It’s Friday…
Ahem…I mean Frightday…
And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…
Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…
Craving Human…Contact.
Now that most of us…
Are practicing social distancing…
One of the things that we are all craving…
Is a little human contact…
But having a craving for humans…
Is not an entirely new concept…
Especially in horror films…
And for me…
The first time I witnessed this craving being fulfilled…
Was when I watched folks savor the flavor…
Of Drayton Sawyer’s award-winning chili…
In Tobe Hooper’s hilarious 1986 sequel…
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2…
And in that film…
As well as the ones that I am recommending to you…
The covetous complex…
The carnivorous compulsion…
The cannibalistic craving…
For human flesh…
Cannot be stopped…
It can only be…
Fed…
And when it’s time to feed this particular craving…
Always remember…
The wise words…
Of Ol’ Drayton Sawyer…
“Don’t skimp on the meat.“
So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Craving Human…Contact Movies…In the years following The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
Ravenous (1999) – In this film…The desire to eat people is derived from an ancient Native American myth…One that says…That a person who consumes the flesh of another person…Not only takes their power…But also acquires a powerful urge to feed again…This behavior is first displayed…When we meet Colqhoun, played to devious perfection by Robert Carlyle (28 Weeks Later)…A mysterious stranger who stumbles into a remote military outpost…Before long we realize that Colqhoun is not just a man who likes to snack on his fellow man…But he has definitely become a monster…And his monstrous behavior…Is similar to that of a vampire…Or perhaps even…A sentient zombie…And Carlyle plays it like a fiddle…Sometimes written off as a black comedy…This dark and gritty horror film…Has far more black than comedy going on…And although the cast and crew suffered through constant changes during production…The finished product didn’t suffer at all.
We Are What We Are (2013) – This film was directed by the amazing Jim Mickle (Stake Land)…And after receiving the blessing of, Jorge Michel Grau…Mickle and his long time writing partner, Nick Damici…took Grau’s 2010 Mexican horror film of the same name…In a whole new direction…And the tale they decided to tell…Is about an unusual and ritualistically strict family…Following the death of their matriarch…Due to something called, Kuru disease…Which is apparently…A deadly side effect to cannibalistic eating habits…One of her daughters is forced to take on a new role…While the other begins to question every aspect of their family’s rituals…Bill Sage (Fender Bender) is outstanding as the terrifyingly reticent, and domineering patriarch of the Parker clan…And the incredible performances of both actresses playing Parker’s daughters…Ambyr Childers as Iris…And Julia Garner as Rose…Were outstanding as well.
Eat (2014) – This film tells the story of professionally stagnant actress, Novella McClure…Who as she struggles to get noticed in Hollywood…Develops a really bad habit…Nope, not cocaine…No sir, she’s not addicted to hot yoga…Her thing…Her thing is that she enjoys snacking on her own flesh…This is sort of the disgusting cousin to the film Starry Eyes, which illustrates the desperation felt by the struggling Hollywood actress…This film takes that desperation…And the effects of having to endure such desperation for years…Now…Self-cannibalism is a concept that I was first introduced to, when I read Stephen King’s short story, Survivor Type…A short story that was a part of his Skeleton Crew collection…This was a story that King claimed, “goes a little bit too far, even for me.” And as this actress begins to unravel…Or be digested…Depending on how you look at it…It may just go a little too far…For you.
Bone Tomahawk (2015) – So you might be asking yourself…How the fuck did a western get on this list…Well folks…This ain’t your Daddy’s western…Kick-ass director, S. Craig Zahler (Brawl in Cell Block 99)…Gives us this smart and original tale…So chocked full of gritty realism…And rich characters…That it drives this unique story all the way home…I was on the edge of my seat…All the way through…To the utterly disturbing final act…The climax of this film is what makes it unlike any western that I have ever seen…The events that take place…Would fit in nicely…Within the walls of the Elite Hunting Club, from the Hostel films…The cannibalistic troglodytes that make up the army of antagonists…In this film…Are scary as fuck…And in case y’all forgot…Kurt Russell is still a bonafide bad-ass…It just goes to show you, folks…Sometimes a western, isn’t a western…Sometimes it’s a taut thriller…And sometimes…It is a visceral…Flesh-noshing…Gore-fest.
