What do Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Delicatessen (also 1991), Frank Marshall’s Alive (1993), and Antonia Bird’s Ravenous (1999) – to name but a few worthy titles – all have in common? For starters, these are prime-cut films. Great titles no matter how you slice and dice ‘em, and ones I’ve already covered in a previous post of a couple years ago. They also touch on the taboo subject of cannibalism, and there is a reason why I’m thinking of them all on this fine April day.

When I was a student in college (late ’80s and early ’90s), the third week of April had a special day in honor of Colorado’s most famous cannibal, Alferd Packer. On this day, people would eat Rocky Mountain Oysters (aka: bull testicles), have burping contests, drink a lot of 3.2 beer, and watch some great live music featuring bands like Fishbone and Primus. The latter band clearly made a strong impression on two C.U. students, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who later commissioned the band do to the theme music for South Park.

In 1874 a small group of men traveling to Breckenridge, Colorado got stuck in deep snow for two months. Only the mountain guide survived the trip. Packer was later convicted on five counts of manslaughter in 1886, with the judge famously saying: “There was only six Democrats in all of Hinsdale County, and you, you man-eating son of a bitch, you ate five of them.” Packer did admit to eating “the flesh of these men,” but otherwise claimed he had only acted in self-defense by shooting the man who had murdered everyone else in the group. Either way, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison and was paroled after 14 years. A few decades later, in 1952, three Republican state representatives tried to erect a memorial in his honor for his “substantial and lasting contribution” in reducing the state’s Democratic voters.

Despite his partisan diet, Packer still got the student vote at the University of Colorado in Boulder, when in 1968 they named their campus grill after him. Then came the yearly Alferd Packer Days, which lasted a couple decades. The bloody-good times were dealt a death-blow by the politically-correct minded groups that thought such shenanigans glorified gluttonous and other immoral behavior. Not everyone agreed, especially some film students who found inspiration, rather than distress, with Packer. These students went on to make a film about Colorado’s most famous flesh-eater and called it Alferd Packer: The Musical. It was later picked up by Troma and retitled Cannibal: The Musical. You can follow that musical thread all the way to the present with The Book of Mormon. Somewhere inbetween this, Trey Parker and Matt Stone were known for South Park. But with performances of The Book of Mormon now selling-out nation-wide and winning a marathon run of Tony and Grammy awards, well… it’s hard to keep up with them.

One person who not only kept up with them during their early years but also helped land Trey and Matt essential connections for later South Park glory was Jason McHugh; actor and producer on what is now called Cannibal: The Musical. He even helped with the cut-outs for the initial South Park animations (along with influencing a character, or two). McHugh recently self-published a book recounting the stories behind Parker’s debut feature called Shpadoinkle: The Making of Cannibal! The Musical.

Last Thursday night McHugh flew out from L.A. to visit us in the Rocky Mountains for a screening of his splendid student film, along with a Q&A, which was then followed by a double-feature presentation of Jim Roberson’s The Legend of Alfred Packer (1980), a film that influenced a couple scenes in Parker’s musical. Both films were on 35mm, the former thanks to Troma, and the latter thanks to a generous donation by producer Mark Webb, who felt his film should find a permanent home in the state of Colorado. (On a relevant note, Packer was able to avoid death at the hanging gallows thanks to Polly Prye’s assessment that his misdeeds had occurred while Colorado was a “territory,” rather than a state).

Between overseeing franchise stage productions of Cannibal: The Musical, video game concepts, and several other projects, Jason McHugh took a moment to answer some questions regarding Colorado’s most famous cannibal.

K: What kind of research goes into a musical about a man who eats his comrades?

J.M.: The biggest film influences for Cannibal: The Musical were Oklahoma and Friday The 13th, Part 2. The styles and structure of those two movies had the biggest cinematic influence on us at the time and we even referenced those films in our first tag line….. “In the tradition of Oklahoma and Friday the 13th, Part 2 comes the first intelligent film about cannibalism!” Monty Python was of course a huge influence for all of us too.  As far as actual films about cannibalism I saw Sweeney Todd as a kid onstage with Angela Lansbury, so I knew there was a market for cannibalistic musicals based on that.  I also enjoyed Eating Raoul and The Little Shop of Horrors. Movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre also had some tasty flesh eating impact, but to what extent they played a role is hard to say.