Almost since Hollywood began making motion pictures, innocent people have been getting devoured in them. And yet only now do we have the first serious survey of how and why human beings get eaten alive on the big screen.
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Halfway through last year's life-affirming. Southern Gothic, small-budget, female buddy film Fried Green Tomatoes, the impish Dixie Peach Mary Stuart Masterson hits upon the gastronomically suspect but matrimonially efficacious stratagem of concealing her best friend's wife-beating, Ku Klux Klan husband's carcass in a large vat of barbecue mix at her fine dining establishment, the last place the authorities would ever think of looking for it. The film, told largely in flashback, is set in rural Alabama in the '30s, at a time when the Klan was making life miserable for blacks and, to a lesser extent, Catholics and Jews, and when Klan-bears like Mr. Barbecue were also making life unbearable for their hapless WASP wives.
Be this as it may, there is nothing in the annals of 20th-century Alabamian written or oral history to suggest that wife-beating Klan members were routinely or, in fact, ever mixed in with piquant barbecue sauce and served for lunch in local eateries. This would seem to suggest that the characters in Fried Green Tomatoes got the idea of hiding the wife-beater's battered corpse in the barbecue sauce not from their own experience inside the movie, but from the screenwriter who wrote the original novel, who obviously did not get the idea from studying early 20th-century, rural Alabamian packing, jarring or cooking traditions. No, she probably got the idea from watching Eating Raoul, a 1982 small-budget, non-life-affirming black comedy in which the body of the eponymous Raoul is chopped into tiny strips and served at a formal dinner precisely because the cooks could think of no better place to hide the body.
I am not suggesting that the idea hiding the body in the barbecue sauce in Fried Green Tomatoes came directly or exclusively Eating Raoul. The screenwriter may have also been influenced by the popular '70s musical Sweeney Todd, or Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the1936 black-and-white film that inspired the play. Or she may have drawn her inspiration from Motel Hell, the 1980 black comedy in which Rory Calhoun plays a sort of sausage-packing Norman Bates. For that matter, the screenwriter may also have been influenced by Tenderness of the Wolves, the 1973 German film in which a homosexual vampire with an entrepreneurial bent first lures young men to his apartment in post-World War I Berlin, then seduces them, then excises huge chunks from their necks--effectively removing them from the gay, postwar German night-life scene forever--and then repackages their remains into tasty cutlets he sells to local merchants desperate for prime beef at a time of massive meat shortages.
Whatever the truth of the matter, it is reasonably safe to say that the cannibalism motif in Fried Green Tomatoes, which is set in rural Alabama in the '30s, almost certainly derives from a low-budget black comedy set in Los Angeles in the early '80s, or from a medium-budget '70s German, neoexpressionistic horror film set in Berlin in the '20s, or from an expensive 1936 black-and-white British film set in London in the 1880s, or from a very inexpensive slasher film set in the unidentified American boondocks in the late '70s. This is yet another example of the motion picture industry's amazing ability to cannibalize itself, even when making a film about cannibalism.
I'm glad we have a chance to have this little chat.
Almost since Hollywood began making motion pictures, innocent people have been getting devoured in them, but this is, to my knowledge, the first time that anyone has ever attempted to write a comprehensive essay about what the Germans call das essenfilm, what the French call le cinema bouffe, and what the Italians refer to as film mangiare: films in which people get eaten. Yet our goal here is not to discuss every movie in which people have been eaten--there are far, far too many to even contemplate such an undertaking--but to consider the various genres of movies in which people get eaten.
Thus, we will be looking at movies featuring cannibalism (Alive, Eating Raoul, Suddenly, Last Summer, Night of the Living Dead, Soylent Green, The Silence of the Lambs, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Fried Green Tomatoes), unexpected aquatic dining (Piranha, Leviathan, Thunderball, Orca, Jaws, Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D, Jaws the Revenge), reptilian buffet (Alligator, Live and Let Die), insects that manifest a penchant for human flesh (The Naked Jungle), man-munching mammals (Grizzly, Cujo), peckish rodents who develop a taste for Homo sapiens (Willard, Ben), as well as smorgasbord films in which humans are eaten, or at least gnawed on, by a wide variety of predators: humans, dogs, wolves, bears, piranha, Adrienne Barbeau (Quest for Fire, Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death). Possibly, by looking carefully at films such as these we will all learn a little bit more about the world around us, and perhaps even a little bit more about ourselves. Though frankly, I kind of doubt it.
In discussing films in which people get eaten, it is important to distinguish between works in which:
1) People get eaten primarily for nutritional reasons
2) People get eaten primarily for legitimate ritualistic or religious reasons
3) People get eaten just for the hell of it.
It is also important to distinguish between films in which the eating of human flesh is a minor, incidental element (Fried Green Tomatoes) and films that are basically about human cuisine and not much else (Alive, Jaws, Piranha, Motel Hell, Soylent Green).
For example, The Last of the Mohicans includes a scene in which Magua, the sadistic faux Mohawk (he is secretly a Huron), rips the heart out of a British officer and is just about ready to jam it down his gullet when the camera meekly wanders off to see what the more refined Madeleine Stowe is up to at the time. The scene clearly establishes that Magua is a primeval brute, a feckless traitor, and at least a part-time cannibal, and thus not a guy to be messed with. But The Last of the Mohicans is not primarily a film about eating human flesh. The Last of the Mohicans is primarily a film about hacking, cleaving, hewing, flaying, impaling and roasting human flesh. It is vital that we make this distinction.
A far different sort of film is Jaws the Revenge (this time it's personal). Much like its predecessors, Jaws the Revenge is about a big fish that likes to eat people so it can become an even bigger fish. However, unlike The Last of the Mohicans, which also deals with such issues as love, grace under pressure, the inevitable cultural fallout from a head-on collision between a highly developed, market-driven European civilization and a Paleolithic, socialistic culture, and the indispensable role of a volunteer militia in a free society, Jaws the Revenge deals almost exclusively with a large shark that likes to eat people. It has, as it were, no subtext.
The same distinction can be made between Quest for Fire and Alive. Although both films are protein-oriented, in the sense that the people who get devoured in them do not get eaten for personal reasons, but because those who eat them can't find anything else to nibble on. Quest for Fire is basically a film about a valiant group of prehistoric men desperately seeking to master the element of fire in order to survive. The cannibalism stuff is just a sidelight. Otherwise, the film would have been called Quest for Chuck Steak.
Alive, on the other hand, is primarily, almost entirely, a film about enlightened cannibalism. In this life-affirming, medium-budget, South American Gothic buddy film, a group of young Uruguayan rugby players, having withstood an airplane crash, an avalanche and Vincent Spano, must eat one another in order to survive. Although the film deals in a tangential fashion with certain other themes--man's inhumanity to man, the need for a more cohesive relationship between Uruguayan and Chilean civil aviation authorities, the importance of always carrying extra radio batteries and large bars of chocolate on one's person during flights across desolate mountain ranges--the film is primarily about cannibalism, a subject foreshadowed early in the story when one of the characters breaks open a bottle of red wine, which, or course, is only served with red meat.
Lamentably, most films in which people get eaten do not deal with larger themes and do not feature characters that would forego eating human flesh if they had any other choice. In most films, ruthless creatures chow down on human beings for one simple reason: there's nobody in the immediate vicinity who is big enough and bad enough to stop them. It is impossible to believe that the mammoth great white shark in the original Jaws only gobbles up coeds and little kids because there's nothing else in the whole Atlantic Ocean to eat. No, he eats coeds and helpless little kids because he's an ornery son of a bitch who likes to get in people's faces, and while he's in them, to eat them. While a certain revenge motif comes into play in Jaws 3-D and Jaws the Revenge, we are still basically talking about sharks that eat people just to annoy everybody. There's no reason they couldn't eat marlin or bluefish or red snapper or medical waste like all the other sharks. But then again, they're not like all the other sharks, are they?
