The first thing you should know about Cannibal!: The Musical is that it’s one of the best bad taste, gross-out comedies of the 90s. Today, gore and laughs go together so often that it’s become hack-y, but back then all you had were some old Monty Python gags, Return of the Living Dead, Street Trash, Peter Jackson and Troma (who bought the film in 1996 and gave it its wide release). At the time of the original production in 1993, making a joke as you put a bullet in a guy’s head and rip off another guy’s jaw was still a tad weird.
The second thing you should definitely know is that’s based on the true story of Alferd Packer (not a misspelling), one of America’s most famous known cannibals. In 1874, he got lost with a pack of fellow prospectors in the Colorado mountains in the dead of winter. Freezing and starving, Packard ate some of his traveling buddies for survival. Sounds like a comedy to me.
The third thing you need to know is that writer/director/star Trey Parker grew up in Colorado and studied film at UC in Boulder, where the story of Alferd Packer is well-known and often joked about. In 1968, the university cafeteria was named after Packer in tongue-in-cheek tribute.
The fourth thing you oughta know is that, yes, this is an honest-to-God MUSICAL. The songs are totally competent, if ridiculous, and elevate this 16mm low-budget project to something ambitious, something more than just some film students goofing off in the woods for a few days. Credit Trey Parker’s musical theater background. He knows his Rodgers and Hammerstein inside and out and he pays tribute to and makes a mockery of the two old masters here (and would continue such throughout his career).
The fifth thing you might want to know is that this film has one of the most unexpected cameos ever when experimental film hero, and instructor at UC, Stan Brakhage shows up in a small role.
The sixth thing you should know is that Alferd Packer’s horse in this film, Lianne, is named after the girl who broke Trey Parker’s heart in college.
Okay, you only really needed to know five things.