Cannibal! The Musical

In the winter of 1874 Alferd Packer goes into the Colorado mountains with six men and comes back alone. The story he tells at his trial forms the body of the film: losing the route, hunger, his love for his horse, and what happened in the end. There are songs in between. The subject is not cannibalism but how unbearably absurd a catastrophe looks when it is told as a musical. The songs are deliberately too well written and too cheerful, and the comedy comes precisely from that mismatch. The form does not hide being a student film. The gore is crude, the acting amateur, the editing untidy. None of it is concealed and the film makes its own cheapness the joke. It comes from Trey Parker's time as a student at the University of Colorado. Parker directed, wrote, composed the songs and took the lead; Matt Stone acts and produces. It was shot first as Alferd Packer: The Musical, then Troma took over distribution and changed the title. It predates South Park and every comic reflex of that show is visible here. Dian Bachar is in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like crude, cheap and genuinely funny independent films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for production values; the film is technically raw and chooses to stay that way.