Cannibals. Hookers. Cannibal Hookers. The title tells you everything you need to know.
A hooker struts down the Sunset Strip. A john picks her up. They go back to her place and she strips down into trashy lingerie. Then she bites his finger off. It gushes. He screams.
Meanwhile, Hillary and her friend pledge an exclusive sorority. To join, they must dress up like hookers and pick up guys on the Strip and bring them to a whorehouse. Seems like an easy thing to do, right? But, as we know, things are never easy. Case in point: I have a bank account with 95¢ in it and Chase won’t let me close it over the phone.
The girls convince their boyfriends to be their johns and they go to the whorehouse, where Dwight gets cannibalized by—surprise—a hooker. At least he died doing what he loved best.
The movie continues with more hookers stripping down to their g-strings and biting the necks of unsuspecting men, while a porky man named Lobo stares maniacally. Lobo refers to himself in the third person and nibbles on hearts. He’s got a giant dark spot on his balding head that should get checked out by a doctor. Not to be a downer, but in the United States, more people are diagnosed with skin cancer each year than all other cancers combined.
Cannibal Hookers has cannibals and hookers, but there’s just not enough to it. Kills happen off-screen and 99.9% of the gore is in the form of hookers drooling fake blood. It’s hardly inventive. This film was released in 1987, at a time when low-budget exploitation filmmakers were trying to outdo each other and get ahead in the blossoming home video market. The year 1987 was peak-80s hair and peak-80s cocaine, but unfortunately Cannibal Hookers only has one of those things (hint: it’s not the cocaine). Directed by shot-on-video veteran Donald Farmer (Demon Queen, Vampire Cop), Cannibal Hookers lacks imagination, inspiration, and passion. There’s no escalation of violence or insane histrionics of any kind. It keeps a steady tepid temperature the entire hour runtime. It’s like drinking a glass of lukewarm water that’s been sitting out all day—unsatisfying and filled with amoebas. Cannibal Hookers just goes through the motions, which is mostly ladies in lacy bras unbuttoning guys’ shirts. The funniest joke might be when Hillary says her crabby mother is on the rag. It’s not a funny joke, but it is actually the funniest joke in the movie.
Music is by Das Yahoos. Now that’s funny.
