Cannibal Girls (1973): coincidence or real HGL tribute?

It was only after I have seen the above movie that it was directed by Ivan Reitman. That name sounded familiar but I had to look him up where I had seen him before. Many fans of the 80s blockbuster Ghostbusters would have felt insulted not putting the link but hell I don't care. Ghostbusters is some cheesy horror comedy which I personally cannot really appreciate and I'm really being nice here. I won't go on a tirade how overrated and trash (in the bad or boring sense of the word as I like trash movies) but it's hard to believe that Reitman would have made a decade earlier a movie that is so vastly different. Despite that Cannibal Girls is labeled as a comedy horror there hardly is anything to laugh about and has a serious dark tone. Plus it felt to me like a tribute to the horror movies of Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Story in short a young hippie couple spends their honeymoon in a sleepy town. There isn't really anything to do and their car was in for repairs but the nice lady of the motel they are staying at tells them about a story of 3 young girls that lived in a remote house luring men in the house and their beds to end up eventually as food. So yes the girls were cannibals. But that happened long ago and the place had become a neat restaurant worth checking out. And that's what the couple does without spoiling things go from bad to worse as the place is a restaurant but the cannibal girls are still there...

Coming to the HGL tribute part. There is a certain Two Thousand Maniacs vibe as the inhabitants seem to be welcoming to visitors but don't like snooping around. They also do their best for the couple not to leave town even the phone company and public services are minimal in their "services". There is a bus once a day that can take you to another town but that might be a lie. The sheriff who is not that nice to them reminded me nevertheless of the Maniacs mayor as he would make sure they didn't do anything funny and has 2 nasty boys to keep visitors in line (like Lester and Rufus but a bit more violent in their ways to persuade).

Further the restaurant owner who calls himself 'reverend' is almost a copy paste of Montag the Magnificent aka the Wizard of Gore in the way he dresses, acts, speaks and even the hypnosis is there. It's way too obvious Reitman got his inspiration from this character. The biggest difference is that his victims are not women but men. Yes that's right women do not have to fear anything as only visiting males end up as a dish on dinner tables. Meat at the butcher's is not likely to come from animals. The Blood Feast reference is more than obvious. I wouldn't go as far as calling the movie feminist as men still rule the place but they do worship women in a rather extreme way not only sparing them from the fate foreign men will but also persuade them to join their little cannibal cult. It's hard to understand that the same director would pretty much make a u turn and make Ghostbusters rather misogynist mostly thanks to Bill Murray's annoying character.

Finally in the cannibal house we have also a grunting imbecile character a guy more beast than human called Bunker. And there we have our Gruesome Twosome reference as well Bunker reminding us as Rodney doing the dirty job. The nice motel lady could be seen as Mrs Pringles.

For all fans of HGL flicks it's worth checking out. And it's a turkey so that's a possibility for this challenge.