J.C. Maçek III The World's Greatest Critic!!! I'm a strict vegetarian and have been since February of 2002. I don't preach about it, I don't try to convert. My family still eats meat (I don't call it "Dead Animal" over the dinner table either) and my best friend eats meat. What's right for me may not be what's right for you, que no? Still, the biggest question I get asked by most folks is "Why?" Instead of offering up an answer I think I'll show the next person who asks the first two minutes of this dumb movie: La Semana del asesino, or, Cannibal Man, one of Spain's Five and a Half contributions to the Video Nasty List! Now before anybody shouts out some crap about cannibalism not being the same thing as carnivorism, rest assured, the depiction of cattle being hung upside down, kicking and mooing until their throats are slashed and torrents of blood drain out until the twitching slowly stops is bound to make just about anybody wince. Hey, it's probably not going to cause anybody to want to give up meat, but it most certainly answers the "WHY" question pretty damned well, no? Another Flavor-rich Part of... FALL... In Love with a VIDEO NASTY! Fall in love with MORE Video Nasties! This is the setting for Cannibal Man, the lowly tale of a Meat Packing Factory worker named Marcos (Vicente Parra) who is surrounded by such carnage as a part of his daily life. Sadly, the guy comes off as a bit of a dim bulb, especially when his really hot girlfriend (Emma Cohen's yummy Paula) is involved. Here's an example: When a prudish taxi driver attacks them for gettin' fresh in his checker, Marcos accidentally kills the guy. The next day Paula asks him if there was any news about it in the paper. He responds "Not a word". She asks if he read the whole thing and he responds "Well there was something... he died." Then he proceeds to give her lots of details. Far from "not a word." Later, when they can't agree on whether or not to go to see the Police about it, he kills her too. What a jackass! My wife and I had a lot of discussions on whether we should go to see the Police when they played at Staples Center on their 2007 tour, and neither one of us ended up dying about it. I hear Copeland was awesome too. But I digress. Marcos confesses this crime to somebody else who (shocker) insists he go to the police, so that person dies, then somebody goes looking for them and that person dies... the list goes on and on and bodies are piling up, up, up, up, up! Considering the title of this movie, how do you think a morally shattered man with a knowledge of butchering techniques might get rid of a body pile-up problem? The same way one might expect in any old Video Nasty. Cannibal Man almost gets funny as it goes on with the same theme of "Hey, what you got in this room, Bluebeard... A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A H!" I half expected Vincente Parra to turn to the camera with blood splashes all over him and say either "Oops, I did it again!" or "Did I do Tha-aaaaaaaaaat?" While this one is most certainly repetitive, director Eloy de la Iglesia (who co-wrote the screenplay with Robert Oliver and Antonio Fos) still manages to surprise us at one or two turns. That is especially when Cannibal Man gets gay all of the sudden. There is no secret that one of Marcos' buddies (Eusebio Poncela's Néstor) is a prime candidate for Pride Parade Grand Marshall. At one point in the movie it's almost easy to forget that we're watching a serial killer cannibal thriller because full on Brokeback Mountain bursts through the door and says "Estoy Aqui, baby!" When my Uncle died, he left a tape of porn flicks, with some straight flicks from the 1980s, along with a couple of bi flicks and a couple of gay flicks. I taped over the gay and bi flicks with some episodes of Babylon 5, but accidentally caught a piece of one as I was cuing it up... and La Semana del Asesino is even gayer than that. Look, I'm not dissing gay people in any way, shape or form, but man, this isn't even subtle. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was more in the closet than this. Throwing on a dress with too much eye makeup to perform the best of ABBA to a Karaoke crowd was almost in order. Iglesia had to throw in a straight sex scene later on just to keep Richard Simmons, Harvey Firestein and Dame Edna from standing up and saying "Welp-ah, too gay for me, headin' for the door!" If that part was unpredictable, the fact that more and more bodies keep piling up is anything but. Marcos' crappy little villa is starting to smell like seven miles of used ass and the neighborhood dogs are lining up around the place waiting to make an order. He even buys bags full of perfume to cover it up (which doesn't do much for denying the whole gay thing), but after a while, he starts living like a Spanish, Bi-Curious Patrick Bateman in rural Barcelona. Iglesia is more subtle in his gore (at least his human gore) than many among the Exploitation Set. There is plenty of blood splashing around and an overall feeling of discomfort (you can practically feel the heat of the Spanish summer). However, there is no liver munching or lame gut dangling by callous, hungry characters emulating the motions one might use to hang garland on a tree. Still, much of the value here is "shock value", the humor is unintentional and the artistry is not so artful. In short, this one is a DOG. Is it the worst movie I've ever seen? No, absolutely not. Is it the worst movie most people are likely to see? Could be. One note here, those of you who find yourselves on a "Cannibal Kick", shooting for the gross-out horror that only flicks of that kind can provide, might want to apply elsewhere. La Semana del asesino doesn't translate to "Cannibal Man", it actually translates to "week of the murderer", or "week of the killer". This film has its nasty moments (its inclusion on the DPP List of 74 is no mistake), but the cannibal aspect here is almost as thin as the plot. Take it as a horror crime flick, more than a cannibal movie. Be warned, though, when the film should be at its grimmest, it's at its funniest. See you in the next reel, folks... And please... don't kill anybody! Especially a hot chick!