RAVENOUS - A delicious pitch black horror comedy

It’s rare for me to say a movie is CRIMINALLY UNDERATED but, for RAVENOUS, I will.

Troubled productions, with multiple directors, meddling studios and confused marketing, are common fodder to niche cinema fans such as us. But what is rare – as rare as the flesh consumed throughout this film – that such madness gives rise to a bona-fide classic. Ravenous is such a classic, one of the strangest films to appear in 1999, that magical year of cinema where certified bangers rained from the skies and yet this one slipped through our fingers.

I could describe this as a cannibal black comedy-horror set on the American frontier, chock full of satirical and homoerotic themes, stuffed with character actors that make you say “Hey, its that guy!” But this is a case where the sum is VERY MUCH more than its parts.

It starts traditionally enough with a Dances with Wolvesesque disgraced military officer (Guy Pierce) exiled to a remote fort full of wacky rejects too crazy for even the US Army circa 1850. But things take a turn when Begbie himself, lil Robbie Carlyle, turns up with a story of Oregon Trail settlers resorting to cannibalism and offers to lead the soldiers on a rescue mission.

From here, the movie gets very strange, very discomforting and very amazing as director Antonia Bird (a renown English theatre director who was the THIRD and final director on this film) brings a unique kooky sentiment to the film which is gross body horror one minute, elevated criticism of manifest destiny the next. And I haven’t even mentioned the bizarre soundtrack created by Gorillaz wunderkind Damon Alban and arthouse marstro Michael Nyman. It’s a rare movie where a terrifying forest chase is scored to knee-slappin fiddles like it’s the Benny Hill Chainsaw Massacre.

I believe this utterly strange, utterly magnificent film is a certified classic but have I just drunk the Kool-Aid (or, in the case of this movie, supped on the forbidden meat?) Find out on Saturday 14 when we decide if this film is RAD, BAD or MAD!

We are hosted by NEWSTEAD TENNIS & SQUASH COURTS a licensed venue - feel free to bring FOODS and you can buy drinks at the BAR.