Crew
Director/Screenplay – Sean Haitz, Producers – Sean Haitz & Ryan James, Photography – Jacob Geimer, Music – Cameron Dmytryk & Michael Railton, Makeup Effects – Andrea Davoren. Production Company – Studio Beaut/Hezblut Productions/Pink Plaid Productions.
Cast
Aaron Prager (Charlie), Austin Judd (Chrystal Jennings), Robert Dunne (Carrey), Mis Sadistic (Eleanor), David Vega (Sheriff Weaver), Shae Jawaun (Vic), Eric Allegria (Juan), Mark Cerulli (The Heckler), Tyania Estrada (Desert Woman), Allen Danziger (Narrator)
Plot
Charlie has grown up among a cannibal cult that live in the desert. He makes a living selling meatballs from a roadside stall and then killing passersby to use for meat. His neighbour Eleanor abducts Chrystal who is on her way to perform at a music festival. However, rather than kill her, Charlie keeps Chrystal prisoner and develops a connection to her. He has ambitions of being a stand-up comedian. After discovering a local club that is advertising open mic nights, Charlie premieres his act as The Cannibal Comedian to surprisingly good reception. He then finds that the club owner Carrey is shutting him out from appearing and has stolen his act.
Cannibal Comedian is one of those Deliberately Ridiculous Titles – it sells the whole film to you in its very title. For a time, during the opening scenes with the devilishly smiling Aaron Prager and drag queen Mis Sadistic, whose fingernails should get their own separate billing, going around killing people, everything is wound up to the level of broad farce and Bad Taste humour that the average Troma film operates on. Everyone has been given directions to play as over-the-top and loudly as they can and show no restraint. Here Cannibal Comedian settles in to being something loud and unsubtle and only occasionally hitting the mark.
The surprise about the film is about a third of the way in is that it drops the broad, bad taste humour (for the most part) and instead starts to take the whole ‘cannibal comedian’ thing relatively seriously. Aaron Prager makes his stage debut as the cannibal comedian – cue more lame cannibalism-related puns and jokes than one thought it would be possible to make. Clearly, someone involved in the film has some insider knowledge of the way the stand-up comedy circuit operates and there feels a believable authenticity to the scenes where Prager is performing his act. These are scenes that, surprisingly enough, director Sean Haitz plays without the broad cartoonish farce that he does elsewhere.
The main problem with the film is that it begins and ends with the cannibal comedian concept. There is not a whole lot more to it than that. There is the B plot about Aaron Prager keeping Austin Judd a prisoner and being less-than-captorlike with her. The last quarter of the show tries to take the idea somewhere with fighting over Robert Dunne’s attempts to steal the cannibal comedian idea, before a sardonic twist in the tale.
Cannibal Comedian was the third film from director/writer Sean Haitz who had previously made Mangrove Slasher 2 (2011) and the killer clown film Big Top Evil (2019).
Trailer here