Bodo A few years before Trey Parker and Matt Stone teamed up to create South Park, they shot this little gem under the banner of the iconoclastic Troma Films production company, known for quite a few cult classics in the genre of schlocky and offensive B-movies.The title, CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL, is fairly descriptive: The movie is actually a musical with cannibals. It takes its inspiration from Oklahoma! and is set in Post- Civil-War US, following a group of miners who embark on a trip to Colorado Territory. The cheerful group of companions soon finds out that their guide, played by Trey Parker himself, may not know all too well which way they're headed...This film is beautifully silly, full of little jokes and obscure humor. It mocks musicals but manages to also manages to pay respectful tribute to them. The humor is not quite as crude and offensive as it will be in Parker and Stone's later creation of South Park, but the spirit is perhaps more in the vein of The Book of Mormon—there's even a Mormon character!Don't be put off by the gore. This movie should be amenable to most viewers despite the excessive violence in the first scenes... which is admittedly over the top and meant to be funny. All in all, CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL comes together as a funny (and at times witty) B-movie musical with a heart.

johnstonjames for all of you who mother's were elephants and fathers were Eskimos, you know already the weird and disturbing musical charm of this wildly funny Troma nightmare.i grew up watching musicals and my parents pushed musicals on us because they thought they were highbrow entertainment. i always preferred the 'B' and 'Z' horror movies, Three Stooges, and cheapo Disney Burbank studio stuff to the lofty pretensions of MGM and Broadway musical shows. i've spent years trying to erase the lyrics of these showtunes from my mind with little success. through no fault of my own i occasionally relive the lyrics to bile like "wouldn't it be loverly" and "if ever i would leave you" chiming in my memory much to my dismay and even worse threat to my sanity.don't get me wrong. i love musicals. in fact musicals are my favorite of the entertainment genres. i just disagree with the current and standard consensus of which musicals are good. i can't stand anything that falls into too much formula with say, the exception of Disney films. in the case of Disney, formula works. in the case of most everything else, formula breeds familiarity and contempt. that holds true for most Broadway and MGM musicals. too much formula and contrivance leads to boring familiarity which leads to mutinous contempt.that's why i like musicals post 'Rocky Horror'. just to survive musicals had to break formula and convention. instead of conventionally square, they often could be daring and willing to take chances. many of them became rather dark, or even violent, like in the case of 'Sweeney Todd' and 'Cannibal;The Musical'.even though 'Cannibal' never appeared on Broadway, it is actually more fresh and inspired than the majority of those productions. even though filmed on a very marginal budget, 'Cannibal' feels very much like legitimate musical theater comedy. so much so that it doubles both successfully in film and as a popular stage play. it also isn't really any more violent than say 'Sweeney Todd' which received Tony awards.i'm no stranger to musicals. my experience goes all the way back to the original B&W musicals by Busby Berkley (who i actually do like)and i have heard many Broadway track recordings even if i haven't seen those plays. and as someone who truly likes musicals, my criticism of mainstay musicals is probably more fair than by someone who doesn't care for musical theater.i love 'Cannibal;The Musical'. it's funny and tuneful and most of all, inspired. i love musicals, although if your average musical authority saw a list of my favorite musicals, they'd probably think i was warped. i mean i have Oingo Boingo's 'Forbidden Zone' on there.

