Kannibal

Can't make up its mind whether it's a low-quality porno flick or a low-quality `slasher'-type horror flick; but it does very, very poorly at being either. A total, complete, unmitigated, inexcusable waste of the batteries used to power the cheap camcorder with which it was apparently filmed.

Good old Richard Driscoll, or 'Dick Risk-all' was we like to call him down the job centre, he did such a sterling job writing, producing AND directing this movie, not to mention starring in as well, the lead role no less! I said to him, I said 'Dick, it's a hell of a stress to write, produce, direct AND act in a film - why not make it easy on yourself and the audience, and get someone else to write, produce, direct and act in it. You have a sit down old chap'. He took this in good humour. I then probed him about all the female nudity in the film, his 'tribute' to Thomas Harris, or, as he puts it 'an opera version of Tosca'. 'Well,' Dick-all told me, 'there was no budget for costumes. Lucien had to supply his own'. Indeed, Lucien, Harrison Ford lookalike, one of the foremost theatre actors of his generation, supplied fedora, scarf and monocle for an extraordinary performance as a harried cop chasing a serial killer - remember, this is a good seven years before Fincher's 'Zodiac', and I'll bet Jake Googlegall didn't supply HIS own costume. That's devotion. And this film doesn't so much have an audience, simply devotees. You can tell a 'Kannibal' fan by the fact they are only let out of the home once a week. What more can be said about Kannibal that hasn't already been scrawled in excrement on the toilet walls of the Bellvue Institute for the Deranged? Kheck it out.

Absolute garbage. The "plot" is incoherent, sound quality is so bad that dialogue is unintelligible, background music choices are bizarre at best [such as in the opening sequence, with several police cars rushing to their destination on a rainy night with lights and sirens, with bright, sprightly, cheerful music playing], the music tends to be so loud that it drowns out dialogue [which is probably a good thing. Judging by the garbled "plot", the "writing" was so bad that a better result could have been achieved by throwing alphabet soup at blank paper] and the "actors" seem to be sleepwalking or to hate the movie about as much as the audience does.

My first impression on reading the promo on the video cover was that this has to be a spoof, Kannibal - Hannibal. Viewed in this genre the film comes off, not notably, but, decently done as these are professionals doing, well, what they do. I do get another underlying theme here, assumingly promulgated, by the director / cast : You Americans like sex and gore, we'll do our best satiate your appetite. And there is, of course, the obligatory swipe at the rather bumbling and pathetic whining "What's this all about," lead detective, also decently cast. I suppose my summation is that this film is more of a social commentary about the audience than about any permissiveness, or poor taste, of movie content.

Not a bad movie, but not a great movie. If you like a lot of gore in horror films you'll love it. Quite a lot of female nudity featured. Some of the sequences are quite disturbing, someone with a very weak stomach would not enjoy watching this movie! Linnea Quigley is great as the Russian "lesbian" crime figure, along with Eileen Daly as her companion. The plot is interesting at times, although it never completely makes much sense. I'd say this was most likely shot on Digital Video and the 5.1 Sound Mix is often hard to decipher, a lot of times i could barely make out the dialogue. All in all, interesting for a single viewing.