Cannibal Girls

1973, Starring Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Ronald Ulrich. Directed by Ivan Reitman (Scary Pictures).

In some ways, Cannibal Girls is completely unremarkable. Standard 1970s horror trash about a couple that encounters some hungry honeys in a small community they are unable to escape from& mddash a typical mix of nudity and gore. However from a Canadian standpoint, Cannibal Girls is one of our most important films for a variety of reasons. If any film deserves to be labeled as Canuxploitation, it is this little gem. Ivan Reitman, best known for comedies like Ghostbusters and Meatballs, made this film (his second) in only 10 days with future SCTV performers Andrea Martin, and Eugene Levy. Levy is seen at the height of 1973 fashion, with a large afro and moustache.

The film takes place in Farnhamville, a small Canadian town that Cliff (Levy) and his new girlfriend Gloria (Martin) are traveling through. Their car breaks down in the snow, and while their car is being fixed at the town's service station, they meet a guy who tells them his sister is missing, and shows them her picture. He also recommends a motel down the road that they can stay at while they are waiting.

Mrs Wainright, the owner of the motel, lets Cliff and Gloria in on Farnhamville's ugly secret. Once upon a time, three young girls lived together in a nearby house and would bring men home to kill and eat them. In a flashback sequence, we see just that as three men have sex with the girls, and are subsequently killed. The last man is chained to the bed while the women pour blood over his chest and eat him alive. The couple is shocked by the story, but Mrs Wainright explains that the murders happened "a long time ago" and now the house is a local eatery. She even offers to take them there for dinner. They agree, and Cliff and Gloria go off to relax in their room. Gloria falls asleep while Cliff sings her a song (he wants to be a rock star) and when she wakes, Mrs Wainright drops them off at the restaurant.

They are welcomed by Reverend Alex St. John, a strange bearded figure in a top hat who looks like some kind of carnival magician. The Reverend gives them a tour of the house, including a stop in the house's own "chamber of horrors" where more grisly stories about the house are revealed. This scene is especially fun, as the camera travels over each object while the Reverend narrates grisly tales. Of course, the final objects of horror are long knives "said to have been used by a group of cannibals that once inhabited the house." While Cliff and Gloria cautiously eat their meal (served by three familiar girls), Reitman interjects some footage of people around town who are eating large hunks of meat under an imposing picture of the Reverend.

Ronald Ulrich is downright unsettling as the Reverend, and his addition adds a touch of class to the picture. He's almost like a Vincent Price character, quoting Shakespeare and vaugely demonic poetry, as he flips his cape and contorts his face.

Once the meal is finished, Gloria and Cliff enjoy some wine, and the girls sing a hymn. The Reverend convinces them to stay the night, and it isn't long before he enters their bedroom with the three girls in tow. Cliff is chained to the bedposts, and the Reverend tries to hypnotize Gloria to kill her boyfriend with a knife. Breaking his grip, she escapes from the house. Although the girls chase her, Gloria manages to hitch a ride with a doctor, who takes her home and gives her a sedative.

When Gloria awakens again, she is back in her motel bed, with Cliff. Realizing that her experience at the house has been nothing but a bad dream, the two go for a walk around the town to relax. Gloria still wants to leave, but Cliff tells her they can't, since the car is still being fixed and there are no buses leaving until the next day. As they sit on the curb talking, the Sheriff arrests them for "vagrancy." But instead of taking them to the police station, Gloria is shocked to see hat the Sheriff has brought them to the Reverend's restaurant...

The first time I saw this film, I was fairly young and took it as dead serious. The scenes with Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin are sort of oddly funny, I guess. They seem to be gently parodying the standard horror movie couple. One of the funnier parts has Gloria coaxing the car into running again by telling the car that she loves it. It is easy to mistake much of the humour in the film, since everything is extremely deadpan.

This was Reitman's second feature film, done after the sex comedy Foxy Lady. For his next films, he turned to producing David Cronenberg's They Came From Within and Rabid as well as William Fruet's Death Weekend.

If there is such as thing as "breaking into" the American B-movie market, then this was the first Canadian films to ever accomplish this. At Cannes, Reitman managed to sell the picture to American International Pictures, home of schlock king Roger Corman. A little unsure of what to do with the picture, the studio added a special warning buzzer to the film, before the gore scenes. When something gruesome was going to happen, the buzzer would go off, and squeamish members of the audience would know to close their eyes, until a doorbell sound was heard, indicating the scene was over. Does this gimmick sound like it was ripped off from a William Castle movie? Actually it was stolen from a TV-pilot called Chamber of Horrors which was released theatrically. In that film, a "horror horn" was sounded before the scary scenes. Regardless of who stole what gimmick, Cannibal Girls went on to be a big hit on the drive-in circuit. It should be noted that the home video version of the film does not contain the buzzers.

Surprisingly, Cannibal Girls is unabashedly Canadian. Cliff's car has a University of Toronto sticker on it, and Gloria even tries to call her parents in Toronto. Although Farnhamville is a fictional town, it is actually Richmond Hill, Ontario. If one of the distinct aspects of Canadian films is the importance placed upon communities, then Canadian horror films should involve the loss of community. Unlike Black Christmas, which involves the systematic removal of the community by a killer, Cannibal Girls presents the audience with an community-wide "conspiracy" of cannibalism which threatens to assimilate Cliff and Gloria, a notion that is as equally terrifying as it is uniquely Canadian. Cliff is certainly not the gung-ho Hollywood hero of this film. Gloria appears as stronger and more heroic, since she does not fall under the Reverend's spell as easily. The ending, although I don't want to give it away for those who have not seen it, has the same kind of tragic finale favoured by Canadian horror directors.

That said, there are some unsatisfying plot elements to Cannibal Girls. Who is the Reverend? At what point did he join the three cannibals? Despite the unanswered questions and a few strange actions of Cliff and Gloria, Cannibal Girls remains essential viewing for Canuxploitation fans? an extremely low budget picture, with a story seemingly right from the pages of an EC horror comic book. Sure it's trash, but it's restrained Canadian trash, all in good fun.