Starring: Trey Parker (as Juan Schwartz), Matt Stone, Toddy Walters, Robert Muratore, Ian Hardin

Director: Trey Parker
Released: 1993

Mood: If you’re in the mood for a Western but your spouse only wants to watch sharp-witted cartoons and you’re really not into compromise unless both people win.

I have officially found my people in the subredditors who quote Cannibal! The Musical, and use the movie to screen new friends and potential love interests.

Two weeks ago I’d never heard of this movie. This weekend I watched it twice in 24 hours, got my husband hooked on it, and now we’ve both memorized the lyrics to one of its insanely catchy songs. My heart’s as full as a baked potato.

Cannibal! The Musical is a darkly satirical musical… tribute?… to the life of the Colorado Cannibal, Alfred Packer.

Within the first 60 seconds of this movie I was already laughing out loud and immensely entertained, and that feeling never subsided. That’s surprising for a ‘90s B-movie made by college students on a budget of just $125K that they raised from friends and family… but it’s also unsurprising for college students who went on to become South Park’s scathingly clever Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

• Fun Fact #1: Parker and Stone love telling Colorado stories. South Park is a real place in Colorado, the characters are based on people they knew, ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! is a documentary about them trying to save a local restaurant, and Alfred Packer is inarguably the most famous American cannibal, who committed his crimes in Colorado.

While not a traditional Western, and utterly ridiculous, there’s a niche group of fans who fall in love with Cannibal! The Musical.

Cannibal! The Musical’s opening text reassures the viewer that the violence has been edited out of what they’re about to see. Then it jumps right into a snowy bloodbath where a quasi-zombie frontiersman is biting the flesh and limbs off of people, and everyone is running around shouting with no arms and holes in their necks.

This is a reenactment from the trial of young Alfred Packer (Trey Parker). We learn from flashbacks, as the incarcerated Packer tells his story to charming reporter Polly Pry (Toddy Walters), that he was an innocent Utah miner who had the best of intentions when he agreed to guide a group to the more prosperous Breckenridge, Colorado.

• Fun Fact #2: The trial scenes were filmed in the same courtroom where Packer was tried, in Lake City, CO.
• Fun Fact #3: Packer was famously a dick even before he allegedly killed and definitely ate his party. But Cannibal! The Musical captures the version of his life spun by reporter Polly Pry, after he’d already served 18 years in jail: he’s just a sweet guy who loves his horse and is terribly misunderstood. She successfully got him paroled.

Packer’s group includes George Noon (Dian Bachar), Shannon Bell (Ian Hardin), Israel Swan (Jon Hegel), Frank Miller (Jason McHugh), and James Humphrey (Matt Stone) who rocks a hat that later became the signature headpiece for South Park’s voice of reason, Kyle Broflovski.

The optimistic team has a run-in with some delightfully white-trashy trappers led by Frenchy Cabazon (Robert Muratore), who want Packer’s horse.

• Fun Fact #4: The movie’s trappers are named after members of the original, real-life expedition that later abandoned the incompetent Packer and, eventually, participated in his capture and trial: Jean “Frenchy” Cabazon, O.D. Loutzenheiser, and Preston Nutter. The horse is named Liane after Parker’s recently-ex-fiancée, and is portrayed as unfaithful.

Then they get lost. They have misadventures crossing the Colorado River, and come upon the ‘Nihonjin’ Indians – a group of Japanese people overtly doing stereotypical Japanese things while wearing terrible “Indian” garb. Nihonjin literally translates to ‘Japanese’. It feels like a cheeky nod to Hollywood casting anyone and everyone as Indigenous people in Westerns.

The chief (Masao Maki, owner of Sushi Zanmai in downtown Boulder, CO) warns them not to keep going. They run into the trappers again, which gives us a Monty Python-level song about what it means to be a trapper. The group keeps going, and the cannibalism begins. With, of course, more musical numbers.

Again, let us appreciate that Cannibal! The Musical was made by college students on a shoestring budget. Yet the acting is solid, the songs are EPIC, and the overall production is at a level of wit that begs to be made into a Broadway musical.

• Fun Fact #5: You’ll spot The Book of Mormon, the inspiration for and title of Parker and Stone’s popular Broadway musical, in the movie.

Sure, it was clearly filmed in part on Betamax. But it’s PACKED with clever winks and nods to the original Alfred Packer trial, and it’s full of futuristic references for South Park fans.

• The movie’s influences range from the dream sequence in Oklahoma! to the cyclops in The Odyssey
• Parker, Stone, Toddy Walters, and Dian Bachar all do voices for South Park
• Parker is credited as Juan Schwartz, a variation of John Schwartze – one of Alfred Packer’s aliases
• Some of the extras were Parker’s professors
• A song from the movie can be heard in South Park episodes, and Cartman’s voice can be heard in the movie
• The judge is Parker’s dad
• Packer did get off on his original charges due to the technicality that his crime took place before Colorado was a state and its laws couldn’t apply
• Don’t stop here, go read the IMDb trivia and forums that pay tribute to this movie’s rich trivia

Parker is the most obvious standout of Cannibal! The Musical. You can’t ignore the talent here. Not only did he write, direct, and act in the movie, but he also wrote the eight original songs AND sung tracks for other characters.

There’s this gloriously ‘80s glam rock, glamour photo musical number in a cave that feels like it could be in any modern mockumentary. It takes you to a specific time and place, while still working in the bizarre musical Western front. His physical comedy and sweetness make you want to love the cannibal.

But Toddy Walters deserves mad props for her impressive vocal prowess when Polly Pry is lamenting her crush on Packer.

My favourites, though, are:

• Robert Muratore as the head trapper, who gives you a pirate-king-of-Penzance level of campy swagger in every scene
• Ian Hardin as Bell, especially when he tries to make his group of desperately starving pioneers feel the joy of building a snowman

Everyone looks like they had a blast filming, and that joy is infectious.

Unlike A Million Ways to Die in the West, we’re not wasting time on bro jokes. The dialogue is so smart that every moment of screentime is funny and relevant to the story. The production is shockingly good for the time, budget, and team. And the songs are so damn good.

I’m not a musical theatre person, but when I do love a musical, I get way too into it and I’m way too into this one.

I will watch this movie again and again. It seems stupid, but it’s genuinely well-researched and well-produced. I hope that Trey and Matt don’t turn out to be assholes, now that they are billionaires. I want to keep loving the politically incorrect comedy that they produce.