Fine Young Cannibals

Eating Raoul

Spider Baby

This week I was craving something different, something really out-there, something that may be an acquired taste for any empath or vegetarian or people-person: cannibalism. The act of a human consuming another human’s flesh is a grotesque and hard-to-fathom phenomenon that mostly occurred within early human history, among peoples on most continents. To quote Brittanica:

“Though many early accounts of cannibalism probably were exaggerated or in error, the practice prevailed until modern times in parts of West and Central Africa, Melanesia (especially Fiji), New Guinea, Australia, among the Maoris of New Zealand, in some of the islands of Polynesia, among the tribes of Sumatra, and in various tribes of North and South America. There is no one satisfactory and all-inclusive explanation for cannibalism. Different peoples have practiced it for different reasons, and a group may practice cannibalism in one context and view it with horror in another. In any case, the spread of modernization usually results in the prohibition of such practices.”

While cannibalism is a difficult concept to swallow (so to speak) it is still heavily featured within popular culture, and at the present moment is very en vogue. There have been plenty of iconic cannibal movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Soylent Green, Raw, The Bad Batch, Fresh, and my new favorite Bones and All. The most notable new people-eating program, though, is the show Yellowjackets, which finally delivered on its promised savagery in the most recent season. No matter how distasteful this disturbing human behavior is, we’re seemingly still very perplexed by the stories surrounding cannibalism: what would drive someone to consume another person, what it would look like, what, shudder to think, does it taste like… And while you’d think that horror would be the first genre I’d jump on to explore cannibalism, I’m intrigued by all the different ways one can approach this topic. Neither of tonight’s films are really horror films, and neither begin with a bold serving of cannibalism, they instead save it for the last course—leaving this critic at times wondering where the flesh-eating part of these films would come into play, and how I’d be able to stomach it. But each of these man-eating movies certainly delivered on their petrifying promises, in fun, unexpected ways. In the case of Paul Bartel’s 1982 cult classic Eating Raoul, the approach to cannibalism was rather wacky, kinky, and darkly funny. When I was little, and I walked in on my parents watching Eating Raoul, my mom described it as “a very adult movie”, and while there are a bevy of sexual situations, nude actors, innuendos, and unsavory characters here, I found this cannibalistic, comedic gem to be surprisingly wholesome. Eating Raoul follows Paul and Mary Bland, a sweet and sophisticated couple who live in Los Angeles. Paul (Paul Bartel) is a snobbish wine salesman and Mary (Mary Woronov) is a nutritionist, and while Paul suffers through peddling cheap wine all day, Mary is constantly dodging handsy patients at the hospital. Paul and Mary’s relationship is an odd but sweet one: they don’t share a bed or any intimacy, but they’re perfectly matched in their reserved, uptight, and borderline asexual routines. Paul and Mary wish to open a restaurant, but the only trouble is that they’re having a hard time coming up with the money, and on top of everything else, the building they live in is seemingly overrun with swingers. On one particularly hectic and hedonistic night, a swinger wanders into Paul and Mary’s apartment by accident, resulting in another accident—out of self defense Paul and Mary kill this strange deviant. Running out of options and money, Paul and Mary rob this sadistic swinger, and dispose of his body in their building’s trash compactor. When another swinger stumbles by, tries to rape Mary, and meets the same fate, Paul and Mary realize that they can make lemonade out of this lousy situation. With a little helpful advice from Doris the Dominatrix, and a little ad in the Hollywood Press, Paul and Mary begin their business in pleasure—promising to fulfill whatever perverted sexual scenario one could imagine, for a small fee (and an eventual blunt force trauma to the head). Paul and Mary, as prudish as they are, become quite good at luring in the skuzziest of sexual shoppers and masochistic males with rape fantasies, Nazi fantasies, and any other depraved desire their clientele requests—gaining their trust and admiration just in time to be bopped on the head by Paul. When Paul and Mary meet local locksmith Raoul (Robert Beltran), however, their scheme will never be the same. I hesitate to mention any more details, because while Eating Raoul presents a fairly obvious premise, this movie is far from predictable. Eating Raoul is the definition of low budget, low brow, but still incredibly smart filmmaking. Much of the cast was filled with character actors borrowed from the improv troupe The Groundlings, some of whom you would recognize like Ed Begley Jr. and Buck Henry (the writer of The Graduate and other classics), who all stood out in their own unique, grimy ways—but this trio of leading actors really stole the show. The late Paul Bartel made many films that garnered a cult following, but his performance here was just effortlessly funny and fearless while still being soft-spoken. Mary Woronov was also hilarious, and a statuesque beauty—channeling RHONY’s Countess Luann de Lesseps, or perhaps the other way around… and Robert Beltran as the “hot-blooded emotional Chicano” Raoul was irresistibly sexy and charming. I was utterly obsessed with the humor in Eating Raoul, how some jokes would be crass and in-your-face and others would be more sweet and subtle, like when a nurse comes over the hospital intercom and announces that the “Male Nurse’s Dance” had been cancelled. The light-hearted but self-aware approach to cannibalism, sexual predators, capitalism, and other morbid topics was rather bold and unflinching—perfectly capturing how violent our world can be, and how desensitized we’ve become because of it. Eating Raoul was tongue-in-cheek, relentlessly funny, and impossibly cute despite its pornographic, anthropophagous