Tampabay.com
NOVEMBER 06, 2009

Friday Fromage: Every time a bell rings, a Cannibal Girl eats her wings (or else Eugene Levy)

After Thank You for Smoking, Juno and the upcoming Up in the Air, Jason Reitman has proven himself to be one of today's best young filmmakers. His father Ivan wasn't bad for a while either, with Meatballs, both Ghostbusters flicks and Stripes among his hits.

Thanks to those successes, junior didn't need to break into the business with a chunky slice of cinematic gouda like 1973's Cannibal Girls. Ivan Reitman did, dragging along SCTV stars Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin for this horror comedy. (Levy's the guy in the trailer wearing the Jew-fro and smoking a cigar before getting smoked.) "Tongue-in-cheek" is the least of what these shapely taboo breakers shove in their mouths when they're hungry.

Reitman also employs one of the signature ballyhoo stunts of the drive-in era, that the trailer makes triply sure viewers know about: a bell clanging whenever "scenes of an especially gruesome or erotic nature" are about to flash on screen. "Those in the audience of a squeamish or prudish disposition" could use that sound that sound as a signal to close their eyes or turn away.

But, really, if you paid to see a movie titled Cannibal Girls, would you miss the best parts?

Enjoy!

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About the bloggers

For new movie reviews and movie news, this blog's for you. Steve Persall, movie critic for the St. Petersburg Times, weighs in on blockbuster movies, small-budget movies, the best movies, the worst movies ever and everything in between. Steve was conceived behind a drive-in movie theater his father operated and raised in projection booths and concession stands. He doesn't care how you did it up north.

E-mail Steve Persall:
persall@sptimes.com.

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