The Green Inferno (2015) – In this film by horror-guru, Eli Roth…The director pays homage to the film that started it all for cannibal horror…Cannibal Holocaust…Even the title Roth selected…Also comes from an old school cannibal horror film…The story takes place in a similar setting…But under a different set of circumstances…I mean…What could be more fun than watching a bunch of pompous, self-absorbed, narcissistic tree-huggers go to the rainforest to stage a protest? Oh…I don’t know…Watching them get eaten? Hey it worked for me…Even though this picture was poorly received by the majority of critics…I gave my typical zero fucks about that…And I am fairly sure that this perpetually maligned director…Has learned to give the same amount of fucks, too…In this film…Roth once again holds true to himself…And to the source material that he was paying homage to…He gathered a group of some of the douchiest douche-nozzles that ever douched…And man…That made it so that when they finally pay the ultimate price…It was a whole lot easier…To stomach.
He Never Died (2016) – I just love this film…And you know what…It’s all Henry Rollins’ fault…This film is the sophomore effort of Jason Krawczyk…And it tells the story of Jack…A man whose regimented routine of a life has been designed to distract him from an overwhelming desire to consume the flesh of humans…As we delve deeper and deeper into Jack’s world…We try to understand exactly what kind of monster he might be…And in the darkened recesses of his life…We discover that he is an immortal being…One whose origin story was ripped from the pages of The Bible…And as we discover this origin…The things he does…The man he is…All come into focus…Just in time…To blow our fucking minds…Just a heads up…If you end up becoming a fan of this film…Just like I did…Then the following tidbit of news will tickle you…Krawczyk penned the script for a sequel…It is called She Never Died…And it is currently in post-production from horror director, Audrey Cummings.
K-Shop (2016) – This film tells the story of Salah, a young man who returns from university to help his ailing father run the family-owned kebab shop…After a deadly late night encounter with a customer…Salah takes a hard left at the fork in the morality road…And delivers a vicious variation of vigilante vengeance…On the ever-incorrigible, shit-faced, late-night kebab-consuming crowds of weekenders…Found aimlessly stumbling the streets of London…Oh man…This film goes dark as fuck…As it follows Salah down his gore-plastered rabbit hole…And all of those wasted weekenders line up for a heaping helping of very special kebab…And maybe even a little bit of karma, too.
Raw (2016) – In this twisted little French-Belgian horror film…From first time feature film director, Julia Ducournau…We meet Justine, played by Garance Marillier, a vegetarian veterinary student, who attends the same veterinary school that her older sister attends…And it’s also the same one where her parents met years earlier…While Justine is being subjected to some weird hazing rituals at school…She is forced to consume animal flesh for the first time…And with the…Well…Let’s call it…Help…Of her older sister, Alexia played by Ella Rumpf…The younger sister begins to learn things about her family…And herself…As she begins to transform right before her own eyes…This film was unique, folks…It was subtle in its delivery…It had genuine and organic performances…And ominous and atmospheric visuals…And because of all of that…This is a director…Whose career I will be following…For sure.
Darlin’ (2019) – It’s a no-brainer that this sequel to Lucky McKee’s 2011 film, The Woman…Was the directorial debut of Pollyanna McIntosh…Because after all…She played the titular character in that film…A character that she first brought to life in the 2009 film, The Offspring…And now…She breathes new life into her with this film…She gives us a story that picks up after the events that took place at the end of the previous installment…When “The Woman” left the Cleek farm with three little liberated girls in tow…The youngest one…Was Darlin’…And now we see that she has grown into a feral teenager…One who has become pregnant…And deposited by The Woman into so-called civilized society…In order to give her a so-called safe place to deliver…This film was a ton of fun…It was as crazy and feral as The Woman herself…And that’s right folks…You guessed it…I dug it.
The Video Store Clerk 