DVD Review: Ravenous

Ravenous (Dir. Antonia Bird, 1999)

This weird Western reveals its quirky sensibility right from the outset, when it follows up an epigraph from the renowned philosopher Nietzsche with the Anonymous quote "Eat me."  The fact that this film has its tongue (or should I say, its teeth?) set in its figurative cheek is also signalled by the choice of actor to play the commander of the mid-19th-Century army fort situated in the Western Sierra Nevadas.  Perhaps best known for his work in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and the HBO series Deadwood, Jeffrey Jones portrays a bumbling colonel that could have been right at home with F Troop.  Even the music that provides the soundtrack for Ravenous strikes a discernibly whimsical note, in deliberate discord with the drama unfolding on-screen.

All this is not to suggest, though, that Ravenous forsakes horror for comedy.  The oddball chaplain Toffler (played by Jeremy Davies) elicits shivers as well as giggles when he wakes up screaming, "He was licking me!"  The "he" here is the mysterious, Machiavellian (yet also campy) figure Colqhoun, who has insinuated himself into the company of soldiers stationed at Fort Spencer.  It seems that the exigencies of frontier life in the wintertime have forced Colqhoun to develop some taboo dining habits.  Now he has an insatiable, unnatural appetite for human flesh (once you go cannibal, you never go back).  In short, he has turned Wendigo, and now plots to gorge himself on his fellow man--and to turn some of the soldiers into cohort cannibals that will then prey upon unsuspecting travelers who visit the fort.

Robert Carlyle excels in the role of Colqhoun, as does Guy Pearce as the dubiously-decorated soldier John Boyd, who gets his first taste of blood (literally) during the Mexican-American War.  Whereas Colqhoun is a gory glutton, Boyd is a cannibal with a conscience; the conflict that unfolds between the two Wendigo-touched figures drives the second half of the film.  Their climactic battle is wonderful to behold, full of destructive mayhem and bloodshed.  An intriguing moral dilemma also arises at film's end (I don't want to spoil the fun by saying any more about it in this post).

Ravenous is not for the weak (or empty) of stomach, but fans of gleeful grotesquerie will find plenty to feast on here.  Never has the Wendigo theme been incorporated more smoothly or cleverly into a motion picture.  This one is a must see, during Wendigo Week or any time of year.