Another subset of people-eating movies are films in which people get eaten by creatures that get put up to it by other humans. The most obvious example is Willard, which deals with a dysfunctional youngster who breeds his own army of rats and then turns them loose on his neighbors. There is no reason to believe that the rats would have ever ruined the big party that Ernest Borgnine was holding had the decision been left up to them; rats don't like parties. They were pressured into doing it by the dysfunctional youth. Not quite so innocent is the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors that manipulates Rick Moranis into supplying fresh bodies, but then again, it's silly to be too hard on any creature that effectively removes Steve Martin from our midst.
Humans are also to blame for the tragedies that befall their fellows in Piranha, Leviathan, The Killer Shrews, Empire of the Ants, Alligator and Orca, all of which deal with man-eating monsters created by humans, usually scientists. In Alligator, a parody of Jaws scripted by John Sayles, a baby alligator flushed down the toilet grows to humongous proportions thanks to hormone-filled carcasses dumped into the sewage system by an unscrupulous drug company. The result? A bunch of people played by actors you never heard of get eaten.
The same thing happens in Empire of the Ants and The Killer Shrews. In Orca, a killer whale minding its own business is transmogrified into a killer-diller whale by Richard Harris, an unscrupulous fisherman who wantonly kills its mate. The result? Keenan Wynn gets eaten, and young Bo Derek gets partially eaten. Charlotte Rampling, playing an anorexic marine biologist who befriends Harris, apparently escapes a similar fate because there's not enough meat on her to interest any self-respecting killer whale.
In Leviathan, a monster spawned by an unscrupulous defunct country that used to be called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics grows up to humongous proportions thanks to some chemicals planted in the vodka. The result? Richard Crenna gets eaten.
In Piranha, a parody of Jaws scripted by John Sayles, a school of killer fish grow to humongous proportions thanks to some chemicals spilled into the water by an unscrupulous country called the United States of America. The result? Keenan Wynn gets eaten again.
And in Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell, a German shepherd grows to humongous proportions thanks to an unscrupulous group of Satanists who don't dump any chemicals in the water system, but who look like they would if given half a chance. The result? Well, Richard Crenna almost gets eaten.
Coincidence, you say?
In discussing films in which consumers become the consumed, it is imperative that we distinguish between films in which the people who get eaten deserve to get eaten and films in which they do not. Based on our exhaustive sample of 33 motion pictures in which people are consumed, we found 93 cases in which the movie told the audience enough about the person being eaten to allow for a determination about whether the individual deserved his cruel fate.
In the overwhelming majority of cases (72), the people being consumed--swimmers, surfers, lovers, vacationers, sewer workers, Uruguayan rugby players--did not deserve to be eaten and were unfortunate victims of circumstances. Of the 21 other victims, 18 indisputably deserved to be eaten, and three were tossups. For example, the wife-beating Ku Klux Klansman in Fried Green Tomatoes certainly got exactly what he deserved, as did the balding asshole in Night of the Living Dead who wanted everyone to remain hidden in the basement (where it's safe), as did Vincent Spano and Keenan Wynn, for reasons too obvious to discuss, in Alive, Orca and Piranha.
Less open-and-shut cases are the roving pederast in Suddenly, Last Summer, who didn't deserve to be eaten, but who should certainly have chosen a better neighborhood in which to pick up small boys; the dogmatic British colonel in The Last of the Mohicans, who didn't deserve to have his heart eaten, but certainly deserved to be shot off his horse; and Lorraine Gary's youngest son in Jaws the Revenge, who deserved to have his arm torn off for having her as a mother, but who probably didn't deserve to have his entire body ripped to shreds just because he had Roy Scheider for a father.
