CANNIBAL MAN (1971)
Director: Eloy de la Iglesia
Severin Films

The CANNIBAL MAN takes another bite out of the Blu-ray format in Severin Films' remastered release.

Not middle-age but no longer a youth, slaughterhouse worker Marcos (Vicente Parra, NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM) is being pressured to marriage by his much younger girlfriend Paula (Emma Cohen, HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB). On their weekly night out, Marcos gets into a fight with a cab driver (Goyo Lebrero, CAULDRON OF DEATH) and accidentally kills him. When guilt-ridden Paula insists that he turn himself into the police, he strangles her and hides her body in his bedroom. When his brother Esteban (Charly Bravo, ELIMINATORS) refuses to help him anywhere other than to the police station, Marcos murders him too. Trapped in a spiral of murder and fear of discovery, Marcos mind begins to fracture further as the summer heat rises and the smell of corpses – among them Esteban's fiancée (Lola Herrera) and her domineering father (Fernando Sánchez Polack, VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES) – attracts stray dogs. He finds solace in the company of wealthy gay neighbor Néstor (Eusebio Poncela, ARREBATO) until he discovers that the other man's highrise apartment provides a bird's eye view through the skylight of his corpse-strewn shack.

Although more popularly known under the export title THE CANNIBAL MAN than the Spanish title that translates as THE WEEK OF THE KILLER, gay filmmaker Eloy de la Iglesia's second thriller is no gorefest and there is no actual cannibalism apart from some sickly suggestion. It has more in common with REPULSION but with a less overt surrealistic bent, focusing instead on Marcos' alienation which is as much socioeconomic oppression as it is a reluctance to accept responsibility. Marcos kills Paula as much out of fear as her attack on his manhood, refusing to accept his worldview that the police would never believe someone like him; ironically, he had just received a promotion that might have improved his economic prospects in the eyes of Paula's parents, so the murder could also be construed as another type of escape. Although Néstor may be attracted to Marcos, the film remains ambiguous about where the attraction is shared, with some moments of possible homoeroticism just as easily interpreted as respite and revelry as Marcos is allowed to temporarily forget his oppressive circumstances at home. Although director Iglesia does not condone Marcos' crimes any more than Néstor, he does seem to share Marcos' cynicism about how Spain's authoritarian regime treats classes differently (even Néstor escapes harassment by police officers checking identification when a restauranteur points out that he lives in one of the highrises). Although the ending was imposed by the censors, it is dramatically resonant.

Prepared for export by German world sales distributor Atlas International as THE CANNIBAL MAN – with dubbing supervised by Robert Oliver and featuring some familiar English dubbers of Italian horror – the film was released stateside under that title as well as APARTMENT ON THE 13TH FLOOR by American International offshoot Hallmark Releasing. In the UK, the film was branded as a Video Nasty on the basis of its title alone (it did not help that the export version moved some slaughterhouse footage up to the beginning and that the assessors may not have watched much beyond that) although it was reissued by Redemption Films in the nineties. Anchor Bay released the export version on DVD in 2000 and – after a double feature reissue with MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD – that disc was reissued by Blue Underground in 2007.

The film received its high definition debut in 2014 from German label Subkultur featuring two versions: a mislabeled "Spanish version" that was actually the export version (98:30) with English audio and the shorter German theatrical cut (97:41). The disc also included eleven minutes of deleted scenes, some of which had been reintegrated in Spain's 2016 Blu-ray from Divisa which featured an integral cut (107:34) featuring material exclusive to both the Spanish and export versions. This integral cut was ported over stateside by Code Red for their 2018 Blu-ray which dropped the remainder of the deleted trims which consisted of footage not used in either version of the film but intriguing nonetheless (see below). Severin Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray features a brand new transfer from the original camera negative that is the basis for two versions of the film: the international export cut (98:25) and a reconstruction of the integral version (107:19). The body of the transfer is a nice improvement over the earlier HD master which had some filtering and blotchier grain. Grain is sometimes noisy (especially on those bare off-white walls of Marcos' shack) but the newer transfer greatly enhances the film's sweltering atmosphere with an emphasis on decay and sweaty skin as well as some contrasting cool blues of the night scenes (as well as some subtle gels) as mini dark nights of the soul for Marcos. The reintegrated scenes of the long cut look slightly inferior and there is some minute jitter at the transition points (as well as one panning shot later in the film) while the export cut's credits look like they have been upscaled from SD in an otherwise superior presentation to the DVD master.

