People Eating Together entries discuss that age-old tradition of people coming together to tear each other apart — Cannibalism! So settle in, maybe grab some coffee or a snack(!), and let’s explore this last social taboo together – because you can’t practice cannibalism alone.
Sometime in about the year 2007, while bored at my job at a children’s textbook publisher, I fell down a Wikihole about cannibalism. In between reading about Sawney Beane and Jeffrey Dahmer, I ran across the Franklin Expedition, which is to Canadian history what the Donner Party is to American. The article was fascinating enough, so imagine my excitement bordering on hysteria when I reread the article in 2017 to find that AMC was making a TV show about it. I loved the show, and immediately listened to the novel on which it’s based. There are significant differences which I’ll go into in the spoilers section of the review, but for now let’s focus on reviewing the show.
“Say ‘cheese’ everyone! Ha Ha, just kidding, we haven’t eaten cheese since 1846 and have forgotten what it tastes like.”
(Note: The Terror is planned as a historical horror anthology. Season 1 deals with the lost Franklin expedition (with supernatural elements) and is based on Dan Simmons book of the same name, but season 2 will be about life in a Japanese interment camp in the US during the Korean war, and stars George Takei at the head of a predominantly Japanese-American cast. After the high bar set with season 1, I’m eagerly looking forward to season 2.)
In Which The Author Leaves The House in the Company of Friends, Good Food, and Post-Apocalyptic Cannibal Cults.
[The Enzian did not pay me to write this entry, I just love going there and have for years, and wanted to spread the word!]
Last night I scurried forth from my bolthole for a special occasion: Orlando’s own local independent theater The Enzian was showing Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Rejoice!
The Enzian’s been around since 1985. I saw my first film there in 1997, Ma Vie En Rose, so right away you can see it has quite a variety. It’s the kind of place for people who just flat out love movies and good stories, like the Alamo Drafthouse. During the Florida FiIm Festival (yes, Florida has a film festival and it’s not just police dash cam vids of drunk people falling down or setting things on fire) the Enzian becomes a nerve center of activities: they show a lot of films there, and they have discussions with filmmakers and actors. Gabriel Byrne and Helen Mirren have attended, and I believe my former Creative Writing teacher Pat Rushin did an appearance as well.
The Enzian has a sweet bar outside with all kinds of drinks from domestic beers to cocktails containing absinthe, flavored whiskey, and moonshine. Inside, they offer a full menu of oodles of goodies, like sandwiches, tomato cream soup, and/or truffle parmesan fries. They also do free movies on the lawn sometimes, or other film events around town. The bar/patio is shaded by gigantic live oaks and has a fountain, so it’s a nice place to unwind.
Films I’ve seen at the Enzian:
Ma Vie En Rose
The Dinner Game (French)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
What We Do In The Shadows
So I Married an Axe Murderer
Aliens (on birthday last year- they do horror movies in October!)
Pumpkinhead
The Host (Korean horror/sci-fi, not the Twilight thing)
A Very Long Engagement
Let the Right One In (Swedish)
Micmacs
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Babe: Pig in the City (I have no shame about crying in front of people during this movie)
Mirrormask
Gone With the Wind
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
Oldboy (original)
Big Trouble in Little China
Primer (the science fiction one)
Film festival shorts
The Troll Hunter
And so many more! I can’t list them all!
As mentioned above, the Enzian does horror movies during the month of October – I’m already planning to see Shaun of the Dead and probably Beetlejuice, too.
I met up with a bunch of friends who are movie nerds like myself and we had a damn good time. I thought I saw Road Warrior like 20 years ago but apparently I was thinking of the first Mad Max, when he’s a cop. Ah well!
In lieu of a real review, here are my thoughts:
More in line with Fury Road than Thunderdome, although I still love all three
More feminist than I would have guessed (the female warrior was badass; there was also a chick who had the option to escape and did the honorable thing by staying with her people; women sat on the council and took up arms)
The Feral Kid was the best
Lord Humungus’s thighs needed their own credit. That dude was walking beef.
