Cannibal Girls (Ivan Reitman, 1973)

Before his successful career as a director and producer of mainstream Hollywood comedies (his first hit as producer was Animal House in 1978 and his first Hollywood film as director was Meatballs in 1979), Ivan Reitman was an independent producer of horror films in Canada, working with David Cronenberg on Shivers and Rabid, William Fruet on The House by the Lake, and Jean LaFleur on the fourth installment in the Ilsa series, Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia. He continued working in horror on his first Hollywood production job, Blackout, about criminals terrorizing an apartment complex in Manhattan during the blackout of 1977, before comedy became his main focus. Reitman directed his first two films in Canada, the 1971 comedy Foxy Lady and Cannibal Girls.

Cannibal Girls is a curious and charming little horror/comedy hybrid starring Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin that probably won't satisfy people looking for big laughs or full-on terror, but it amused me greatly with its quiet, dry humor and its wintry Canadian atmosphere. Despite the title and subject matter, Cannibal Girls is not overly campy, with Reitman mostly playing it straight and allowing the humor to come out of the characters' lack of self-awareness and their realistic reactions to ridiculous situations. If you like low-budget '70s horror, cannibalism, dry Canadian humor, Canadian accents, and Eugene Levy with a giant 'fro and mustache, you will enjoy Cannibal Girls.

Shot in various locations in rural Ontario, Cannibal Girls takes place in the fictional small town of Farnhamville in the snowy winter. Young Toronto couple Clifford Sturges (Eugene Levy) and Gloria Wellaby (Andrea Martin) have only been dating briefly, but they decide to take a rustic, small-town vacation, and Clifford unwisely chooses Farnhamville. After uncomfortable encounters with a knife-admiring tough guy and a man looking for his missing sister outside the gas station/body shop, Clifford takes the advice of the man working and books a room at the motel run by Mrs. Wainwright (May Jarvis). Mrs. Wainwright tells the young couple the motel has been mostly deserted since the town legend scared tourists away. She then proceeds to tell them the legend, which seems like a bad idea if you're trying to attract and keep customers, but it works out pretty well for those of us in the audience since we see this scene in flashback.

Three attractive young women, Anthea, Clarissa, and Leona (Randall Carpenter, Bonnie Neilson, and Mira Pawluk) lure three male travelers into their home, then kill and eat them, assisted by a deformed weirdo (listed in the credits as Bunker, playing himself). The male travelers supply some of the movie's best comedic moments. Rick (Alan Gordon) is an organizer of small-town parades, Felix (Allan Price) is a truck driver for an ice cream company, and Earl (Earl Pomerantz) is a rich guy obsessed with playing Monopoly, who has brought the board game with him to the cannibal girls' home. (Side note: Pomerantz passed away last week at the age of 75. After Cannibal Girls, he would become a successful sitcom writer in the United States, writing episodes of Sanford and Son, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Rhoda, Taxi, Newhart, Cheers, The Cosby Show, Amazing Stories, Major Dad, and Becker and TV specials for Lily Tomlin and Flip Wilson.) They have several very funny interactions with each other and the cannibal women before they end up on a plate.

Jazzed by the legend, Clifford and Gloria request restaurant recommendations. Mrs. Wainwright walks them through the snow to an ominous house in the woods, which she says is the town's gourmet eatery. The only customers in what looks nothing like a restaurant, Clifford and Gloria are greeted by a weirdo in a cape and top hat named Reverend Alex St. John (Ronald Ulrich), who proceeds to regale them with florid descriptions of the morbid history of the home and the town before giving them a menu with a single item on it. Guess who else is running the restaurant? That's right, the cannibal women.

You may think you know what's coming, but the movie takes several weird twists and turns that are a little creepy, a little funny, very atmospheric, and a whole lot Canadian. Reitman already has a good sense of pacing and a knack for capturing some memorable images, and the small-town Canadian landscape in winter is an eye-catching and unusual movie setting. It's fun to see Levy and Martin early in their careers, even before SCTV, with Levy looking like he could be a roadie for Mahogany Rush or something.

Reitman and his stars have downplayed this movie and don't seem particularly proud of it, only acknowledging it as a way to get their careers going, but I think they're selling it short. Reitman has certainly directed worse films (Junior and No Strings Attached, anyone?) and even his best Hollywood films lack the DIY charm of Cannibal Girls. Reitman has described the film as a "spoof" of horror, which makes me wonder if he's seen it lately. The horror and the comedy are presented mostly straightforwardly and naturally, and it plays like a horror film with the horror elements happening to, or perpetrated by, funny people who don't know they're funny. I liked it.

Reitman was one of the most successful comedy directors of the '80s and early '90s. His directing credits include the aforementioned Meatballs, Stripes, Ghostbusters (another horror-comedy), Legal Eagles, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and Dave. As a Hollywood producer, he worked on Animal House, Heavy Metal, Casual Sex?, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Beethoven, Space Jam, Private Parts, Old School, Up in the Air, Chloe, Hitchcock, and a couple Trailer Park Boys movies. Cannibal Girls screenwriter Robert Sandler has a weirder career. His other credits include several episodes of Fraggle Rock, multiple true-crime shows, the reality show My Pet's Gone Viral, and a documentary called Assholes: A Theory.