Both versions offer a choice of English or Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono tracks and optional English subtitles for the Spanish dialogue or English SDH subtitles for the English track. Although the English track features some familiar voices, the Spanish track is recommended (even though none of the actors dub themselves) just for more somber and mature delivery. For instance, sexpot restauranteur Rosa (Vicky Lagos, FIVE DOLLARS FOR RINGO) sounds like a brainless flirt as dubbed in English by Carolyn de Fonseca but in Spanish her observations about Marcos and his relationship with Paula sound more pointed. On the integral cut, scenes not included in the Spanish version revert to English on the Spanish track while scenes not in the English version revert to Spanish on the English track (a third English subtitle track is included for these snippets). There is at least one proofing error on the SDH track transcribing a football match on the radio while a bar scene exclusive to the English version means that the cook is addressed as "Ernie" in the English subtitles for the Spanish version early on and then later as Augustin for a later bar scene in Spanish.

Extras include "Cinema at the Margins" (26:11), an interview with film historian Stephen Thrower (NIGHTMARE USA) and academic Dr. Shelagh Rowan-Legg on director Iglesia and the Spanish filmmaking scene under the dictatorship of General Franco. They note the basque filmmaker's beginnings, studying in Paris and returning to Spain where his first feature was a children's film before moving into thriller territory with his next films SOMETHING BITTER IN THE MOUTH and the criminally underseen THE GLASS CEILING (an ideal companion piece to CANNIBAL MAN). They note that the popularity of those films emboldened Iglesia to try something more daring with CANNIBAL MAN, that his initial concept was rejected by the censors – Marcos was originally an eighteen year old youth who gets away with his crimes – and that casting Parra (then known for playing Prince Alfonso XII in two very popular Spanish films) allowed him some sway (Parra is also credited as associate producer). Thrower provides some background on Spanish censorship at the scripting and editing phases while Rowan-Legg notes that genre cinema allowed Spanish filmmakers to criticize the regime without being seen as political. Of his later years, they note his more politically-motivated films that dealt with both homosexuality and oppressed economic classes of characters, with Thrower comparing him to Pier Paolo Pasolini in his filmmaking and his relationships with young toughs (noting that Iglesia dropped out of filmmaking for a decade because of his own drug addiction) as well as being a precursor to gay Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almadovar.

In "The Director and THE CANNIBAL MAN" (17:54), film scholar Carlos Aguilar covers some of the same ground but with some additional perspective, noting that Iglesia was not the only filmmaker who debuted with a children's film because of a grant, that Iglesia, Parra, and Poncela were all gay and the film allowed each of them to break out of their popular images, with the two actors taking on more daring work later on without being marginalized in popular cinema. The deleted scenes (1:35) not reintegrated into the film and not included in either version are also included on the disc, including some snippets of unused ending, an alternate take of the sex scene between Marcos and Rosa, and most interestingly a montage featuring a kiss between Marcos and Néstor that may be imagined or real but dropped because Iglesia felt it might suggest that the latter condones the crimes of the former (in the actual ending, Néstor just says he supports Marcos whether he turns himself in or run away). The disc closes out with the export theatrical trailer (3:07), the narration of which suggests that dubbing director Robert Oliver was actually the voice of the devil in the opening of BEYOND THE DOOR rather than Edmund Purdom as cited in some references. The standard edition available from retailers includes a reversible cover that has a beautiful reimagining of the Intervision Video Nasty pre-cert front and back cover on the inside while a limited edition available exclusively from Severin Films includes a slipcover with two artwork motifs from the original advertising. (Eric Cotenas)

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