tendencies. Even with its sexually-uninterested protagonists, Eating Raoul couldn’t help but be sexy and sex positive—with its depictions of swingers parties, discussions of fetishes, and the respectful and mundane portrayal of Doris the Dominatrix’s daily life. My only complaint with Eating Raoul is how short it was, and how right as the film ends, Paul and Mary’s story is seemingly only beginning. Paul Bartel planned a sequel to this film given its unprecedented eventual cult-popularity called Bland Ambition, but sadly passed away before he could make it. But the love for Eating Raoul lives on—it was even adapted into an off-broadway musical in 1992. Another cannibal film that took awhile to garner love and appreciation was Jack Hill’s 1967 dark comedic horror film, Spider Baby. Spider Baby, also known as The Maddest Story Ever Told, opens like many 1960s films do: with a cute cartoon and catchy theme song. We’re then shown a young man, our narrator, reading a book titled “Dictionary of Rare and Peculiar Diseases”, where something called “Merrye Syndrome” becomes the topic of discussion. The young man tells us that this is a rare disorder that causes the afflicted to regress into childlike savagery, however this disease was extinguished on one fateful day, ten years ago. We then cut to ten years ago, where a poor, innocent mailman is forced to deliver a letter to the Merrye House—where legend says a very strange family lives. The mailman, unfortunately, does not last long, as one of the children of the estate, the titular spider baby, catches him in her web and swiftly slices him up. This odd child’s name is Virginia (Jill Banner), and she’s got a knack for catching bugs—and people. Her sister, the less enthused about bugs but still just as creepy Elisabeth (Beverly Washburn), is meant to watch over Virginia and their brother Ralph (Sid Haig) while their caretaker is away. When their caretaker Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr. aka the OG Wolf Man) returns, he gives the girls a look of “not again”, while he grabs the body of the mailman and tosses him down into the dank, dark basement full of spiders and odd whispers. The letter this mailman delivered says that due to the passing of the man of the house, Mr. Merrye, the rest of his surviving family will be coming to collect their inheritance—on today of all days! Suddenly Bruno has to sweep away the cobwebs and dust, and tell the children to act as normally as possible, as they prepare for the arrival of some normie distant relatives who have no idea what kind of haunted house they’re about to walk into. These relatives—the rude but dazzlingly dressed Aunt Emily (Carol Ohmart) and our young, tolerant narrator Uncle Peter—are accompanied by their nosy lawyer Mr. Schlocker, and his secretary Ann. Despite the clear dysfunction and dilapidation of the Merrye Estate and all that it houses, Emily and Peter—but especially Emily and Mr. Schlocker and his Hitler-stache—are determined to make this house their own so they can sell it for a fortune. Once Bruno catches wind of this intrusion and attempted theft, he tries his best to get rid of these guests, but to no avail. Even with the creepy children eating bugs and tumbleweeds and saying cryptic things about family members yet to be seen, Emily and Mr. Schlocker insist on not only eating dinner at this house, but staying the night. It seems that Emily and Mr. Schlocker think that Bruno and his wards are putting on a creepy show just to scare them off, but as the audience soon finds out, these children are not acting, and these guests should’ve listened to Bruno when they had the chance. What occurs on this bewildering, fateful evening is a series of spooky and silly events that will have you booing the normies and shouting long live the freaks! Spider Baby has everything I would expect from a sixties horror movie and more—bad screams, dumb characters, good bad-acting, outdated depictions of the mentally ill (Sid Haig must’ve been channeling a Pinhead from the movie Freaks), and oddly-sexualized, vaguely Lolita-esque creepy little girls. Every breathy line delivered by the two spider sisters was oozing with attempted sex appeal, even when Elisabeth told her sister Virginia that “spiders aren’t supposed to eat other spiders” and she responds “cannibal spiders do”… Spider Baby obviously presents a very bizarre, imperfect premise, and yet this entire film was so beautifully made. The aesthetic of this film was to die for: from its satin-costumed women to its elegant empty house and all of the ways it was decorated with uniquely unsettling details, every bit of it was divine—after all, there is no creepy crawly more chic than the spider. And much like Eating Raoul, Spider Baby saves its cannibalism for the climax—making its punchline all the more gruesome and gory and glorious. While this film is undeniably campy and somewhat aware of its absurdism, Spider Baby didn’t lack an emotional center. Lon Chaney Jr. gives a teary-eyed monologue toward the end of the film that was so imbued with earnestness that it really moved me, and I certainly didn’t expect to be moved by such a wild, wacky sixties spidersploitation film. Even with all of its humor and constant nodding to Chaney’s tenure as the Wolf Man, Spider Baby packed quite a punch of creative horror and unexpected humanity, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And just like Eating Raoul, Spider Baby was also eventually adapted into a musical, aptly titled “Spider Baby: The Musical”, and as of this year, filmmaker Dustin Ferguson has acquired the rights to this film and plans to produce a remake—though it hardly needs it. I never would’ve guessed that these movies about fine young cannibals would be so sweet and savory, to the point that they inspire musicals, but that’s the magic of the movies for ya. There will always be room for cannibalism in the genre of horror, but it’s weirdly fun to explore all of the various genres, tones, and point of views that can intersect with this anxious, weirdly-universal topic. We’re all human, we’re all hungry, and we all need a palate cleanser from time to time, so why not sink your teeth into a cannibal double feature the next time you’re craving something new? Ta ta for now, readers! 👅