Cannibal Girls
Ivan Reitman took this film to Spain's International Horror Festival in November of 1973. Eugene Levy ended up winning the best actor award and Andrea Martin ended up winning best actress.,The opening scene shows a man killed and a woman threatened, but cuts away before the viewer can know her fate. Later a missing girl is mentioned, with no clues to her whereabouts. She never reappears and is never mentioned again.,In the final credits, actor Gino Morocco's first name is misspelled "Gina", the feminine form.,Theatrical version distributed by AIP in the United States featured a "violence warning" gimmick, i.e. a horn sound played before violent sequences. This was not included in the Canadian theatrical version distributed by Cinepix. A bell rang to indicate the end of the violent scenes. This version is offered as a bonus audio track on the current DVD and Blu-Ray releases.,Featured in Sneak Previews: A Little Romance, Love on the Run, Dawn of the Dead, Manhattan, Hanover Street, Firepower, Cannibal Girls (1979),There is an explanation to the disjointed and jumbled storyline. From what I read, the movie was originally made in 1971 as a cheap quickie by producers Reitman and Goldberg, largely depending on improvisation. On seeing the completed footage, they felt that they could get a good distribution deal if they made some alterations... which took about two years to complete!

So it's no wonder that with all this make-it-up-as-we-go-along for two years that the finished product makes little sense - and moves awfully slow as it tries to figure out what to do with itself. It seems to have been intended as a horror comedy, but it doesn't work as such. The comedy, apart from a couple of moments that induce small smirks, is not only bad in itself, it's delivered with almost no energy. Levy and Martin show nothing of the zaniness they brought out later in their careers.

The horror moments are marginally better; the crudeness of the production does give a few of these moments an effective grittiness. There are some other moments that could have also worked had they not been spoiled by some terrible acting (voice and posing) by the actors.

I suspect you might have guessed already that this is a bad movie, considering how the movie has never received a video release or is readily available on cable or TV (at least in the U.S.) despite its association with Levy, Martin, and Reitman. Don't expect a DVD release of it any time soon - even MGM (which now owns the A.I.P. catalog) isn't *that* desperate!,