Cannibal Girls

Cannibal Girls (1973)

this film is an interesting little hidden gem of cinema history.The film is directed by Ivan reitman pre-Ghostbusters,stripes or Meatballs and stars SCTV allum Eugene Levy (American Pie/Best in Show) and Andrea martin (Black Christmas original and remake).Eugene and Andrea play a young Hippie couple Gloria and Clifford.They are on a road trip looking for a nice place to vacation when they start to have car problems and decide to rest in a small very odd town.Upon arrival we see a man looking for his missing sister ,whom we do see in the opening scene briefly as her boyfriend gets killed by an pick axe wielding young woman.The locals are no help but whisper amongst eachother that she is one of the Reverends "Girls".After this scene we follow Gloria and Cliff as they find a small inn to stay at and the innkeeper tells the couple the tale of "The three girls" which at this point the film takes a turn and we see three young women running a hotel of sorts and killing three male occupants and eating them,after the story the inn keeper tells our main couple that the house where the massacre happened is now a restaraunt and is in fact quite good.Cliff decides to take his car in for repairs and then the couple head to this restaraunt to see what it is all about.When they finally arrive at the dinning place they Meet The Reverend Alex St.John who is a odd bird to say the least,before the dine he gives our couple a tour of the House/restaraunt and tells many grim and strange tales about the history of his family and the property which makes for a very funny scene and one of the more entertaining chunks of the film.Cliff and Gloria decide to stay at the Reverends place once they hear of a madman that is stalking the woods and they fear the walk back to the inn,but this is where the film gets a bit strange and hard to follow.They stay the night and when they wake the reverend and his three girls (Athea,Clarissa and Leona) are standing bedside and cliff has been chained to the bed.The reverend appears to possess Gloria and tells her to kill Cliff but she is quickly snapped out of it ,when she comes to she tries to make an escape and makes it to the main road where she is picked up by a car passing through.She is given a sedative and when she wakes she is back at the original inn as if none of this happened.After such a disturbing and realistic dream Gloria is ready to leave the town but the car is not ready so the couple goes sight seeing in the town.While on their venture into town all of the townsfolk appear very suspicious of the visitors and eventually Gloria and Cliff are forced to go to the reverends restaraunt by the town sheriff.As I said much of this potion of the film gets a bit hard and confusing to follow but when they arrive at the reverends,Cliff seems to have been told to deliver Gloria to the reverend and he hands her to him and attempts to leave.This is not successful as Rev.Alex St. John once again possesses Gloria and orders her to off Cliff ,which she does in graphic fashion via axe to the gut.We fade off with the voice of the inn keeper telling a new couple the tale of "The Four girls" and we fade out.This movie was supprisingly good given the mixed reviews I had read about it online.The film has yet to get a dvd release in the states and is extremely hard to obtain,almost as if Ivan Reitman is trying to keep it that way.This film is not your typical cannibal film and it is not your typical comedy either.What we get here is a rather good Cult film with subtle touches of comedy thrown in with a dash of gore.If you are looking for a good old school horror comedy this one is pretty darn good and although there is not much blood and guts what is shown is effectively done and presented well enough.The film is extremely low budget and it has it’s flaws ,like the mic dropping into plain sight during some scenes ,but the way it is done it makes me think that it may even be intentional.I got this on my recent rare flick buying spree and now so far I am 2 and 2 this one being one of the 2 good ones.I was very pleased with this film and if you can get your hands on it I definitley suggest a viewing .Give this one a chance for sure,it does get a bit hard to follow at times but it is alot of fun too watch.
final verdict on this one
3 out of 5