jaysilentbob37 Yes, I have to say it, I am a South Park fan. I watch the show religiously, and that is the reason why I watched this brilliantly entertaining film. That's probably the only reason anyone ever watches it. This film is one that you either love or hate, and I can't imagine anything in between. It's wildly uneven, poorly paced, poorly acted, and has rather bad sound quality at times. And I love it for all those reasons. It's simply a student project that Trey Parker and his buddies put together over one spring break, and with such a small budget, and limited film-making skills, they created something brilliant, and inspirational.Alfred Packer (Trey Parker) is a lonely miner who seems to be in love with his horse, Leanne, and has recently been put on trial for murdering his mining crew and eating them. He tells the real story to a reporter named Polly, and it goes like this. One shpadoinkle morning, he is chosen as a replacement guide for a gold mining expedition to Colorado, though he doesn't exactly know the way. With his five crew members, he sets off on the journey. Of course, when his horse runs away, he ends up leading his crew on an agonizing search in the wrong direction, which leads them into the cold, snowy mountains, becoming hopelessly lost. As they fight to survive, they soon realize that they may need to resort to eating each other...This movie is a hysterical comedy with many big laughs, but I personally think it works better as a musical. A real challenge with this movie is to see it, and then try and get the songs out of your head. The music is so catchy, and if the film was really popular, I wouldn't have to constantly explain to the people around me what I'm whistling/humming. Sometimes, I leave my iPod playlist of the movie's songs running all night as I sleep, as they provide me comfort. Most people won't love the music that much, but you can't say the music isn't wonderfully catchy. "Shpadoinkle Day," That's All I'm Asking For," and Let's Build A Snowman" are my favorites, though I love them all. The first former and the latter would be considered classics if the film had a wide release.Now, the main problem with the film that most people have is the pacing, which is extremely slow. The thing is, is that Trey Parker had little knowledge of making a film, and with a tiny budget, the film is of poor quality. The acting, sound, and agreeably the pacing, are all bad. But the film's bad quality is one of it's charms. Much of the humor is unintentional, due to some of the funniest, and most obvious errors ever put on film. They are easy to spot if you pay attention, and don't let the pacing get you down. By the way, if you don't like it the first time, try it again with the hilarious, and helpful directors commentary on the DVD in which Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and the rest of the main cast get drunk and watch the film. They point out many things that you probably couldn't care less about the first time, and their insight makes it really funny (not to mention, it helps the pace quite a bitCannibal! The Musical is one of my favorite comedies, and everyone should give it a try. It gets an 8/10 in my book.It is rated R for Comic Gore/Violence and some Language. Sex: 3/10 Violence: 9/10 Swearing: 6/10 Drugs: 1/10

MovieAddict2016 "Cannibal! The Musical" is inspired by the true story of Alferd Packer (although his real name was allegedly "Alfred" and "Alferd" came about because he didn't know how to spell his own name correctly). Packer was one of only two men - along with Albert Fish - to ever be convicted of cannibalism in America. (Apparently serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer had enough going against him already that he wasn't tried for cannibalism on top of mass murder).Packer led a group of five men into Colorado in search of gold. They got lost and were stranded in desolate conditions, and eventually Packer killed his men and ate them. (Although according to Wikipedia recent evidence indicates he never killed them, and in 1981 he was apparently acquitted of crimes long after his death. I guess they figured eating people who are already dead in order to survive doesn't qualify as full-out cannibalism. I'm not really sure about the specifics on how that works.) Trey Parker and Matt Stone made this movie before "South Park." I believe it was actually filmed in 1994 and first screened at the Alferd Packer College (yes, there's a college named after him) which is presumably located in Colorado. It's become a cult film over the years and the title was changed to "Cannibal: The Musical" after Troma producers convinced Trey that not enough people outside of the state were aware of who Alferd Packer actually was. (I certainly wasn't - I thought it was a fictional character before looking up the film on Wikipedia.) First things first - I have so far been largely unimpressed by Trey and Matt's live-action ventures. I've become a huge "South Park" fan within the past year or so, but I bought "Orgazmo" on DVD and thought it was a very juvenile and average comedy, and although I have not seen "BASEketball" yet, even Trey and Matt have acknowledged that it is not a good film, so I don't feel like I'm entirely missing out."Cannibal" is a huge cult film and I had heard a lot of good things about it from various people on the Internet, in particular one Troma video fan. Well, this is my first Troma video (if it qualifies as one) and maybe that's part of the reason I couldn't get into it.Parts of it are very funny, but for the most part it really isn't very humorous at all. It actually develops something of a story and isn't as loud or obvious as some of Parker's other material. "South Park" is very satirical and witty but it's much more obvious than the comedy here, which is tamer and not quite as edgy. Some of the songs are quite funny but a number of them are inferior versions of songs that would appear in the "South Park" movie and "Team America: World Police." Songs from that film like "The End of an Act" (the one that bashes Ben Affleck and Michael Bay) are much cleverer and musically catchy than anything found here.The cast is generally weak and Trey is visibly awkward throughout - presumably since it was his first real movie. It's very low-budget (filmed for $125,000 - compared to the eventual $1 million they received per episode of "That's My Bush!" in 2001), and part of the reason the film isn't as engrossing at times is due to its budget: it looks like a student movie made by some friends who made up a lot of gags as they went along...and for the most part that's probably a rather accurate summary.I know the film has a cult following and an impressive rating on this site, but I think if you're not a die-hard Trey Parker fan or a follower of the Troma film series, it'll leave you a bit underwhelmed, especially if you're familiar with the boys' recent work on "South Park" and "Team America." It has its strong points but they are far and few between, and for the most part it's a very amateurish production that isn't up to par with their later stuff.An interesting note of curiosity for fans of "South Park," but I couldn't really warm up to it.