...yes, indeed-ee, folks!! We've definitely come a long way, as far as an semblance of depiction of that oh-so taboo subject of unspeakable horror...that oh-so forbidden atrocity of human behavior...namely, the subversive and gut-wrenching concept of (...yeech!!) human cannibalism. Oh granted, in the past, we're toyed and danced around the ghastly activity, from a pop culture perspective...tempering the material with a certain overt and irreverent level of chuckle-able, knee-slapping humor. Surely, you remember those corny and stereotyped 'Looney Tunes"...the ones which had a helpless and clueless, jungle-entrenched Elmer Fudd, soaking in a big ol' black pot of steaming hot water, while a black-faced, grass-skirted primitive with bone through his nose, and sporting dreadlocks (...'onga-bonga-bonga, onga-bonga-bonga'), is cutting up carrots and potatoes into the bulbous cooking vessel. And a wayward-traveling Bugs Bunny, having taken that wrong turn at Albuquerque once again, burrows in at the last moment, and saves the day...as well as Elmer's skin, quite literally...
...and to that...oh, how we laughed...and laughed...and laughed some more...
...and later, there arose a certain social fascination with media-saturated criminal history, and the equally heinous and unspeakable crimes of true-life cannibals, like Ed Gein and Albert Fish...the horrific exploits of which were incorporated into a provocative and controversial sub-genre of horror films, stemming back as far as 1960's "Psycho". and in years to come, we'd revisit these concepts, time and time again, translated into terror films like "Deranged", the later "Hannibal" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". Heck, even during this period, filmmakers would again attempt to temper that oh-so horrific idea of cannibalism, by injecting comical fervor into the ghastly and gruesome proceedings, as evident by dark-humored fright films, such as "Motel Hell", "Delicatessen" and "Parents", just to name a tender and juicy few...