Too Many Titles!!

Fine Middle-Aged Cannibals?

I couldn't decide what to call this post. I didn't want to go the Sweeney Todd route, though I'll certainly be talking about that in a moment (though I doubt either of these people were breaking out into clever, darkly humored song). I almost did "The Brazilian Empenada Massacre;" "Waiter, There's a Tooth in My Empenada;" "Wrong Turn 7: Carnivale" (think about that one a sec...); "Honey, I Cooked the Nannies..." Then I thought about how awful a story it really is. And went right back to thinking up horrible jokes to make about it. Because... well, more on that in a moment. Let's see what I'm going on about, first.

The Mirror is reporting that in Brazil, Jorge Silveira (50), wife Isobel (51) and mistress Bruna da Silva (25) lured women to their home to work as nannies. The women were killed and cooked into empenadas which were eaten by the trio and sold to folks in the hood.

As Mrs. Lovett might say, "Times is hard..." That's Jorge and Isobel in the photo. I guess they don't have Clairol in Brazil. Of course eating human flesh - no matter how mouth-wateringly delicious it may seem - is a depraved act in modern society. And they weren't all TCM about it. They did it... are you ready? Really, really ready? They did it for their religion. The couple reportedly belong to a cult which exhorts ritualistic cannibalism as a "purification ritual." Once again, religion proves to be the completely sane and sensible route to take... NOT! And I make horrible jokes about it because if I didn't laugh, I'd lose my mind over how awful people can be to one another, especially under the influence of religion.

Many years ago, I had just started a new retail job and was making new friends; figuring out what clique I was going to be in (and boy, was I), etc. News broke in Philadelphia about a woman escaping the basement dungeon of serial kidnapper/rapist/murderer Gary Heidnik. The reports in those first few days were horror upon horror and it all became to awful and people started making sick jokes, as they do. We were in the store's basement, stocking the Toy department before the grand opening and I several other department managers had gotten friendly and we start in with the Heidnik jokes. The ones that laughed were in the clique. Not because we were the "mean girls," but because we dealt with the horror through humor. A very sweet current co-worker and Facebook friend called me out on my dark streak by finally recognizing Krampus as my profile picture, because of her heritage. "A lot of your posts and pictures are dark and weird and I have no frame of reference for them," she wrote. I completely understand. 

And speaking of humor, horror and cannibalism, my favorite musical role of my varied stage career is undoubtedly Sweeney in Sondheim's darkly humored operetta Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. One of the few shows my mother saw and said "I forgot it was you." Of course this story echoes the plot of Sweeney Todd, or at least some of it. Murder and human pies for sale. Hell, there's even a mistress the wife lets play. It doesn't get much more salacious than that. Or funnier. Here's my favorite number from Sweeney Todd (and the one I learned first):

Here are a few other references I refrained from making:




This next one may be NSFW



That has be the strangest soundtrack for a horror movie, ever...



A strange, strange film...



One of my favorite oddball indie comedies, ever...

Okay... I'm done. I promise. Except, I think I want a meat-lover's pizza, now.

More, anon.
Prospero

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Madmen, Cannibals and Slashers

Why does Jason Voorhees get a doll? Yes, he's going onto his 12th incarnation (in 3D, no less), but there are plenty of other Horror movie killers more worthy of a doll.

I've already recently talked about the Father (or is it Mother) of the Slasher genre, Hitchcock's still effective and nearly perfectly-made Psycho. At the time, Hollywood was in a tizzy. the Master of Suspense making a cheap indie horror movie? What was he thinking? Indeed. Psycho ended up being quite an extraordinary film that literally changed the movie-going habits of America. Richard Matheson wrote both the novel and screenplay, based on the notorious Wisconsin necrophiliac, Ed Gein.

13 years later, Kim Henkal and Tobe Hooper would base their screenplay on Gein, as well. This time, the story was set in Texas and the Gein character was an entire family of sadistic cannibals who lured strangers to their remote farm where they would be terrorized before being butchered. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a drive-in sensation and started Hooper's directing career (which sadly peaked with Poltergeist). Of course, the most memorable member of this mad clan was a character simply known as Leatherface (so named because he wears a mask made of other human faces stitched together). The interesting think about TTCM is that we never really see any of the violence. We see its aftermath and we hear that terrible chainsaw running, but really awful stuff happens off screen, leaving the view to conjure up his or her own horrifying images, proving that less is, indeed, more.

TTCM has had several sequels, though only Hooper's own is any good. sadly, it wasn't until 1986 when Hooper and Henkal reunited for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, the truly nightmarish sequel set mostly in the access tunnels beneath an abandoned amusement park. Bill Mosely (more about him in a bit) plays a Chop-Top, one of the most vile and repulsive and still fascinating characters in Horror history. And the scene where Leatherface tries to make our heroine waer her own mask? Stupefyingly horrific.