Within the admittedly disequilibratory genre of people-eating movies, it is nonetheless possible to distinguish between films that are merely tasteless (PG), and films that are really gross (PG-13). For example, it is important to make a distinction between films in which people get eaten after a modicum of preparation (dressing, garnishing, seasoning, cooking) and films where people get eaten raw. Whatever their other failings, Eating Raoul and Fried Green Tomatoes handle the subject of cannibalism delicately, so that even if you freeze-frame the film on your VCR you still can't really tell that the food being eaten comes from a human being; in both cases, it looks like something you might order at any roadside Greek diner.
In Quest for Fire, on the other hand, the cave men munch on what are clearly human limbs that have charred over an open flame. In Alive, the stranded rugby players simply tear off little portions of beef and then stuff it right into their mouths. This is really disgusting, and I can't believe in the long run that it's going to help Ethan Hawke's career to have done it. Gnawing on morsels of flesh torn off the backs of corpses played by obscure Hispanic and Anglo actors or Vincent Spano is the sort of thing you're supposed to do at the end of your career. Just ask Rory Calhoun.
As noted above, it is also important to distinguish between these very dissimilar cinematic properties:
1) Films in which animals have a legitimate right to eat their human prey because they are themselves hungry and will die without some immediate means of sustenance
2) Films in which animals eat human beings because they've gone completely bonkers and can't be held responsible for their actions
3) Films in which the animal has some sort of a personal vendetta against the person he plans to eat
4) Films in which animals eat people just to show off.
In the first category are such films as Piranha and Alligator, where the man-eaters, through no fault of their own, have grown to become super mutants and simply must eat or die. In these films, the audience feels a certain grudging sympathy toward the monsters, because the monsters didn't ask to be transformed into monsters and therefore can't really be blamed for their gastronomic transgressions. Thus, even after the school of razor-toothed butchers has ripped a bunch of little kids and a cute camp counselor to pieces in Piranha, one does not feel any special antipathy toward the murderous fish. They were only doing their job.
The same is true in Stephen King's Cujo, which is set in Maine, where people don't get out often enough, and even when they do, they're still in Maine. In Cujo, a previously cuddly Saint Bernard with no prior history of substituting raw human flesh for Alpo, is suddenly driven straight out of his mind by a rabid bat that impudently bites his snout.
Admittedly, Cujo does put Dee Wallace and her little kid through all kinds of hell for an entire weekend, and does end up eating his master, his master's drinking buddy, and a careless cop. But the audience never feels any special animus toward Cujo as he gnaws his way toward Nantucket, because it isn't the psycho-pooch's fault that he's acting this way, and besides, Dee was screwing the local stud behind her husband's back so she probably had it coming. In a very real sense, Cujo himself is a victim.
"Victim" is not a word that can be applied to any of the sharks in the four Jaws movies that have been made to date. Any way you cut it, these great whites are heartless sadists who deserve whatever they get. (That's right, fuck you, Greenpeace!) Whereas the man-eating monsters in Alligator, Orca, Cujo, Leviathan and Piranha look like simple garden-variety predators that are going about their business devouring everything in sight, the sharks in the Jaws movies actually seem to be enjoying what they are doing.
In Jaws, the great white appears to be chuckling as he forces a perplexed Robert Shaw down his feedbox. In Jaws 3-D, the great white seems to be taunting the tourists trapped below sea level in Sea World's brand-new see-through facility. In Jaws 2, the shark devours a helicopter and in Jaws the Revenge, the shark actually destroys an entire airplane, raising the possibility that in Jaws 5 we might get to see a shark swallow the QE2 or the Concorde. These are sharks that you really don't want to be fucking around with.
One of the questions that poses itself in an essay of this sort is this: If you had to pick a creature to be eaten by, which one would it be? Great white shark? Soldier ant? Alligator? Grizzly bear? Rabid dog? Piranha? Rat? Killer whale? Psychiatrist?