One complaint – I couldn’t get over the assless chaps the raiders wore. Hell, just wearing shorts in Central Florida summer can get you burned on a cloth carseat, so Australian post-apocalyptic desert-wear should offer more protection from leather motorcycle saddles baked by the sun. Just a thought. Also I imagined the actor playing Wez was having fun as he flashed his cheeks at the camera with joyful abandon. It was a full moon at noon over the Aussie desert, y’all
Jedidiah The Gyro Copter Pilot was also the best
SO! If you find yourself in Orlando, consider taking a day off from a theme park and hitting the Enzian for some REAL Central Florida flavor. I like roller coasters as much as the next person, but sometimes need a break from the sweaty throngs.
[EDIT: It only hit me this morning, the delicious irony of going to a high art movie theater to watch nitro-cannibals ride around on flaming motorcycles in assless chaps. But whatev- they wouldn’t show it if they didn’t love movies!]
For one thing, I am astounded at what they get away with on network tv. I’m not a big fan of splatter movies, gore doesn’t bother me, but the show is so visceral in its presentation of the violence. You rarely see violence on screen, but the bodies left behind–WHEW.
You might remember me mentioning in this post from approximately a hundred years ago that I am a huge fan of the Hannibal Lecter character. I still haven’t seen Hannibal Rising (probably won’t), but a friend kept telling me how much I needed to watch the tv show. It wasn’t on Instant, so I was a good little consumer and bought the first season on dvd.
GOSH.
For one thing, I am astounded at what they get away with on network tv. I’m not a big fan of splatter movies, gore doesn’t bother me, but the show is so visceral in its presentation of the violence. You rarely see violence on screen, but the bodies left behind–WHEW.
If you aren’t already a fan of horror and aren’t very desensitized to it, you might strongly consider giving this one a miss. I mean the show is so compelling, but seriously – HORRIBLE THINGS. This makes Game of Thrones look like a Disney movie and I have NO idea how they do it!
It’s magnificent. It’s perfect. As a portrait of Hannibal Lecter it’s – well it’s not perfect, because the Hannibal of the book is a short, unassuming little man with piercing eyes with red highlights, nothing like towering specimen Mads Mikkelsen. But it works. The show is not trying to recapture the book’s character, and Mikkelsen makes the character his own anyway. He is playing Lecter as completely fallen, sort of pretending that Lecter is Lucifer and inherently evil rather than worrying about any of the psychology behind the character. And it works!
But that’s not what I’m talking about today.
So much has already been written about this show and these characters and scenes and symbology and Wendigos and food and plaid suits and so I don’t need to try and plaster my stickers on over everyone else’s. The fandom exists, and by all means go and explore it. I might! I have never written fanfiction before but I just might!
Instead, I give you a list of things that it is impossible (yet fun!) to imagine Hannibal doing. I don’t know why these things occurred to me, but I was amused at the mental images and thought I’d share. Enjoy! [I’ll avoid spoilers in case anyone is interested in pursuing the show!]
Realizing he needs to get his car washed, finding that his normal detailing people are out of town, and having to wash his car himself with cutoffs and a tshirt he got free from the bank. I picture him losing himself in the car care section of Advance Auto Parts pondering which scent to buy. Would he even OWN cutoffs? I mean he makes his own beer, does canning, and a lot of cooking, and I’m sure he does all the maintenance on his murder dungeon himself. I can’t see him sacrificing a good suit while doing all that. Maybe that’s what the killsuit was originally for.
Screwing up a recipe because he’s out of that ONE GODDAMN THING that sets the whole thing off and being SO GLAD he was eating alone that night. Quelle dommage! But he has a freezer full of goodies, so he’s all good.
Handing out Halloween candy. Can’t you that just see that long silhouette appearing in the orange doorway, beguiling scents of hot food drifting out around him? Would he say fuck it and get a grab bag of KitKats and whatnot, or would he present them with something a little more… savory? I feel like he’d do the latter, and like 99% of the kids would be like ‘ew!’ and overprotective moms would chuck it anyway since you’re not supposed to trust strangers…
… but one kid would try. Oh yeah.
Stumbling across a reality show filmed in his city where everyone is horrible and rude and discourteous and he sort of smiles to himself and realizes that if he doesn’t slow down he’ll have to break out the sweatpants from all the people eating lately.
And because it’s about food, a subject I hold to be VERY precious, here is the amazing supercut that makes it look like an amazing cooking show. And yes, there are very identifiable people parts. Just rock with the music and pretend it’s veal!
