There aren't many taboos left in the movies, but as the everyone's-talking response to Lambs' Hannibal Lecter proves, cannibalism still prompts a fascinated disgust. It's no surprise that the subject has been exploited for shock value in slasher flicks (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre); more intriguing is the number of seriously intended films that use cannibalism as a social metaphor. The more notable:
Soylent Green (1973)
It may be the food of favor in overpopulated
2022 Manhattan, but as Charlton Heston discovers, ''Soylent Green is
people!'' C+
Eating Raoul (1982)
Paul and Mary Bland stop at nothing to open a
restaurant in Paul Bartel's scabrous black comedy. A-
Sweeney Todd (1984)
Stephen Sondheim's tale of a vengeful London
barber and his meat-pie-making landlady is captured in all its dark
tragedy in this videocassette version of the acclaimed Broadway
musical. A+
Parents (1989)
Behind their sunny '50s facade, suburbanites Randy
Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt are models of conspicuous consumption. B-
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1990)
In Peter
Greenaway's arty, controversial tapestry, thief Michael Gambon's
misdeeds come back to him on a plate. B+
