Ravenous hamsters?
Oh fuck. Uhh, essentially: Ravenous. Blew me away. Robert Carlyle is amazing. Funny and disturbing. Rent it.
Before the hampsters get you!
…?
My post was eaten by Ravenous hampsters, after I ranted about how good a movie Ravenous was.
I loved this movie but I had forgotten all about it until I saw this thread.
Really great flick.
MeanJoe
MeanJoe, I had the same experience.
Looked it up on the IMDB thinking it was something I’d never seen, but it dimly comes back, and the “memorable quotes” are indeed memorable, although I’d forgotten them all entirely.
Definitely something that I could stand to watch again.
Robert Carlyle is always amazing.
I liked the film, but I LOVED the soundtrack. Composer Michael Nyman and Blur’s Damon Albarn make some damn fine music together.
Thanks for reminding me of this movie!!! I saw it years ago and really loved it, and recently I was wanting to put it on my Netflix queue but I could not remember the name.
I love the soundtrack. I described it in an older post on this board as sounding like someone trying to reproduce electronic music with simple acoustic instruments.
This movie is fucking great. How many western dark horror comedies do you see nowadays?
And yes, props to the composers of the soundtrack. great stuff.
Hell, I think I"ll watch it right now. Too bad it didn’t get recognition in the theaters. I have to respect Fox though for giving a DVD for it. Like they did with other cult movies like Fight Club.
Yeah, so Robert Carlyle’s always great. However, this is his best performance that I’ve seen, IMO. Him giggling as he plays cat-and-mouse with his victims, grinning with mouthfuls of blood, and noting to the last living member of the crew that he might “Contribute” to the stew makes me chuckle and shudder at the same time. Brilliant.
Ditto to all of the above.
Jeffrey Jones (the commanding officer at Ft. Spencer) was dryly funny throughout – introducing the characters, cutting short “Grace,” pulverizing walnuts, etc.
Cannibalism aside, the movie milks a lot of its yuks from one of my favorite genres of comedy, “what happens when a collection of oddball guys spend way too much time together,” with nothing better to do than stew in their own juices [so to speak] and feeding off of each others’ eccentricities.
As for the score, it’s marvelously off-kilter and effective in the way it suggests the uncanny, isn’t it? It’s a rag-and-bone buffet of traditional instruments – banjo, squeezebox, harmonium[?], and others. Strange harmonics and chords, too.
As for the cannibalism plot, I suspect that the movie was at least partly inspired by the true-life grisly story of Alferd Packer, now somewhat rehabilitated as a historical figure and the celebrated subject of, among other things, a Phil Ochs song and an off-off-Broadway musical.
I thought it started out great, but went nowhere pretty fast. I was very disappointed by the time it petered out. Great concept, great actors, great soundtrack, sloppy whole.