Finger-licking good (Ravenous (DVD))

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	Ravenous (DVD)
Date:	02/02/02 (83 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very funny, quite gripping

Disadvantages: Absolutely sick

'Ravenous' is one of those films that your parents would never have allowed you to watch when you were a kid. It literally drips with blood, virtually every scene contains gore and mayhem and the subject - cannibalism - is one of those guaranteed to make your pursed-lip relatives turn off the television in disgust. It suffered a change of director (being made in the end by the British Antonia Bird), long delays in release, and a final, brief moment on cinema screens before being condemned to a life of obscurity.

It's not hard to see why - from the opening, Bird is audibly chuckling, seeing how much outrage and mayhem she can generate from that last of taboos. The hero is very flawed, the villain is a charmer, and the attitude towards cannibalism is quite complex. Here, eating people isn't simply done because you're trapped up a mountain ('Alive') or because you are a complete loon ('Hannibal'). 'Ravenous' takes up the idea contained in many primitive cultures where cannibalism is known - that to consume human flesh is to consume the power of the dead victim.

During a war in Mexico, commanding officer John Boyd (Guy Pearce) commits a gross act of cowardice, pretending to be dead and ending up in a pile of corpses in an enemy camp. Revived by the blood of a dead man, he storms out, and takes the camp single-handed. Embarrassed by this deeply compromised hero, the Army exiles him to a remote fort in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. Cursed by guilt, the past catches up with Boyd when the soldiers find F.W. Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle) a stranger wandering in the snow once he is revived, he tells a terrible story of being one of a group of travellers, marooned in the mountains and gradually turning to eating each other to survive. When the soldiers travel out to investigate, they find that all is not as it seems, and all hell proceeds to break loose.

Though much of the action is f
ast and frenetic, this is first and foremost a black comedy. Many of the supporting actors are comedy faces (David Arquette, Jeffrey Jones), and the tone is one of bleak, nasty comedy. Carlyle has lured the soldiers out into the woods for a meal, but nothing is as expected, and the film is about the vicious battle of wills between the two cannibals: Boyd has eaten people out of desperation, while Colqhoun thinks that cannibalism is the way forward, and sees the Army base as his chance to prey on pioneers heading out to California.

It's brilliantly acted - Carlyle hams it up, but he's more or less playing a pantomime villain anyway, while Pearce's agonising over his growing need to consume his fellow man is deftly played with tongue in cheek. Meanwhile, Jones, Arquette and Jeremy Davies give superb comic performances. In a way, you suspect that the film was originally intended as a straight horror thriller, but Bird and her actors have rightly smelt a rat and realised that the only way of dealing with this most horrific of subjects is to laugh at it.

That's not to say that the film is sloppy - the sets and costumes are superb, and the wintry mountain locations are gloriously photographed. Bird is a very strong director, and manages to hold the line against the film becoming too farcical, at least until the climax, where various cast members end up on the menu, and a final bloody battle finally settles the matter in a deliberately silly way.

This is limited-audience stuff - if you've seen and enjoyed such culinary masterpieces as 'Parents' or 'Hannibal' then you can probably stomach this, though it has to be said that it's not so much the gore (of which there is plenty) but the deliberately grisly humour which will probably sent you reeling. But if you can take it, it's a short movie, and you'll be hungry for more.

Summary: