Getting psyched for the Big Game with my favorite sports movie, 1981’s CANNIBAL QUARTERBACK. A schlocky low-budget grindhouse splatterfest, the film is impossible to track down but cherished by aficionados of tasteless cinema. Although it contains no sex scenes, it received an X rating for “senseless, prolonged nudity and graphic violence” thanks largely to its notorious “cheerleader blood orgy” scene, which at 27 grueling minutes accounts for nearly a third of the entire film.
In CANNIBAL QUARTERBACK, radioactive waste from a secretive government facility leaks into the farm of cattle destined for leather, and a football made from the mutated cows finds its way to the local college football team. At first the mysterious football seems to give the players power and stamina on the field. But what follows is anger, violent rage, and an intense hunger for raw bloody meat. When gobbling beef before each game is no longer enough, the gruesome killings begin; students begin disappearing, and mangled bodies turn up around the stadium, the flesh chewed off them.
Consuming human flesh begins to change the players, mutating them one by one into savage creatures who yearn only for blood. Their coach, greedy for the wins his newly supercharged players are bringing, tries to conceal the dark secret of the team and even helps lure unsuspecting students into the locker room to become pre-game snacks. The big game against their rival team proceeds as planned despite the growing body count, and all hell breaks loose on the field. The rage and bloodlust of the now monstrous players can no longer be contained, nor can the sickness afflicting them, which spreads rapidly to the other team — and the cheerleaders.
A fight between the rival cheer squads quickly descends into a cannibalistic orgy of gore. In a trance-like state, drunk on an abundance of nubile flesh, the possessed women tear each other apart and writhe in their blood and guts, consuming their bodies layer by layer until the locker room is a formless heap of meat and bone.
Meanwhile, the violence on the field has continued, the teams of deranged mutants engaged in a twisted "game," savagely competing to devour each other all through the night until only the strongest cannibal remains.
The film’s final scene sees the sun rising on a field of grotesque death, with only a few mindless cannibal monsters still alive, wandering around seeking new blood. But a bizarre post-credits scene returns to the radioactive farmlands of the opening shot, where humanoid mutant cows are seen emerging ominously from the glowing green ooze that created them. A planned sequel of mutant cow creatures seeking revenge on the humans for slaughtering their kind was supposedly filmed but never completed.
Auteur underground horror director Ron Sharletan, fresh off the success of 1977’s DRIVE-THRU OF DEATH, described CANNIBAL QUARTERBACK as “a commentary on the corruption of school sports and the toxic American obsession with zero-sum victory at all costs.” Upon receiving an X rating from the MPAA for the film’s “excessive graphic violence and nudity,” Sharletan refused to edit the film despite the rating meaning near-certain commercial failure for the film. “Art is not defined by censors,” Sharletan said in a statement, “and my vision will not be sacrificed on the altar of mass market puritanism.” Thus, the film had an almost non-existent theatrical release, and only found its niche audience years later on VHS.
Critical reviews were unkind, with many reviewers walking out of press screenings during the film’s notoriously graphic 27-minute “cheerleader blood orgy.” Gene Siskel wrote: “I’m envious of my colleagues who made the wise decision to abandon this cinematic atrocity, because having enduring the full length of the film, I can assure you dear reader that there is no merit to be found on the other side.”
Peter Travers called the film “regressive, exploitative trash” and Sports Illustrated’s review said “such excessive violence and sexism make a mockery of the beautiful game of football.”
Little is known about why the planned sequel fell apart before completion, but one crew member described it as “a drug-addled trainwreck” and “the worst filming experience of my life.” The never-seen footage from the sequel has become a “holy grail” for underground cinema aficionados.
Official CANNIBAL QUARTERBACK t-shirts now available at Glitch Goods!
NOTE: This film does not actually exist outside of my imagination. This alternate history horror story is part of my NightmAIres series exploring media and events that never existed, conceived by me and visualized with synthography. Some other entries in this series include Cyborg Slaves of Satan, The Macy's Thanksgiving Day "Blood Parade", World Without Christmas, Rankin/Bass' 1967 Krampus TV Special, Children of Irradiated Skies, Jodorowsky's Frasier, David Lynch's Perfect Strangers.
