Genre blending can be just as much fun as it risky. Throw together too many disparate elements and you may confuse and confound your audience who simply won’t know how to approach such an eccentric set up – on the other hand, nothing truly memorable ever came from playing it safe. But playing it safe was never going to be a problem for Antonia Bird’s little seen Ravenous, a horror/western/comedy/cannibal mash up that piles its influences into a huge grinder and cranks that handle with reckless abandon.
Taking inspiration from the Donner Party incident that occured in the 1840s and the legend of Alfred Parker, the so-called Colorado Cannibal who ate five companions after becoming snowbound in the 1870s, Ravenous also manages to take a hefty bite out of the concept of manifest destiny and the Native American myth of the Wendigo while maintain a quirky sense of ghoulish humour the whole time. But can such a bizarre mix (not to mention issues during filming when the original director was fired three weeks into production) possibly hope to produce a coherent movie, much less an entertaining one? Be prepared, the healing power of cannibalism has the power to heal all…
Awarded a medal after during a sizable skirmish during the Mexican – American War, it’s soon discovered that Second Lieutenant Boyd only managed to take the enemy single handed after a gargantuan act of cowardice. However, while he is exiled to the remote Fort Spencer located in the Sierra Nevadas to avoid a scandal, their are aspects to Boyd’s story that he never elaborated on, chief of which is that while he played dead among a pile of bodies, the blood pouring down his throat gave him the strength and resolve to slaughter the enemy.
Upon arriving at Fort Spencer, Boyd is introduced to the various misfits stationed there including kindly Colonal Hart, drunken Major Knox, timid and religious Private Toffler, gung-ho Private Reich, perpetually stoned Private Cleaves and Native American siblings George and Martha, but not long into his exile, the fort is visited by a man who staggers in from the biting winter near-dead and babbling on about the horrifying fate thay has befallen his wagon train. The man’s name is Calqhoun and he claims that the group he rode with got trapped by a particularly brutal storm and for the last three months, his companions have been picking each other off and eating one another under the insistence of their leader, the maniacal Colonal Ives. Naturally a rescue party is sent to see if there is any survivors, but while Boyd is anxious to discover if Calqhoun experienced the same rejuvenating effects of eating flesh as he once did, the strange man pulls a massive rug pulls on his “rescuers” after it’s discovered that Calqhoun is actually Ives who has lured the men out into the middle of nowhere to continue to indulge himself on his ghastly diet of human meat.
During the chaos, Boyd’s overriding terror of death rises to the surface and he has to once again commit unspeakable acts in order to dodge the Grim Reaper. However, upon returning to Fort Spencer, he finds that his cannibal nightmare is far from reaching the final course.
The fact that Ravenous isn’t more well known has always stuck in my craw in a way that’s haunted me since I first saw it back on release. While the movie is riddled with flaws (understandable considering its chaotic production), Antonia Bird’s bizarre middle finger to manifest destiny is one of those rare films where even it’s uneven nature actually benefits the unhinged tale as it zigzags and staggers to unpredictable places while constantly keeping you off-balance. It’s a Western because it’s set in California the 1840s, it’s a horror because it deals with a man with an insatiable hunger for human flesh, it’s a comedy because it recognises the inherent ludicrous nature of its own story and the misfits who populate it – and yet while the film is all of these, it’s utterly impossible to properly class Ravenous as it’s splayed across all genres like a particularly relaxed cat stretching out in front of a fireplace.
Literally nothing about the film – not the off-kilter performances, or the remarkable score provided by Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman – comes close to being conventional and the movie’s darkly sarcastic tone often revels in referencing cannibalism in the most mundane ways it can to show how completely unbothered its antagonist is about his gruesome habits.
Bird proves to be something of a world class juggler as she leans into making the entire film feel just off centre with reality and that aforementioned score takes that notion and rus with it almost as if John Carpenter had his synths taken away and he had to make do with banjos, jaw harps and squeeze boxes from another century. However, none of this would work if the ensemble wasn’t fully on board with the weirdness and thankfully, Ravenous’ cast seem to get the joke one hundred percent. For example, Guy Pearce has always sought out strange lead roles and with Boyd he’s found a doozy as he has to make an abject coward who would rather stoop to eating a colleague than venturing into the great beyond sympathetic to an audience.
And yet does it he can; with huge, vulnerable eyes and a quiet voice as he suddenly finds himself at ground zero of a slowly growing cannibal conspiracy that, if left unchecked, would slowly entwine itself around the growing of America itself. Helping Pearce’s job immensely is that his character is being seduced into the life of cannibal fine dining by Robert Carlyle monstrous Calqhoun/Ives who is somehow charming and utterly terrifying all at the same time. Behind them is a group of character actors born to be in a film this strange such as David Arquette, Jeffery Jones (less said about him the better), Jeremy Davis and Neal McDonough who alternate between playing their eccentric characters and being delicious in equal amounts.
However, like all the best horror movies (even ones that don’t really feel like horror movies), Ravenous has more to say other than some creative bloodletting and inbetween the snark and gore the film has some points to make about greed, the way Native Americans are treated by whites as glorified pack mules for the entire film and the nature of the expansion of the United States itself, but smartly the film doesn’t let these themes overwhelm the oddball story. In fact, Bird even opts to end the movie with that most American of tropes – the climactic fisticuffs; but instead chooses to take the piss out of countless final battles that sees its combatants take insane amounts of punishment due to the fact they’ve achieved regenerative powers from eating the people around them. That and they use a massive bear trap to settle their differences…
Undoubtedly strange and yet incredibly rewarding for anyone on the same level as it’s outlandish tone, Ravenous treads it’s own path and is strangely all the more touching for it. Cannibalism powered healing factors? Heroic cowards? Death by gargantuan bear trap? God, I love it when a movie has meat between its teeth.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 