Well, let's do it by a process of elimination, based on the illuminating information provided to us in these movies. Right off the bat, soldier ants get the hook; based on what takes place in the 1954 Charlton Heston vehicle The Naked Jungle, it's safe to say that the ants work slowly--guaranteeing that your death will be long and hideous--and they also tend to crawl up your clothing and go right for the eyes. Thus, you would have to lie there screaming in abject horror as the little devils nibbled their way right through your cornea, your iris, your retina and then into your brain before you died.
Who needs that?
For similar reasons, rats are out. Unlike sharks and killer whales, which basically kill you off in a couple of heaping mouthfuls, rats tend to play with their food--a nibble here, a nibble there--and even if there are a whole bunch of them on hand for the festivities, you're still looking at a lingering, excruciating, nauseating kind of death. It's also important to remember that rats are kind of gross; if you do have to be eaten to death by some creature, you'd probably prefer it to be a shark or a whale because that reads a lot better in the newspaper, partially because of that whole romance-of-the-sea business.
Compare the following obituary headlines, as they might appear in your local newspaper:
MAN EATEN BY GREAT WHITE SHARK
MAN EATEN BY KILLER WHALE
and:
MAN EATEN BY RATS
If you are still seriously considering exiting this world by having your carcass feasted upon by famished rodents, first take a gander at Willard and see what they did to Ernest Borgnine. If that doesn't change your mind, nothing will.
On the surface, gators, crocs, grizzly bears, piranha, sharks and killer whales all seem like reasonably good alternatives if you absolutely, positively have to leave this planet by being eaten to death. Yes, they're better than rats and soldier ants, but when you take a closer peek at how these heartless predators operate, I think you'll see that they are all in their own little ways profoundly inadequate. Gators, crocs, piranha and killer whales all tend to eat every last mouthful of their victims, so once they get through with you there won't be anything left for your family to bury. Sharks and grizzly bears tend to play with their food, ripping a human being in half and maybe eating the head and torso but allowing the ankles and fibula to wash up on the shore where some distraught parent has to identify the remains ("Yes, that's Timmy, I'd know that femur anywhere") and then bury them in a shoe box. If the funereal niceties mean anything to you at all, I'd take a rain check on most of these creatures.
That leaves humans and dogs, and I honestly believe that if you're backed into a corner on this food imbroglio and have to choose between dogs and men, you should go with Fido & Co. every time. I'm not merely saying this because of the innate dread we all feel when the subject of cannibalism is raised. No, I'm saying this because of the despicable behavior of known cannibals after they've eaten you. "A census taker once tried to test me," Hannibal Lecter gloats to pert FBI trainee Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."
This is the kind of cynical remark that your survivors would be up against long after you're gone. Whereas, when a shark or a rat or a school of killer piranha eat you, there's no way they can come back to gloat about it, a cannibal can hang around making wisecracks about you for decades because of our lax judicial system which refuses to send these vermin to the electric chair. Personally, this would really piss me off. I'd rather get eaten by a shark or a grizzly bear and get the whole damn thing over with.
For this reason, I'd suggest that if you absolutely, positively have to choose the creature that is going to eat you, I'd go with a big, husky dog like Cujo. Although the frothing, saliva-drenched Saint Bernard is pretty horrible to look at, and does tear massive, bloody chunks out of the thighs, abdomens and upper torsos of the people he attacks, it doesn't take him long to polish off his victims, and, more importantly, he doesn't eat the entire body--meaning that you can still have a decent burial, and perhaps even a viewing. If you're Roman Catholic like me, that whole wake thing is pretty important, and provided Cujo doesn't start munching on the face, a good mortician might have enough left to work with to set up an open-casket viewing, which, again, is pretty important to me as a Roman Catholic. All things considered, I'd rather be partially eaten by a rabid Saint Bernard than swallowed whole by a killer whale or torn into fish chum by a ravenous great white shark.
I hope all this has been helpful.
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Joe Queenan's forthcoming book from Hyperion is called If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble.