Author: Cannibal_Studies

Awarded PhD from the University of Melbourne for a thesis questioning how cultural manifestations of cannibalism challenge the assumed anthropocentrism of our relationships to other animals.

“They sure like their milk” PLURIBUS Season 1

On By Cannibal_StudiesIn Cannibals on TVLeave a comment

Pluribus (or in the titles “Plur1bus”) is the latest series from Vince Gilligan, the genius behind Breaking Bad and its sequel, Better Call Saul, as well as some thirty episodes of X-Files and its spin-off, The Lone Gunmen. I watched Breaking Bad and BCS compulsively (even though there was no cannibalism in them) because they forensically unwrapped the thin veneer of civilisation that tries to conceal the greed and violence underlying human societies.

Pluribus goes to the next step, exploring the nature of solutions that have historically been offered to the depraved appetites that motivate and terrify us – food, territory, sex. It envisages a utopia that is an allegory of every kind of perfectible society attempted from religion to revolution, all of which start by wanting to save us all from war, violence, oppression and hatred, and end up enforcing their perfect society with brutality, bloodshed and the suppression of individual liberties and thoughts.

In this scenario, Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn from Better Call Saul) finds that virtually everyone else on earth except a handful of immune people have been affected by a virus whose origin is a stream of data from a distant galaxy. They have merged their minds into a collective consciousness, a “hive mind”. Imagine if suddenly everyone around you was inhabited by ChatGPT and had all the knowledge of humanity at their fingertips, was polite and helpful, and wanted you to join them. Or if not AI, then consider meeting members of a cult. They are always so polite – until perhaps you join them! No one is an individual any more – the “joining” has caused almost everyone to share their thoughts, their knowledge, their talents.

Violence is therefore totally obsolete, unimaginable, the way that murder was considered unthinkable in the “workers’ paradise” of the Soviet Union. It is the ultimate form of Communism, where everyone works together for the common good like bees or ants, there is no dissension, and no one is exploited or killed (except when Carol has her tantrums). Carol is the outsider, the one who does not fit with the smothering conformity that society calls well-balanced happiness. Imagine a vegan in a Beef Week parade. She has, by a freak of genetics, taken what The Matrix calls the red pill – the one that sees even painful individuality as more important than submission to comfortable conformity. So, when Carol expresses her rage, thousands of people die from the shock waves of her uncontrolled emotions. In fact, the show’s log-line is:

“The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness”

That’s the background, and if you haven’t watched it yet, you may wish to stop reading here and go turn on Apple TV, who outbid Netflix for it. Because there is a big spoiler – for the viewer, and for Carol, who by almost the end of the season has found love with one of the hive people (who of course is also everyone else on earth) and comfort in the fact that she herself is immune and cannot be ‘saved’ without giving them, voluntarily, her DNA from stem cells.

This is a blog about cannibalism, so let’s look more closely at what all humans, even perfectly happy, hive mind ones, have to do: eat. Pluribus is, in a way, a reboot of Robinson Crusoe, sometimes sited as the first English language novel. Like Carol, Crusoe is alone, either psychically in her genetically forced separation from the hive mind, or literally when she causes such havoc that the others all move out of town (it’s set in Albuquerque like earlier Gilligan shows), leaving her isolated, forced to entertain herself with fireworks and golf. But Crusoe discovers that there are other humans visiting his island – cannibals who capture and kill rivals for dinner.

Carol similarly discovers cannibalism. Dumping her trash, she finds a large number of empty milk cartons in one of the town’s rubbish bins from a local dairy. She observes in episode 5, “Got milk”:

They sure like their milk”

She investigates and finds that, instead of milk, the dairy is producing a strange fluid created from a bagged crystalline substance. In episode 6, “HDP”, Carol traces the origin of this substance to a food packaging plant.

At this point, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you will have come to suspect the origin of this mysterious substance. Yep, like Soylent Green, the answer to starvation caused by overpopulation is simple – process and eat the dead humans. “HDP” stands for “Human Derived Protein”, and the plant is full of snap-frozen human body parts, presumably some of the millions of people who died during the joining. She picks up a frozen human head which (fun fact) is Vince Gilligan’s.

Like the plane crash survivors in Alive, there is nothing else for them to eat. A member of the others, played by John Cena (actor, wrestler, rapper and Peacemaker), explains that consuming people is not the Joining’s preference, but is instead a last resort to avoid mass starvation as their strict non-violence has extended to all other life, animal and plant; they have freed the animals from farms and zoos, and will not even pick an apple unless it falls from a tree by itself.

Carol’s hope that this discovery will unite the dozen immune non-joiners in her crusade to undo the joining proves in vain – they don’t care, just like the on-lookers didn’t really care that “Soylent Green is people!” as Charlton Heston screamed as he was being carried out. They don’t even let her join their video conferences due to her propensity to rage.

The joined, represented by Cena, are open and honest about their solution to starvation. The world has become a perfect utopia, except that there is nothing to eat except the waste product of the joining: human corpses. They explain to Carol that nearly 100,000 people die every day on Earth from natural causes. The Others are recycling those bodies like industrial food waste.

They call it “honouring the memory of the deceased.” As Alive asked, isn’t cannibalism better than dying of starvation? And, the next logical step taken in this show, isn’t it better to eat the dead than the living?

Carol by now has been abandoned by the “others”, even though they deliver to her anything she requests, usually by drone. Driven to distraction by isolation, she asks them to return, but writes a reminder to herself on her whiteboard, underlining it aggressively:

“THEY. EAT. PEOPLE”

The reminder stays there on her whiteboard, but she is so traumatised by isolation that she accepts their help and the love of the woman sent to contact her, even though she understands that she is just one cell in the hive mind. She also knows that the situation is unsustainable and that the others will soon be dying of starvation by the millions when they run out of corpses. But what finally changes her mind, makes her back into the outsider, is that she finds that the others have worked out how to develop new strains of the virus specifically for the immune. They already have her DNA from her eggs which she froze earlier in her life. They are planning to get her to join them.

Carol puts in a special request: an atomic weapon. She is determined to return humanity to its old individualistic self: fighting, raping, and exploiting each other, and, like John Cena’s Peacemaker, seems to be willing to kill them all to get there.

So the joining, like all utopias, turns out to be a nightmare from which millions will wake up dead. Although Carol has rejected the idea of joining, she has accepted that the rest of humanity is already joined and she is the glorious outsider, the non-conformist. What changes her mind is the realisation that they will not rest until she joins them too, despite the dire outlook for continued human existence.

What about the “milk” – the HDP? She is shocked when she finds the freezers full of human body parts, horrified to hear that this is what they eat to supplement the fast-dwindling supplies of food from before the joining, but, as they explain to her, the HDP is from people who have already died – there is no violence involved. Unlike our societies where billions of innocent and gentle animals are kept in appalling conditions and slaughtered industrially, the others have created a society along the line of what John Lennon hoped to see:

“Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace”

She just doesn’t want to join them and, you know, EAT. PEOPLE.

2025: The Year in Cannibalism

On By Cannibal_StudiesIn Cannibal NewsLeave a comment

Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.
    — Shakespeare – Troilus and Cressida Act 1, Scene 3

January

Violence in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea marred celebrations of the country’s 25th anniversary of independence. Armed men were shown in videos holding body parts and saying “this is our meat.” The story brought back memories of former US President Joe Biden claiming his uncle’s body was never found during the Second World War as he had been eaten in PNG, stating that “there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea”.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, already in hot water for sex trafficking and racketeering charges, has been accused of cannibalism now. In the Peacock documentary Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy – which covers the rise and dramatic fall of Combs, 55 – former Making the Band 2 contestant Sara Rivers revealed what she and others experienced when cameras weren’t rolling. When Diddy got angry, she says, he threatened her band member:

“You make me so mad I want to eat your flesh!”

In the North West Province of South Africa, one of a group of illegal miners (zama zamas, or “those who take a chance” inZulu) in the Stilfontein mine (which closed in 2013) has disclosed that he and his fellow miners turned to cannibalism when they ran out of food 2km (1.25 miles) underground. The police had cut off food supplies the previous August to ‘smoke out’ the illegal miners.

February

Two artists put on a show in Scotland where they made and cooked “black pudding” sausages from their own blood. Although they did not eat the sausages after this show due to legal considerations, they have done so in the past, although one of the artists has since become a vegetarian and has said he will not be eating them in the future.

John Beagles and Graham Ramsay

Tyree Smith, the “Connecticut Cannibal”, was given conditional release by the Nutmeg State’s Psychiatric Security Review Board from the mental facility to which he was incarcerated. Smith was handed sixty years in 2013 for killing a homeless man and eating his brain and eyeball in a cemetery, washed down with sake. Doctors who have been treating Smith said he’s been fully rehabilitated, thanks to medications that quelled the voices in his head. Others, including the family of the man he killed and ate, are less optimistic about his future plans. Mr Gonzalez’s sister-in-law, Talitha Frazier, asked the review board “How do we know he’s not going to do this again?” Republican state Senator Paul Cicarella said “Murder and cannibalism and release in the same sentence … that’s a problem”.

What’s with all the eyeballs? A “preppy” Princeton grad was charged with murdering his brother at their luxury Princeton apartment, after which he ripped out the victim’s eyeball and ate it. He also reportedly set the family’s cat on fire. Even the Duke of Cornwall in King Lear would have blushed at that transgression.

March

A woman in Brazil barbecued and ate her victim’s heart and penis. Josefa Lima de Sousa, 65, left a blood-stained sign by the mutilated corpse with a message, using her street name, saying: “Gringa got rapist.” She told police the victim had been a child abuser.

A Texas embalmer with the wonderful name Amber Ludermilk was charged with the felony “abuse of a corpse” after cutting off the penis of a deceased sex offender and jamming it into his mouth. An arresting constable stated that “No matter what one thinks of his life, the law requires that he be treated with dignity in death.” In a world where thousands of humans die of starvation every day, and we casually torment, kill and then mutilate the corpses of billions of other animals every year for food, medical experiments, clothing or entertainment, are we expected to weep for this sex offender’s insentient corpse?

A South Carolina mental health facility was sued by family of a victim of murder and cannibalism. The lawsuit alleged that the killer, another inmate, had killed two men and eaten both the victims’ ears, as well as drinking their blood so he could “gain their power.”

In Rwanda, a minister said that persecution and cannibalism of Tutsi people are still “commonplace.” Readers may remember that just over thirty years ago, almost one million ethnic Tutsis in that country, some 75% of the Tutsi population, were slaughtered in the space of just 100 days. Although the word genocide has come to mean ‘anything done by someone you don’t like’, that one was a real genocide.

June

A young woman who calls herself pterodactylhunny disclosed on TikTok that her doctors had given her one her ribs which had been surgically removed. She took it home, boiled it to remove the meat, then ate the meat to see what it tasted like. Spoiler: the formaldehyde in which it had been soaked made it taste pretty bad. The cannibalism of eating her own flesh, however, she described as “cool” and “not that weird”. Viewers responses ranged from shocked to approving, pointing out that eating one’s own meat could be considered vegan, since the animal from which it came had given her consent.

@pterodactylhunny

this is a true story

♬ original sound – evil trickster woman

July

16 men were arrested in the West Pokot region of Kenya after human remains were found including the bodies of several children. One boy was found in a maize field with his organs removed. Police say the suspects have confessed to killing and eating eight people.

Relatives of the victims of a mass-murderer in Idaho were outraged to find that he had taken a plea deal for the stabbing of four students in 2022, thus avoiding the death penalty. No indication of him eating his victims, but a forensic psychologist reported that he had become a strict vegan before that, because:

He was afraid that if he let himself go to taste meat once, he would become addicted to it—like he had become to heroin—and start killing and eating people.”

In Kenya, a man recently released from prison for killing his wife, murdered his second wife, cooked her flesh and fed it to his children. Irate members of the community lynched him and set him on fire. The incident elicited sharp debate among Kenyans over the old claims of cannibalism among members of the community. Samuel Bosire Angwenyi, the Secretary General of Abagusii Council of Elders, dismissed the claims saying it was a myth which some people blindly believed. “If there is a person who can eat a fellow human being, then that must be Satan.”

August

An Australian boxer whose nickname is “the Butcher” told fans he had “become a cannibal”. What he meant was that, as part of his training for a big fight, he had taken advantage of the birth of his child by eating his wife’s placenta, in tablet form, washing it down with a little breast milk. He said:

“I’ve technically become a cannibal. It’s actually like a superpower”

In Cuba, a man arrested for murder was found to have a jar filled with human fat, jars of fried meat, and a bag of ribs in his refrigerators. Cannibalism was suspected but never officially confirmed. Meanwhile, other residents of Santiago de Cuba, seeing an unusual level of police activity in September, fear that the case may be linked to the disappearance of other residents from the Abel Santamaría neighbourhood.

In Zimbabwe, a woman allegedly poisoned her four-year-old granddaughter, Tawanayasha Kadhene, before mutilating her body in Shurugwi on 26 August. Police said: “The suspect gave the victim a maheu drink laced with a maize pesticide pill. The child collapsed and died instantly. The suspect then cut flesh from the victim’s cheek, mixed it with herbs prescribed by a sangoma, cooked it and ate the mixture.” The ritual killing allegedly happened following the woman’s consultation of a traditional healer.

September

In an unusual case of auto-cannibalism, a patient at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine received intravenous lorazepam to treat anxiety and claustrophobia in order to facilitate an MRI. He subsequently developed acute psychosis, performed self-inflicted digital enucleation of his left eye, and then ingested it. Lorazepam is a benzodiazepine that has been FDA-approved as a fast-acting anxiolytic and sedative. It is one of the most commonly used medications for these indications. The studies of the case claim that it is an “extremely rare paradoxical reactions to benzodiazepines.” Worth keeping an eye on though.

October

A thirteen-year-old boy in Egypt was arrested after reports he had murdered his classmate, sawed his body into pieces and ate them “out of curiosity”. He told the police that he that he found human flesh was “similar to breaded chicken”.

November

The strange case of Gabriela Rico Jiménez, a 21-year-old model from Mexico who disappeared in 2009 after raging against alleged cannibalistic captors while outside a fancy hotel in Monterrey Nuevo Leon, has been rediscovered by TikTok posters. Didn’t know this was happening until my blog on the story suddenly started to take wings recently.

@hfnkw1

She warned us… and then vanished. The Gabriela Rico Jimenez case gets DARK.#scary #scarystories #horrortok #fyp

♬ original sound – hfnkw1

In New Zealand, a mortuary technician lost his licence due to posting online talks ‘promoting cannibalism. He offered to obtain human tissue to interested readers, and added “When we have burn victims…. They smell so good sometimes”. The man also engaged in online conversations about rape and sexualising children, his own alleged drug use and ways of making explosives.

December

We closed the year with allegations from the Ukrainian government that Russian troops trying to occupy Zaporizhzhia in eastern Ukraine have run out of food and are killing and eating each other. The Ukrainian spy service GUR reported that:

“Due to a lack of food, the occupiers are sharpening their knives and preparing to eat their younger comrades”

Intercepted radio messages apparently include soldiers saying “We’ll eat each other, it’s all fucked up here. We’re already looking for someone younger” and “I’ve sharpened my knives. I don’t give a shit who I have to cut up. I just want to eat. Fuck everyone else”.

Around this time last year, this blog reported on several convicted Russian murderers who had admitted to cannibalism but been offered pardons if they agreed to serve in the Russian forces in Ukraine for six months. Later reports have noted that the pardons and repatriations may not ever have happened.

Back in Russia, “Perm cannibal” Mikhail Malyshev died at the age of 65 in a clinic, while waiting for a doctor. Malyshev was arrested in 2000 for two proven murders, although a polygraph test claims that he was involved in at least eight: he killed, dismembered and partially ate a man and a woman. Malyshev reportedly used the soft tissue to fry cutlets and threw away the rest. He often made kebabs out of stray dogs. He was sentenced to 25 years and served his sentence in the Perm region, undergoing mandatory psychiatric treatment. He was released from prison in October 2022. Some reports stated that after his release from prison, Malyshev had found work at a shelter for homeless animals. That part may be the most disturbing aspect of the 2025 story!

New cannibalism movies

A veritable swathe of new releases this year, showing again that cannibalism is the flavour of the month (sorry about the pun) or the year, or indeed the whole damn century:

Know Me: A True-Life DramaStory of the “Causeway Cannibal” and media response
DevourAll female metal band called “The Virginia Bitches” come across a town full of cannibals
Human Hibachi 3: The Last SupperCult of devout followers eat human sacrifices in a “last supper”
Cannibal ComedianCannibal takes a stab at stand-up
Cannibal MukbangShe makes vodcasts of voracious eating – mixed with cannibalism of bad men
DeliciousYoung working people work for, then eat, the rich
The WagerTrue story of a mutiny in the British Royal Navy in 1741 and the events that followed for those who survived
Red Night at Skye’sZombie meth cannibals led by a mad scientist
40 AcresDescendants of African American farmers fight roving cannibal gangs
Forgive Us AllNZ film – survivors flee through cannibal infested forest
River of BloodFour kayakers take wrong river into jungle of a cannibal tribe
No Tears in HellMother and son kill and eat poor people – based on Alexander Spesivtsev
Lone SamuraiSamurai battles cannibal tribe on island
StephenSerial killer’s victims are eaten by mysterious person
The BoatyardAtrociously acted ripoff of Hills Have Eyes
The Priest-Thanksgiving MassacreDepraved priest from earliest European settlement comes back to life to kill and eat people
The Weed EatersNZ film – new strain of marijuana turns users into cannibals
Quarantine CannibalWorking man fired from job cannot control cannibalism urges in quarantine

What a year. Can’t wait to see what 2026 is going to bring!

New Zealand mortuary technician loses licence after ‘promoting cannibalism’ online

On By Cannibal_StudiesIn Cannibal NewsLeave a comment

A few years ago, I got chatting to a couple who owned a business in New Zealand – they were undertakers. When I mentioned my doctoral thesis, the thin red line between cannibalism and carnivorism, they told me they often received calls and emails seeking body parts. I doubted the story at the time – after all, cannibalism was a convenient story in the early days of British colonialism, and while Maoris have agreed it happened occasionally, it seemed unlikely to be a regular commercial proposition in the twenty-first century.

But the story lives on. In November 2025, The New Zealand Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal found that a former mortuary technician had posted comments to social media “promoting cannibalism” and boasted that he could “literally steal an entire heart”.

The man – who cannot be named for legal reasons – also shared an image online of a dissected human skull with a handwritten message inside: “We’re inside your head”.

The Tribunal ruled that this constitutes professional misconduct, stating that he:

“engaged in conversations … promoting cannibalism and eating post mortem tissue”

Their ruling noted the man identified himself online as someone who worked in forensic pathology and/or was involved in post-mortems.

The man also engaged in online conversations about rape and sexualising children, his own alleged drug use and ways of making explosives, offering to show others how to make explosives.

One online conversation saw the man claim:

“When we have burn victims…. They smell so good sometimes”

In another online discussion about cannibalism, he discussed the provision of human (post-mortem) tissue to others.

“When you’re working here. We got enough [muscle] to go around. Save your muscle”

He also boasted about being able to access body parts.

“I mean. It’s not actually that hard. I could literally steal an entire heart. It all just goes back into a bag we stitch back inside them not like anyone checks it”

He told one online user he could “sneak a little heart slice next week. It’ll be me conveying my love to you. Sending some actual human heart.”

The man also claimed that he’d decapitated a corpse “to boil her head”.

The Tribunal ruling noted the man “accepts that his rhetoric, comments and information about post-mortems, post-mortem procedures, and dissections that he posted and/or circulated in his social media posts was inappropriate and that his conduct fell below the expected ethical and professional standards that apply to members of his profession”.

The Tribunal also noted the “charge of professional misconduct is established”.

No charges have been laid regarding the man actually carrying out any of these acts. What happened to free speech and entrepreneurialism in New Zealand?

Christmas warning: “THE 12 DEATHS OF CHRISTMAS (MOTHER KRAMPUS)” James Klass, 2017

On By Cannibal_StudiesIn Cannibal filmsLeave a comment

According to Hollywood, everyone eagerly anticipates Christmas, which must be why incidents of violence flare over the festive season (largely driven by festive booze). Christmas goes for twelve days (they tell me), which covers the New Year mayhem as well, and reportedly involves a lot of odd things like lords leaping and pear trees containing medium sized birds. This film covers the twelve days, but omits French hens and turtle doves, etc, in favour of lots of blood and gore. I reviewed it many years ago, but it seems worth a fresh “bah humbug” as I recover over my keyboard after battling greedy retailers and stressed-out motorists.

“Bah! Humbug” always seems like a pretty good response to the confected cheer of Christmas, particularly to those who do not, for various reasons, celebrate the event or conform to the voracious consumerism that accompanies it. If you are one of the many who is over the Christmas rom-coms and tear-jerkers, you may have already come across the German Christmas demon Krampus, who appeared in a 2015 movie from Michael Dougherty, involving goblins, killer toys, malicious snowmen and a jack-in-the-box that eats a child whole, although he has been punishing naughty children for a lot longer than that, and may date back to pre-Christian folklore.

The cannibal movie reviewed today, though, was originally called The 12 Deaths of Christmas and features a different villain – a Christmas witch named Frau Perchta who, according to legend, steals a child each of the twelve nights of Christmas. The witch is also said to slit open the bellies of disobedient children (not dissimilar to the threats of cannibalism which Andre Chikatilo’s mother used to keep him in line). The film’s name was changed to Mother Krampus for the American audience, many of whom have adopted Krampus as a sort of anti-Santa. Frau Perchta does not have nearly the same fan base.

The Santa Claus dogma is of course about socialisation – children are told that a large stranger will sneak into their houses at night and reward them if they are “good”. What if they are not good? Who will sneak into their house then, and what mayhem will ensue? Krampus was one answer, Frau Perchta another. Then there was Santa’s assistant, Père Fouettard who, in a nod to the suffering energy corporations, hands out lumps of coal to children who are not deemed to have been good, and sometimes whips them too (the name Père Fouettard translates as “Father Whipper”. Following Santa around appears to have been his punishment for engaging in a bit of entrepreneurial cannibalism, in which he and his wife drugged three children, slit their throats, cut them into pieces, and stewed them in a barrel, to be sold as Christmas hams. The taste, allegedly, is almost identical.

But today’s film is not just about stealing the bad children, and perhaps killing them, no, it’s all about the punishment of the wicked being extended to the following generations – a popular theme in the Bible (check out Deuteronomy 5:9 for some unfair shit). Perchta is coming for the children of adults who wronged her.

One of these children, and the protagonist of what passes for the plot, is Amy (Faye Goodwin – Mandy the Doll). Her mum is Vanessa (Claire-Maria Fox of Suicide Club and Bride of Scarecrow), and Vanessa’s dad – Amy’s grandpa – (Tony Manders, from The Young Cannibals) lives outside the village, near a scary forest in Belgrave (the UK one), and asks her to drive him, on Christmas no less (no Ubers I guess) to the Church, where a bunch of locals want to discuss the focal local issue – lots of village children are disappearing. There we finally get to hear the legend of the witch:

“Frau Perchta was a witch, who over Christmas stole the souls of children.”

Dad admits to Vanessa that the peaceful villagers got together to kill an old woman 25 years ago. We, the audience, know the background, through an endless voiceover accompanied by cards at the start of the movie. 12 kids disappeared over the 12 days of Christmas in 1921, and none were found, except for one girl whose mind was gone, and she could only scream “the witch! The witch!”

Then, in 1992, five more kids disappeared, their bodies were found in the forest, and the villagers believed, for reasons far from clear, that a nice old lady was the killer and was in fact Frau Perchta the witch, so they stabbed her and lynched her, as you do if the local constable is on leave, in a backward and primitive town like Belgrave, which apparently hosts the National Space Centre!

But as she died, she shouted a curse – that Frau Perchta would be back to wreak revenge on them, and their children. So, maybe she wasn’t quite so nice. Yeah, that’s about it for plot – we see (several times) the stringing up of the old woman, we see the risen witch. The witch kills lots of people in creative ways, including one who is cut up and made into a Christmas light show, another whose flesh is pressed into a cookie cutter to make Christmas peoplebread men, while another is trussed up like a Christmas turkey with an apple in her mouth and carved up, and her flesh cooked and fed to her boyfriend, who is Amy’s absentee dad. Then dad has his heart pulled out and eaten (not uncommon in cannibal stories – think Fresh Meat or even Hannibal).

The climax of a horror film (or any action movie) is usually the last ten minutes, in which the story is resolved and the bad guy defeated (until the sequel). This one goes on (and on and on) for about half an hour, presumably to ensure the film is considered a full-length feature, and it resolves nothing much, with a twist at the end that makes no sense at all. But lots of people get killed, and several have parts of them eaten, which is enough to get a mention in this blog, I guess. The plot is thin, the acting is often appalling, the continuity director in some parts seems to have been taken into the forest and eaten. But it’s presented as a low-budget slasher, and that’s what they are often like – they are not dramatic masterworks, but gruesome pantomimes. The idea of one child’s aunt walking him home through the dark forest at night when bodies are turning up everywhere is narratively absurd but, in a panto, we want to anticipate the villain, we want to guess what is going to happen, and yell at the actors to “look behind you!” And the gore, and the fright factors, are quite well done.

The moral of the story, if there is such a thing, is pronounced by a mysterious woman who turns out to be Amy’s grandma, not that it does her much good.

“Taking it into our own hands, playing God. That’s why all this is happening.”

Isn’t that exactly what humans do – play God? Nietzsche told us that God is dead, we killed him, so we have to become God. We play God in so many ways – the Christmas story in essence is about a Jewish family trying to escape one of the many psychopaths who have played God over the centuries. We play God when we nominate ourselves as above nature, more angel than animal, and proceed to destroy our own ecosystem. Who bears the suffering from such follies? The children. Like Frau Perchta, our vicious brutality usually comes back to haunt us, through the generations.

At the time of writing, the full movie (should you wish to bother) is available on YouTube.

Schoolboy cannibal kills and eats classmate

On By Cannibal_StudiesIn Cannibal NewsLeave a comment

A 13-year-old schoolboy allegedly murdered his classmate, sawed his body into pieces and ate them “out of curiosity”. The teenager killed his friend, Mohamed, by beating him with a wooden stick before using a power saw to cut his body into small parts that would fit into his school rucksack.

The killer reportedly lured his classmate to his family’s home in Ismailia’s Al-Mahatta Al-Jadida district on October 20, 2025. While alone, the child cannibal said he repeatedly hit the victim on the head with a stick until he died. The suspect, known as Youssef A, said he was reenacting the murder scenes which he saw in films and online games. The killer explained that he wanted to “try the way” he had seen online. Police officers were made aware of the attack after the victim’s remains were found near a shopping centre. 

After conducting a search, the authorities then found further severed pieces of the victim under a bridge, in a pool and on an open field. 

Youssef admitted to the killing and using an electric saw to dismember his victim. He also said he scattered his remains across the city in Egypt. 

The suspect added that he ate part of the victim’s body “out of curiosity” and explained that it was “similar to breaded chicken”. 

The child cannibal was made to re-enact the crime for investigators, leading police around the city to the places he had disposed of the body parts. 

The suspect was transferred to a juvenile care facility after being detained for four days by Public Prosecution. He remained there for a week while judges reviewed his case. 

Youssef also underwent a full physical examination, drug testing and forensic analysis to compare samples with Mohamed’s. 

Investigators continue to look into the violent film and video content which he said influenced him to conduct the gruesome act. The case ignited calls for children to have greater protection from graphic content, with increased supervision from parents. 

The case begs the question – plenty of children watch gruesome movies without then eating their friends. What did Youssef see in these media that led to his curiosity? The movies offered the blueprint for homicidal techniques, but behind all that is the isolation that saw two children on their own long enough for mayhem to ensue, and the constant reiteration of the cheapness of life, both human and non-human, that led a child to wonder what difference there might be between a friend, and a breaded chicken.

A Fear in Provence – DELICIOUS (Nele Mueller-Stöfen, 2025)

On By Cannibal_StudiesIn Cannibal films3 Comments

Delicious is a German horror film, a genre that has a proud history, but it’s also a psychological and socio-political drama that examines the many ways the rich eat the poor, and the potential for revenge. It is written and directed by Nele Mueller-Stöfen in her directorial debut, although it as well made as a work from far more experienced directors.

The film starts with social and class-based unrest. In the opening scene, a rich German family are in a car fitted with bulletproof glass as protesters swarm the streets of Paris, jumping on the car and fighting with police. The father is unworried – “they’re not interested in us.” Perhaps that’s true, but the protests are about poverty and the cost of living, and others are very interested in this family.

As they settle into their holiday home in Provence, another group of young working-class people watch them, the serving staff, who live impoverished lives as they wait on the rich, in a hotel room where they are lying on rich people’s beds and pissing in their fancy mineral water bottles. They work at a fancy hotel nearby, and observe as the family have dinner and a few drinks. On the way home, somewhat tipsy, they appear to hit a young woman walking across the road. In fact, we know that her friend has deliberately cut her arm to make the accident more believable. She reopens the wound when necessary, to maintain her connection to their guilt.

The next day, she tells them she has been fired for not being able to work after the accident, and asks for a job as a maid, but she gradually infiltrates the lives of each member of the family. They have designs on her body, but she and her friends have designs on theirs, and (this being a cannibal blog) you can probably work out what is going to happen well before they do.

Serving the rich (in some novel senses) is definitely on the menu, as blood and meat (eaten raw) feature in the early scenes. Less gory versions of eating too, including cunnilingus.

I’ll avoid spoilers, because it’s on Netflix, which means a lot of people will probably watch it. It’s beautifully filmed and well acted, but does tend to drag in the middle, although that is not unusual for European films – they never seem to be in the same hurry as Hollywood, which may explain some of the appalling reviews. But by the time the wife goes to a party with the young ones, we are right into it.

The way of the world is usually the rich squeezing the life out of the poor, and while there are many films about that (think Fresh, The Cannibal Club or What You Wish For), there are not many that look at the retaliation which the exploited must often crave. Eating Raoul captured that anger and propensity to violence well, and this one does it too, without the humour, but with a cast of fine young cannibals for whom the viewer may well feel some sympathy. The family, beset with their own issues to do with work and relationships, does not see disaster coming, and that is the basis for most good horror.

“You have high gates, but your perfect world cannot be separated from ours.”

The plot unravels slowly and by the time blood starts to flow, it’s almost time to finish the film. If you like plots where the invisible reclaim their power, you may enjoy this. Think Parasite or Saltburn, but with the added spice of cannibalism.

At one point Teodora, the “maid” quotes the Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, to her supposed boss.

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters”

In the time of the monsters, when humanity has turned the planet into a giant abattoir, assuming that some are edible and some are not is just a social construction, with little rational basis. Riding off on their motorbikes, the cannibals seem to have cast off such contingent social customs. But who, the film asks, are the monsters?

“Your fingers are revolting”: KINDS OF KINDNESS (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2024)

On By Cannibal_StudiesIn Cannibal filmsLeave a comment

Kinds of Kindness is a black comedy drama, presented as a “triptych fable” – three separate stories which are nevertheless connected. The director, Yorgos Lanthimos, has made many celebrated films, including The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and most recently Bugonia. He has won a BAFTA and been nominated for five Academy Awards. Kinds of Kindness has his regular extraordinary cast, including Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley.

When directors use ensemble casts, it usually means they use the same actors in a series of unrelated films, but this one is really three films in which the same actors play different roles. The one of interest to us is the middle section, “R.M.F. is flying”, which employs the theme of this blog, cannibalism. But the whole film is a entertaining (if somewhat lengthy), and there is a relationship between the three parts that makes an interesting, if somewhat disorienting and bewildering, whole. Life imitates art, in that the director and Stone have recently been involved in signing uninformed statements about international politics, an area in which they clearly are sadly ignorant. Imagined kindness becomes abusive behaviour, the theme of the film.

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t seen the movie, and plan to do so, maybe do that first.

The first part of the trilogy explores abusive relationships, particularly in the workplace, as Robert (Jesse Plemons) lets his boss Raymond (Willem Dafoe) control every aspect of his life. Raymond is loving and generous (a kind of kindness), but only as long as Robert obeys every order Raymond gives him, including his daily food regime, his sexual activities, and the order to kill a person known only as R.M.F. Kindness is presented as a toxic attachment.

The second story, R.M.F. is Flying, follows a police officer named Daniel, (Plemons), whose wife Liz (Emma Stone) has disappeared at sea while on a biology research expedition. Despite all predictions, she is found and flown back home by R.M.F., but Daniel believes she is an imposter – her shoes don’t fit, she does not remember his favourite song, and she suddenly loves chocolate which she previously could not stand, telling of a dream where dogs were the master species and fed their pet humans on chocolate.

Flashbacks reveal how she survived – by cannibalising the other members of the team.

At one point, the distraught cop Daniel shoots a suspect in the hand, and starts licking up the blood from the wound, just as a dog might do. Like the dogs in her dream, Daniel becomes Liz’s pack leader and she accepts his humiliation and cruelty like a “beta dog” would. Demanding she prove her love, Daniel asks her to cook him one of her fingers or thumb, and we see her cut it off and fry it.

When she reveals she is pregnant, he beats her until she loses the baby.

Finally, he says he is still hungry, famished, and says he wants her liver. She removes it with a kitchen knife, dying in the process, and we see the ‘real’ Liz appear at the door, to be greeted lovingly by Daniel.

The closing credits show dogs driving a car, a dead human lying by the roadside like roadkill. This story exposes kindness as vulnerability in intimate relationships. Daniel is determined that Liz be exactly as he wants her and rejects all her overtures of love, eventually leading to her death and rebirth as his ideal wife.

The final story examines a sex cult led by Omi (Dafoe) and Aka (Hong Chau) where followers are purified by drinking water cleansed by the tears of the leaders, and can thereafter only have sex with Omi and Aka. Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons) are paired and sent out to find a messiah – a woman who can revive the dead. Emily, like many converts to cults, has left her family behind, although she sneaks into her old house sometimes to sit on her little girl’s bed. Eventually she goes to visit her family, but the daughter is asleep and her ex-husband drugs and rapes her, meaning that she is now, to the cult, ‘contaminated’, and so ejected from the compound. She perseveres and eventually finds the messiah, a veterinarian named Ruth (Margaret Qualley) who heals a stray dog whose paw Emily has cruelly cut. Liz drugs Ruth and takes her to the morgue, where Ruth brings back R.M.F. from the dead. Triumphant, Emily drives the still dazed Ruth to cult headquarters after doing a victory dance that appears in the trailer at the top of this blog. As the credits roll, though, her reckless driving ends up with her driving her Dodge Charger into a wall, killing Ruth. Abusive kindness again, this time as spiritual devotion turned toward thralldom and abuse.

In all three stories, the characters seek fulfilment and, yes, kindness, going to excessive lengths to achieve it – Daniel kills a man to win his boss’ love, Liz cuts out her own liver to feed her husband and placate his repulsion, and Emily kidnaps her purported messiah to win back the love of her cult leader.

The film is an absurdist romp, reflecting the incongruity of human relationships and social behaviour. In each part, someone is being exploited and abused, a form of consumption, but the middle story makes cannibalism, inherent in all abuse, graphically apparent. There are many variations of cannibalism; Liz indulges in starvation cannibalism to survive as she waits to be rescued, Daniel becomes psychotic and licks blood from a wounded civilian, Daniel indulges in revenge cannibalism, ultimately killing Liz.

When he is convinced the woman that was rescued is not really Liz, he becomes contemptuous, and from that point, her death and consumption are inevitable. She has been, in his eyes, dehumanised, objectified like the animals sent to their deaths by the billions every year for human consumption. They are “de-animalised” – their flesh turned into commodities, made to look as little as possible as the living, feeling animals from which it came. For humans to be cannibalised, they must first be animalised, then de-animalised.

Thus, Daniel licks the wound of the man he shot like a dog might treat a wound; thus, Liz’s dream in which the dogs are in charge and feed the humans, not exactly what they want, but chocolate, of which there is plenty, probably because dogs cannot eat it (it’s toxic for them).

In relationships built on distrust and rage, we are animalised, and animals like dogs become the paradigm of civilisation. The humans are just wearing people masks.

Boxer: “I’ve become a cannibal”

On By Cannibal_StudiesIn Cannibal News1 Comment

Australian boxer Nikita Tszyu has revealed that he became a “cannibal” as he prepared to fight Lulzim Ismaili this month (August 2025). The boxer said he needed to be at his very best to win over his unbeaten opponent, and hoped that his new diet would boost his training.

Tszyu revealed that his change in nutritional sources was all thanks to his wife, Nikita Bedwell. The couple welcomed their first child earlier this month, named Curiosity after the NASA Mars Rover, and the birth allowed Tszyu to change his diet.

The Australian boxer is eating his wife’s placenta in capsule form as part of his training program, and feels like he is benefitting from the change in diet. He told a Sydney radio station:

“we freeze-dried her placenta and I’ve been supplementing on her placenta recently… in tablet form”

Does that make him a cannibal? Well, he thinks so. He added:

“I’ve technically become a cannibal. It’s actually like a superpower. I’ve done tests with my sparring – days where I’ve had it and days where I haven’t – and it feels like I got all this crazy amount of energy”

If you’re not convinced by that, he told the interviewers he is also including breast milk in his diet. Asked if he had tried it, he replied: “I have, I have… and it’s delicious as well!”

Consuming placentas is a growing trend in America, with mothers usually consuming them as part of their postpartum recovery. The practice dates back to Chinese medicine, though studies are yet to confirm that there are benefits to eating them.

The bout on August 20 was subtitled (based on Tszyu’s nickname):

THE BUTCHER IS BACK

So, is cannibalism the next big thing in athletic enhancements? Well, Tszyu knocked Ismaili, who was previously unbeaten, to the mat in just over one minute. The shaken opponent sat on his stool and refused to leave his corner, throwing in the towel before round two commenced.

Athletes often boast of eating meat to improve their fitness and stamina, although there are also plenty of vegan ones who swear that dropping meat and milk makes them faster, stronger and more alert. But if there is any truth in the meat myth, then I suppose we need to consider the words of Anthropologist Marvin Harris, who stated in his book Good to Eat: Riddles of Food Culture that, while humans are clearly not obligate carnivores,

“our species-given physiology and digestive processes predispose us to learn to prefer animal foods… strictly speaking, human flesh itself contains the highest-quality protein that one can eat”

There’s one to chew on, next time you enter the ring.

Cannibal eat thyself!

On By Cannibal_StudiesIn Cannibal filmsLeave a comment

The immigration debate in the USA and in other countries has quickly polarised between those who see immigrants as pioneers, walking in the footsteps of all those who settled the lands during the period of colonialisation and their descendants (which is almost everyone except surviving indigenous people), and subhuman invaders who flood the country, take the good jobs, and rape and kill the innocent.

President Trump has referred to undocumented immigrants as being criminals and rapists (although he said some might be “good people”), who come from:

“… jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums. You know insane asylums. That’s ‘Silence of the Lambs’ stuff. Hannibal Lecter…”

So we waited eagerly (or perhaps apprehensively) to meet these undocumented Hannibals. Now, the Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, has described how federal agents nabbed a purported cannibal illegal migrant who started to eat his own arms during a deportation flight.

On July 1 2025, Noem was visiting the “Alligator Alcatraz” deportation camp in the South Florida Everglades alongside President Trump. This is a the detention centre located about 40 miles west of Miami and surrounded by alligator- and python-infested swampland.

At a press conference, she said:

“The other day I was talking to some Marshals that had been partnering with ICE. They said that they had detained a cannibal and put him on a plane to take him home and while they had him in his seat, he started to eat himself, and they had to get him off and get him medical attention.
These are the kind of deranged individuals that are on our streets in America that we’re trying to target and get out of our country because they are so deranged, they don’t belong here. They shouldn’t be walking the streets with our children, and they shouldn’t be living in the communities with our families who just want to grow up, go to [their] job, raise their children to grow up and get a job, and to live the American dream….
We are going after murderers and rapists and traffickers and drug dealers and getting them off the streets and getting them out of this country.”

Hard to know what to make of this, since the Department of Homeland Security could not immediately provide corroborating details of any case to match Noem’s story. Was this person a cannibal, and if so, who did he eat? Why did he chew on himself? Is airline food that bad?

The story of human evolution: get eaten, or eat ourselves.

Idaho killer avoids death sentence

On By Cannibal_StudiesIn Cannibal News1 Comment

Family members of one of the victims of a gruesome murder of four college students in Idaho are furious that Bryan Kohberger has been offered and accepted a plea deal.

Kohberger was accused of stabbing Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, and Ethan Chapin to death in November 2022 in Moscow, Idaho. The students were found with fatal stab wounds in an off-campus rental home in the early morning hours. Investigators believe the four students, thought to be sleeping at the time, were fatally stabbed between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. According to the coroner, there was no sign of sexual assault.

A little over a month after the killings, Kohberger, a 28-year-old Ph.D. student and teaching assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania on Dec. 30, 2022, and extradited to Idaho.

Kohberger was facing a possible death sentence if convicted in a trial that was scheduled to begin Aug. 18, 2025.

A letter sent to families of the victims to inform them of the deal said Kohberger will appear in court Wednesday to enter his guilty plea and be sentenced in late July to life in prison, according to the Idaho Statesman. Kohberger will forfeit his right to appeal as part of the deal. The letter from Moscow Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson said:

“We cannot fathom the toll that this case has taken on your family. This resolution is our sincere attempt to seek justice for your family. This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and the other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction appeals.”

Goncalves’s family had an angry reply on their Facebook page.

“We are beyond furious at the State of Idaho. They have failed us. Please give us some time. This was very unexpected. We appreciate all your love and support.”

The family issued a later post explaining what had been taking place.

“I would like to clarify a couple of things…we DID talk to the prosecution on Friday about the POSSIBILITY of a plea deal and it was a HARD NO from our family. It was very nonchalant and barely discussed as the majority of the conversation was surrounding the upcoming trial. NOTHING in our conversation prepared us for the next steps.”

A family member of one victim told NewsNation that upon hearing of the plea deal, she felt like “all the power had been given back to Kohberger.”

Why is this case featured in a blog about cannibalism? Well, A forensic psychiatrist told  Newsweek after the arrest that Kohberger had battled with “cannibalistic urges“.

Reports then surfaced that Kohberger had followed a strict vegan diet, and had reportedly struggled with heroin addiction in the past.

Forensic psychiatrist Carole Lieberman told Newsweek that Kohberger’s “obsessive-compulsive eating habits” indicate he was afraid he would become addicted to meat if he ate it.

“He was not only vegan, he refused to eat off of pots or plates that had had meat on them. Psychologically, this represents his struggle against his cannibalistic urges. He was afraid that if he let himself go to taste meat once, he would become addicted to it—like he had become to heroin—and start killing and eating people.”

A relative told the New York Post that Kohberger’s dietary restrictions were “very, very weird” and that he seemed “very OCD,” referring to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The woman, who asked not to be named, but said she was previously married into Kohberger’s family, said:

“It was above and beyond being vegan. His aunt and uncle had to buy new pots and pans because he would not eat from anything that had ever had meat cooked in them.”

Casey Arntz, who was friends with Kohberger in middle and high school, said in a video posted on TikTok that he had been “a heavy heroin user” in high school. Kohberger’s struggles with drug addiction continued into his college years, a friend from Northampton Community College told Fox News. Criminal profiler John Kelly told Fox News,

“This kind of person has this volcanic rage inside that’s going to explode on its victim of choice.”

Lieberman told Newsweek that Kohberger had probably studied criminology both to “calm the demons inside him that were telling him to kill” but also to “learn how to commit the perfect crime.”

It is possible that he had been in touch with the so-called BTK killer, Dennis Rader, whose serial killings in Wichita were the subject of a book by his supervisor, Katherine Ramsland.

Kohlberger may have corresponded with Rader (a lot of criminology students do) but we don’t know that for sure. We have to wonder if Rader would have told him about working in the meat department of a Wichita IGA a few years before his murder spree began.  

Kohlberger’s obsession with meat reflects a lot of issues considered in Cannibal Studies. Firstly, the question of human meat: there really is no significant difference between the meat of humans and other large mammals such as cows, pigs or sheep. Hannibal Lecter takes delight in feeding human meat to his guests, such as the flesh of the flautist of the Baltimore Philharmonic, whose Board members subsequently enjoy the meal immensely in the book and film Red Dragon, thus becoming “innocent cannibals”.

But the point is that once meat is prepared (cooked, seasoned, presented) it is very hard to tell its provenance. Cannibals who have been asked have mostly compared it to pork or veal, with Armin Meiwes telling an interviewer

“It would have made no difference in somebody else had tasted it; he wouldn’t have questioned the meat…. During preparation, it is not as dark, but bright and fresh as pork, and tastes so very close to pork.”

Kohlberger’s belief that he might like human flesh if he tried any meat at all therefore has some logic to it. Since Charles Darwin’s writings overthrew the special status of humans as closer to angels than other animals, anthropocentrism has been amended to offer a story of humans as the culmination of evolution and thereby continues, rather less successfully, to obscure human animality. Should such beliefs falter, as happens repeatedly in many cases of contemporary cannibalism, it becomes a very short step from eating other animals to eating the human one.

But why should he become addicted to any meat? Well, we know Kohlberger has an addictive personality, shown by his very heavy usage of heroin. But we’re not talking drugs of addiction but lumps of protein, aren’t we? Well, there are plenty of studies about that. Marta Zaraska, for example, wrote in her book Meathooked that meat is highly addictive on several fronts – genetic, cultural, historic and commercial, and coined the term “meathooked” for the incongruous compulsion to eat meat despite the pangs of cognitive dissonance – the repressed feeling of guilt when considering oneself an animal-lover while also paying big corporations to kill them. Then there is the mythology of the Wendigo, a creature from Algonquin legend who starts off as a human but becomes a being who can only live on human flesh, which makes him grow bigger and at the same time hungrier. If you believe in Wendigos, then the slippery slope from carnivore to cannibal seems reasonably clear.

This leads us to the issue of Kohlberger’s apparently very strict veganism. Most people seem to believe (or want to believe) that vegans are fanatics, obsessed with animal welfare (or the environment, or their own health) who therefore compulsively avoid meat. But in fact most vegans would certainly wash a pot thoroughly after a relative had cooked meat, but are unlikely to throw it out as irretrievably ruined, as Kohlberger purportedly did. Veganism is an ethical system that attempts to minimise harm to sentient animals, which includes humans (yes, Virginia, humans are animals). If there is a slippery slope from the flesh of other animals to the flesh of Homo sapiens, then the vegan is furthest from the edge of that slope. When Kohlberger killed those students, he was not following any known vegan code of ethics, even if he didn’t sample their flesh on the way out.