilvy collapses in tears about his actions. Popper understands. He wants to help. How much does he know? We can’t be sure. But he won’t report him. Ogilvy must take this in his own hands…
It’s all a bit cryptic and poetic. What now? Guilty? Innocent? Only Ogilvy can choose.
And the movie ends as a tearful Ogilvy departs, wanting to confess, wanting to rid his conscience of the torment. Stumbling and wracked with regret and remorse, Ogilvy stops only to call the police at a pay-phone and admit his crimes.
Popper watches from his heights as Ogilvy walks a lonely resigned walk to his crumbling house and slumps outside, awaiting the wail of sirens.
A trumpet, for no reason, appears to play – from nowhere – “Nowhere Man” by The Beatles.
Which one assumes is meaningful. Or something.
Fin.
Is it any good?
Well there’s a question. Sold-a-pup title aside (this movie has less cannibalism than an episode of Midsommer Murders) it’s not at all bad. I mean sure, screamingly repetitive, tediously samey, plodding and tortuous in its round-and-round cycle of soup, visitor, argument, murder, café, dog walker, soup visitor murder…and so on and bloody so on. However it is not without its charms and the company who have put it together have done their best to make it as engaging and suspenseful as they can.
The scene setting is terrific and we get a genuine sense of the time and place, the crumbling lives of the poor and the luxury spa weekends of the rich. Although to be fair the whole “us vs them” motif is a little laboured. Is he really an innocent man tortured by the authorities for his lack of status? Is this an indictment of Franco’s 1970s Spanish politics and economics? A rich tapestry highlighting the meaningful struggles in 1970s Europe? Well it tries…but no it isn’t. He’s a horny cab-driver-pummelling murderer. So it’s difficult for us to see this as a rich-vs-poor parable. The alleged “satire of Spain under Franco,” I’m “franco-ly” not seeing. Perhaps, like many projects the writer set out to make a valuable point about political oppression? But given the big bucks being raked in by Craven’s Last House On The Left shocker and Deep River Savages, bottled it and shoved in as much pre-Friday The 13th gore-hound splurge and gore as the censors could handle and left the post-modern reading to el cine-students
Maybe there is much of Ogilvy’s troubled childhood about his horribly burnt mother and the inevitable trauma, but given this is all left on the cutting room floor and we just get some gruesome asides from his co-workers, it’s hardly set up as a motive, or even an explanation.
The DoP (director of photography), guided one assumes by the director, is showing off his Movie School chops with as many varieties of artsy zooms and odd-angle shots as he can, however if this is an attempt to show us a mind off-kilter, it misses the mark. It looks, to be honest, more like a sign of a camera off tripod. However one commends the effort to lens this flick in a creative way, rather than the stock, fixed, mid-shot soap-opera it could have been. So hats-off for the effort.
The overall look is lovely if we’re using The Cannibal Man as a time-capsule of the era. All the denim, the grime, the medallions, the sports cars and sideburns firmly place it in the early seventies and it’s all captured with a nasty realism. You’ll want to fling open your windows after watching to get rid of the smell of roll-ups and Hai Karate.
As we’ve covered, director Eloy de la Iglesia takes great relish to go with his beef. Or perhaps it’s barbeque sauce. But there is no holding back as we see the jusxtaposition of the gruesome murders of Ogilvy’s close family mirrored by the hacking and sawing of the abbetoir. A lesson or message here, one presumes. We are happy with seeing some macabre slaughtering for a bowl of mid-priced soup, but balk at the same treatment of innocent humans? There’ll be some vegetarians wandering about Spain who will have had their ideology twisted by the relentless slaughter-house sluice shots of the killing floor. Or at least, one hopes, some omnivores like myself hesitating before we tuck into our Sunday roast, which is just as it should be.
One imagines the sudden cuts out of dubbing into Spanish are a production error or perhaps a problem with the transfer from celluloid to MP4. It’s hard to picture the jarring cut between dubs and language to have been in the final print. Unless this grotty art-house 42nd street drive-in slasher is even cheaper than it appears.
Style wise, we are definitely in the odd cross-over world of the day-time Euro-soap opera and the gay softcore porno. The sets, the outdoor shots, the lighting and even the performances have that one-take woody-ness. But it’s all forgiven as the whole piece has a certain earnest charm. This has not been knocked together over a weekend for a fast buck. We are in the company of a writer/director with a message beyond “look how nasty this is,” and even if the message is a little lost among the soup and sluice, this is far from a waste of your time.
Nasty?
Hoo boy! What did we count? See, told you to pay attention. I think it was 5 deaths in total. We had a a rock to the skull, a throat slit, a cleaver to the face, a battering against the wall and a spanner to the head. And each are delivered with everything the horror fan wants. The cuts and slashes and poundings are slow and deliberate, the claret gushes far too bright and red and there are plenty of stomach-turning close-ups of corpses and mashed up faces with cleavers sticking out of them. Honestly, we are on Episode 15 of “Getting The Banned Back Together” and it’s fair to say that the cleaver-to-the-head attack of Cannibal Man is right up there with Bava’s Bay Of Blood for “ewwwww!”
So gore, yes. Bloodlust, yes. Creepy solo-male murders yes. But there’s nothing “nasty” in tone or mood. As we said before about the western “Enter The Devil”, none of this is gratuitous, porny, lascivious or pervy. It’d be very difficult to get any twisted, drity-raincoat turn-ons from the this plodding and depressing spiral of one lonely man’s descent into self-preserving murder as he seems as disgusted by the whole lot as we are.
Ban Worthy?
Well let’s look at the numbers: A quick review of the movies on my list show 8, count ‘em EIGHT, movies with a Cannibal in the title. As we’ve discussed, when the National Viewers & Listeners Association got together and roped in a queasy and vote-chasing Department Of Public Prosecutions, there was something of a moral panic and the department was keen to be seen to be “banning this sick filth.” As an inevitable consequence, having “Cannibal” in the title was likely to see the VHS grabbed and shoved in a bin-bag by a copper on time-and-a-half.
Research doesn’t help me here but given the movie was also known as a much more relevant title “Week Of The Killer” (and the ludicrous “Apartment on the 13th Floor”) it could be said that a rental-hungry distributor re-titled it to get a bit of publicity. I mean, the guy has a mouthful of beef soup for Chrissakes. I’ve had more of a “Green Inferno” in a spinach and broccoli smoothie.” The murders are bloody however and the cameraman lingers so it’s far from family fare. But banned? Oh give over.
What Does It Remind Me Of?
Well there’s a bit of everything here. We have the cleaver-heavy pounding of Bava’s “Bay Of Blood;” we have the creepy stranger with binoculars which – at a big push – could put is in Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” territory. As said, it reeks of a 1970s men’s fragrance commercial with a heavy Spanish Daytime soap aesthetic. The plodding poe-faced mundanity would appease fans of Michael Rooker’s performance in “Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer.”
Oh and finally, there is as much beach-ball tossing, swimming trunk wearing and swimming pool splashing as a Cliff Richard beach movie. There’s a combination for you.
Where Can I See it?
Trailers and such are all over YouTube but for a decent print, head over to AmazonPrime and for a £2.49 slice of your wages, you can download the flick for a night.
letsgetthebannedbacktogether.uk 