What can one say about a movie in which a man allows another man to slice (and bite) his penis off, have him fry it up in a pan, and serve it to the near-dead (and penisless) man before he nods off into eternal sleep in a bloody bathtub?

How about "Don't watch it"?

One of the sickest and freakiest movies ever to come from a nation well-known for its freaky and sick movies (Germany), Cannibal is shocking, outrageous, sickening ... and just a little bit interesting because it's based on actual events. Entirely true: Two gay men met through the personal ads, and they both shared a rather unseemly passion: One of 'em loves to eat human flesh, and the other guy wants to be, well, eaten. It's all very gross, trust me.

Writer/director Marion Dora treats the story like its Shakespeare meets Adrian Lyne, which explains why there's next to no spoken dialogue in Cannibal -- and also why much of the visual gimmickry looks and feels a whole lot like a Nine Inch Nails video. Once Dora gets down to the slicing and the chomping, the movie's as grisly and off-putting as any horror flick you've ever seen. Only Cannibal isn;t really a horror movie. It's a "gore flick," absolutely, but aside from the idea of using another person's body for sustenance, there's not much here that qualifies as "scary."

"Pretentious," however, Cannibal has in spades. It's a long and languid journey through the sledgehammer subtext and anally-fixated allegory. Someone more astute than myself may be able to find a point here, a moral or a piece of subliminal meaning ... but all I saw was two guys groping each other for an hour, followed by a half hour of some truly disturbing snack-time.

The DVD

Audio/Video: Unearthed Films does a fine job with this nasty little obscurity, delivering the film in a suitably icky widescreen transfer. Audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, which does a suitable job of doling out the ponderous score for 89 minutes.

Extras: Just some trailers.

Final Thoughts

If you're so feverish a gorehound that this movie still sounds compelling to you, by all means feel free to give it a rental. (I'm the same way.) But unless you're looking for 60 minutes of yawns followed by 30 minutes of "yuck," you'll probably walk away disappointed. And grossed out.