Dippy hippie hairball Clifford Sturges (Eugene Levy sporting a ghastly wild'n'woolly Gene Shalit-like white guy 'fro) and his whiny girlfriend Gloria Wellaby (an insufferably shrill Andrea Martin) spend a romantic holiday at a remote rural bed and breakfast inn run by a trio of beautiful young women who are really cannibals. Guess what happens next? Director Ivan Reitman, working from an extremely talky and meandering script by Robert Sandler (a majority of the terrible dialogue was reportedly improvised by the cast, which means this film frequently gets bogged down in extraneous drawn-out conversations that refuse to end),relates the slow and uneventful story at a painfully plodding pace, and fails to deliver much in the way of either scares or laughs. Moreover, the attempts at obvious humor are both clumsy and unfunny, the main characters are annoying and unlikable, the droning score is beyond obnoxious, and the grindingly predictable narrative for the most part follows a familiar path with the notable exception of a mildly startling surprise bummer ending. On the plus side, ravishing redhead Bonnie Nelson, yummy blonde Randall Carpenter, and foxy brunette Mira Pawluk are all quite lovely as the titular flesh-eating ladies, Robert Sand's fairly polished cinematography astutely captures the bleakness of the desolate wintry Canadian backwoods locations, and the generous sprinkling of bloody violence and nice gratuitous female nudity alleviates the general tedium to a moderate degree. But overall this hopelessly stiff and pedestrian flick is far too dreary and inert to provide much in the way of entertainment. A real disappointment.
Cannibal Girls
1973
Action / Comedy / Horror
Cannibal Girls
1973
Action / Comedy / Horror
Keywords: murdercannibalcanuxploitation
Plot summary
A young couple spend the night in an old farmhouse owned by a reverend, only to find out that it is also lived in by beautiful women who hunger after human flesh.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
A very dull and draggy wash-out
Attack of the Canadian Cannibals.
Directed by Ivan Reitman of Stripes and Ghostbusters fame, Cannibal Girls is, rather unsurprisingly, as comical as it is ghoulish. Eugene 'Jim's Dad' Levy and Andrea Martin play Cliff and Gloria, a young couple who travel to the isolated, snow-bound town of Farnhamville for a weekend away, where they discover that the place is home to a cannibal cult headed by weirdo 'Svengali' Rev. Alex St. John (Ronald Ulrich),whose three beautiful acolytes (Randall Carpenter, Bonnie Neilson and Mira Pawluk) do his every bidding.
Clearly shot on a low budget, with competent direction from Reitman and improvised dialogue from the cast of unknowns (Levy having not yet achieved fame),this darkly humorous tale of the macabre is, going by the majority of reviews here on IMDb, clearly not everyone's cup of tea. I wouldn't call it great, but I certainly wasn't bored by the film as many seem to be. There's an unsettling, bizarre, dreamlike quality to proceedings, some subtly amusing moments, just a smidgen of gore, and the three cannibal girls all take their tops off. Oh, and Eugene Levy's hair and 'tache have to be seen to be believed.
6/10. The ending is a tad confusing, but the film is still worth a look for fans of cult '70s oddities.
horror or spoof
New couple Clifford Sturges (Eugene Levy) and Gloria Wellaby (Andrea Martin) are driving their troublesome car when it breaks down near the small town of Farnhamville. They are told about the legend of 3 cannibal women luring men to their deaths. They stay at the house in the urban legend hosted by the Reverend and his three female followers.
With Levy and Martin, I assumed that this is a spoof or at least a horror comedy. I'm not sure if there is any comedic intent and I don't know what is suppose to be funny. There is actually a very effective section as the old woman recounts the cannibal girls legend. I love these beautiful women luring the two nerds especially. It's effective horror and works great as a story. There are interesting ways to go with that dynamic. Levy and Martin don't really fit and they aren't going with their strengths anyways. After a certain point, the movie left me scratching my head.