I saw TTCM2 in a theater, and remembering feeling the same nightmarish numbness I felt after seeing Apocalypse Now and another movie I'll talk about in a bit.

Now - you may be asking yourself about the inclusion of a certain 1978 classic Horror movie and it's immortal antagonist, a certain M.M. I feel like I need to let you know that I am deliberately omitting this particular film from this particular post because of an upcoming, preplanned post of it's own.

Director Bob Clark (A Christmas Story), got his start in Horror. He'd previously made a weird zombie picture called Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, but in 1974 he gave us Black Christmas, a gruesome little tale about a killer stalking a sorority. Olivia Hussey (Romeo and Juliet); Keir Dullea (2001); Margot Kidder (Superman: The Movie); John Saxon (another film yet to come) and the fabulous Andrea Martin (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) star in this low budget, yet very effective movie:

Don't bother with the 2006 remake.

Last House on the Left director Wes Craven returned in 1977 with a gruesome little story inspired by ancient Scottish history called The Hills Have Eyes. A family on their way to California in a motor-home breaks down in the desert, only to be descended upon by a clan of mutant cannibals. It starred the would would be Elliot's mom in E.T., Dee Wallace and the extraordinary-looking Michael Berryman:

In 1980, Sean S. Cunningham got his and Kevin Bacon's career off to a start with a nasty little
slasher movie called Friday the 13th. We all know that Jason (see the doll, above) is not the antagonist in the the franchise's progenitor, but rather his mother (played hilariously over-the-top by former 50's B-Lister Betsy Palmer). The only worse performance is from 'Final Girl' Adrienne King, who doesn't survive past the first ten minutes of the sequel. Tom Savini (Dawn of the Dead; From Dusk Till Dawn) provided the gruesome and gory FX.

1980 also saw William Lustig's version of Joe Spinell's Maniac, loosely inspired by The Son of Sam. At the time, it was reviled for it's over-the-top violence, but Horror fans were really excited by Make-up Master Tom Savini's state-of-the-art FX.

That's Savini getting his head blown off in the opening shots, by the way. It would be another four years before an iconic, unkillable killer would grace the silver screen.

Legendary director Wes Craven created a new franchise and a new killer in 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street:

Not only did Nightmare... bring us Freddy Krueger (thereby making a Horror icon out of actor Robert Englund), it was the feature debut of uber-talented and uber-eccentric Johnny Depp. And of course, John Saxon is not only our heroine Nancy's dad, he's the chief of police with a big secret.

There were plenty of terrible slasher movies in the 80's (and they'll get their own post, as well).
Though 1986 brought us the chilling Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. Starring Michael Rooker (Slither), was a brutal and terrifying look into the mind of a madman:

But it wouldn't be until 1991 that a cannibalistic serial killer again caught audience's attention. Previously portrayed by Bryan Cox in Michael Mann's Manhunter, Anthony Hopkins won an Academy Award for his performance as Doctor Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lector in Jonathan Demme's riveting adaption of Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs, despite having less than 30 minutes of actual screen time.

Then in 1995, director David Fincher directed the only movie I have never been able to bring myself to watch again, Se7en. This is only the third movie that made me feel like I was watching someone else's nightmare, and it disturbed me from the opening credits. Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin Spacey star in this exceptionally creepy tale of a serial killer using the Seven Deadly Sins as his M.O. Set in an unnamed city wher it constantly rains, Se7en is the single most disturbing movie I have ever seen.

Rocker-turned-director Rob Zombie made a loving homage to those 70's horror flicks with House of 1000 Corpses in 2003. Undeservedly maligned, House... hearkens back to TTCM in a tale about a family of maniacs luring strangers in to torture and kill them. And those they don't kill are given over to the deformed Dr. Satan for experimentation:

Zombie's technically superior 2005 sequel, The Devil's Rejects is a revenge tale and ignores Dr. Satan and his experiments altogether. In both films, TCM2's Bill Mosely is super creepy as Otis:

The slasher genre eventually evolved into the 'Torture Porn' genre of films like Saw and Hostel, exercises in bad taste, rather than true Horror. And recent attempts at rebooting some those franchises have been less than critically successful (though I do have hopes for the upcoming Elm Street reboot, starring Jackie Earle Haley.

OK, so tell me... What serial killer/slasher flick got to you? Who's your favorite unstoppable maniac?I left some off my list for brevity's sake (ha!). Maybe one of them is yours...

More terrors, anon.
Prospero

You have read this article Cannibals / Halloween / Horror / Madmen / Shocktober / Slasher Movies. Serial Killers / Trailers with the title Cannibals. You can bookmark this page URL http://tammycross.blogspot.com/2009/10/madmen-cannibals-and-slashers.html. Thanks!