one of my absolute favorites!

Masterful Movie

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

New couple Clifford Sturges (Eugene Levy) and Gloria Wellaby (Andrea Martin) are driving their troublesome car when it breaks down near the small town of Farnhamville. They are told about the legend of 3 cannibal women luring men to their deaths. They stay at the house in the urban legend hosted by the Reverend and his three female followers.With Levy and Martin, I assumed that this is a spoof or at least a horror comedy. I'm not sure if there is any comedic intent and I don't know what is suppose to be funny. There is actually a very effective section as the old woman recounts the cannibal girls legend. I love these beautiful women luring the two nerds especially. It's effective horror and works great as a story. There are interesting ways to go with that dynamic. Levy and Martin don't really fit and they aren't going with their strengths anyways. After a certain point, the movie left me scratching my head.

Dippy hippie hairball Clifford Sturges (Eugene Levy sporting a ghastly wild'n'woolly Gene Shalit-like white guy 'fro) and his whiny girlfriend Gloria Wellaby (an insufferably shrill Andrea Martin) spend a romantic holiday at a remote rural bed and breakfast inn run by a trio of beautiful young women who are really cannibals. Guess what happens next? Director Ivan Reitman, working from an extremely talky and meandering script by Robert Sandler (a majority of the terrible dialogue was reportedly improvised by the cast, which means this film frequently gets bogged down in extraneous drawn-out conversations that refuse to end), relates the slow and uneventful story at a painfully plodding pace, and fails to deliver much in the way of either scares or laughs. Moreover, the attempts at obvious humor are both clumsy and unfunny, the main characters are annoying and unlikable, the droning score is beyond obnoxious, and the grindingly predictable narrative for the most part follows a familiar path with the notable exception of a mildly startling surprise bummer ending. On the plus side, ravishing redhead Bonnie Nelson, yummy blonde Randall Carpenter, and foxy brunette Mira Pawluk are all quite lovely as the titular flesh-eating ladies, Robert Sand's fairly polished cinematography astutely captures the bleakness of the desolate wintry Canadian backwoods locations, and the generous sprinkling of bloody violence and nice gratuitous female nudity alleviates the general tedium to a moderate degree. But overall this hopelessly stiff and pedestrian flick is far too dreary and inert to provide much in the way of entertainment. A real disappointment.

I watched this film because of some SCTV skits featuring Bruno the Hunchback that were based on Eugene Levy's experience with this film. The Bruno character is called Bunker for some reason here.The acting through this film is horrible, including Andrea Martin and Eugene Levy, but it's their early work so it's understandable. The film-making is often inept, such as when the three victims are playing Monopoly and the microphone is visible at the top of the screen for about three minutes. The males in the film, including Levy, are some of the dorkiest guys I have ever seen in my life. That Levy is the leading man indicates how bad some of the others must be. One guy even has fur on his arms, I swear.Anyway, it's a laughable film that gets very tedious after the first 45 minutes or so once you realize it's going nowhere.

David Cronenberg said he was the first man to make a horror film in Canada, but I think this was made first. (unless it wasn't considered a horror film). SCTV's Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin star as couple who goes to a small town filled with strange people who turns out to be cannibals. The film is low on horror and dead on comedy. American International Pictures didn't know what to do with this film, so they tacked in a door bell sound to warn the viewers of all the shock scenes. (would be shock scenes is more like it). Siskel & Ebert gave this film "The Dog of the Week" back in 1980. Reitman second directional effort is a misfire to horror fans, but it's an intresting film looking back at it now.