South Park Creator's First Film!

Our review for Cannibal: The Musical needs a bit of prefacing. One of our contributors, while working for another (unnamed) content provider, rented and reviewed Cannibal. At the time, it was just another title in the Troma library. About three months after this review was penned, the star/director/producer/writer of Cannibal - one Trey Parker - hit the big-time with his animated show South Park. Since then, Trey (along with co-creator Matt Stone) has become one hot ticket. in other words, this glowing review was written before South Park mania swept the country (and before Cannibal's theatrical release which starts this month in selected cities). Sure we're tooting our own horn, but what we're really illustrating here is TapeHead's willingness to wade through tons of crap that nobody wants to watch in order to find you a nugget of goodness. And now, without further ado . . . Our review of Cannibal: The Musical . . .

Troma Films are the maverick geniuses responsible for such classics as The Toxic Avenger, Surf Nazis Must Die! and Tromeo and Juliet. They have a long-standing (and much deserved) reputation for providing films of absolutely no social or intellectual worth. So when I saw the Troma stamp of approval on Cannibal: The Musical I immediately took it home. I envisioned scantily-clad jungle cannibal girls dancing around a greased corpse on a spit - some gratuitous sex and violence. But that's not what I got. Because not only is Cannibal: The Musical one of the most un-Troma movies Troma has ever distributed, it's quite simply one of the best, most original, surprising, and absolutely hilarious movies I've seen in years.

Surprisingly tasteful for a cannibal movie, Cannibal: The Musical isn't the story of jungle dwellers; or of the Donner Party; or even something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It tells the tale of Alferd Packer, the only man in the history of the United States to be convicted of the crime of cannibalism.

Packer, a simple man with a song in his heart and an undying love for his horse (don't worry, he ain't Catherine the Great), stumbles across a group of miners preparing to go to Colorado Territory for the gold rush. Unfortunately, their guide is struck by lightning and killed. Rather than view the incident as a bad omen, the miners elect Packer as their new guide. On their way to becoming hopelessly lost, the Packer Party has run-ins with horse-jacking French trappers and the Japanese-speaking "Nihonjin" Indian tribe. Eventually, the frostbitten and starving group must resort to cannibalism in order to survive.

The musical numbers lift this already funny film into hernia-inducing hilarity. The actors play everything totally straight as they sing and dance through one horrible circumstance after another. And the songs themselves are ten times more sing-alongable than anything from The Nightmare Before Christmas. From the French trapper's theme song (YoHooo! Rip their skin off with my knife!!) to the Oklahoma-esque finale', Hang The Bastard, Cannibal skewers the musical genre with dead-on precision.

It's hard to do justice to Cannibal: the Musical with such a short column. And it's probably even harder to convince you that a movie called Cannibal: The Musical is worth watching. But it is. Exhilarating and original, full of sight gags, puns, and classic slapstick, Cannibal reminded me of the first time I saw a Zucker Brothers movie. For those in doubt: My fiancee, who usually leaves the room when I turn on the VCR, not only watched Cannibal all the way through, but thoroughly enjoyed it as well!

Cannibal: The Musical would get my highest rating, had I a rating system. Rent it now!

-Trent Haaga