Filmdom's Finest Cannibals

Noshing on human flesh is the dirtiest of the dirty societal taboos. The only act comparable in terms of universal no-nos is doing the nasty with your mom or dad.

So of course if you need your movie villain to be really creepy, cannibalism might just be the way to go.

Here, then, are some of moviedom's most delicious depictions of cannibalism (and no, zombies don't count-they're undead and no longer human in an official sense).

Dead Man (1995)

In Jim Jarmusch's kitchy Western, a bounty hunter (played by Lance Henriksen) is rumored to be a cannibal by many-even his own gang speculates on it. This fact is confirmed later in the film, as Henriksen sits fireside enjoying some fried chicken, which, as the camera pulls back, we learn is really a human forearm.

Hannibal (2001)

Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter is easily the most mainstream of all human people eaters, and he offers us several memorable meat-eating moments. This moment from Ridley Scott's "Hannibal" is arguably the best, where he scalps the a-hole cop played by Ray Liotta, then cooks up and forces him to eat pieces of his own brain, being careful to cut out the non-essential parts so he can be awake as he dines on himself.

Of course he saves some for himself, in the film's creepiest moment, sharing a bite with a little with a boy on an airplane.

Alive (1993):

For all the controversy this film (based on a true story) created over its scenes of human-on-human dining, it was surprisingly tame, as the filmmakers took the "beef jerky" approach. An Uruguayan soccer team stranded in the mountains after a plane crash is forced to eat their own dead to survive. It proved to be a whole lot of nothing, as the survivors cut off small pieces of flesh and ate them like, well, beef jerky.

No, the most egregious form of cannibalism in "Alive" were confirmed white guys like John Newton and Ethan Hawke calling each other decidedly Hispanic names. Way to go for authenticity, fellas.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

A group of young filmmakers head out into the Amazon looking for indigenous tribes apparently find them, because they disappear. The resultant rescue party recovers only their footage, "Blair Witch"-style (okay, they find some bones as well). The tape shows their grisly demise at the hands of cannibals that features an uncut (so to speak) sequence where the savages lop off a man's junk that was so convincing I'm still trying to figure out how they pulled it off (er, so to speak).

Last House on the Left (1972)

Wes Craven's horror classic is the epitome of late 60s-early 70s creepiness: quick, jarring cuts, extreme close-ups, and a filming style that seems so amateurish it has to be real. Craven tells a tale of a raging gang of hoodlums who massacres a pair of teenage girls, in one case rubbing her viscera all over their faces and mouths and having a bite.