Consuming Passions

Exploring themes that have been covered before to varying degrees of success by Sondheim (SWEENEY TODD) and director Antonia Bird in the even darker horror-comedy RAVENOUS, PASSIONS is a marvelous concept, but it seems as if something got lost in the translation from play to screenplay. Pythonites take heed; Terry Jones and Michael Palin wrote the play SECRETS, then adapted that for the screenplay, but this is Swiftian satire that's pitch black even by Python's standards.

I guess a considerable part of what the problems are with this movie lie in Giles Foster's direction. He doesn't seem to be sure if he's making an all-out slap-schticky farce, or a savage "veddy-veddy" British comedy of human foibles and frailties. In trying to give us the best of both worlds, the film suffers instead from a kind of unfocused schizophrenia.

What wonders would have been wrought if Terry Gilliam had directed, and Palin had taken the starring role (which seems to be written for him anyway), thereby completing the Python connection? Alas, we'll never know, but as it is, it's not half bad, and you could do MUCH worse.

I tell friends this is the funniest film about cannibalism I've ever seen! I've put in on wish lists, tried Netflix, everything, and I can't find it on DVD.

Fortuntely, I do have a pretty good VHS I can watch whenever I like.

It was my first exposure to Sammi Davis, who later turned up in Quentin Tarantino's "Four Rooms" in her voluptuous best.

The Monty Python influence is obvious. After all Michael Palin and Terry Jones put it together. Terry Gilliam did "Brazil" and here's Jonathan Price. He and Michael Palin starred in Brazil. Another very dark and humorous film.

Finally, there's the totally wonderful Vanessa Redgrave.

Enjoy it if you can find it.

Unless this a remake, the original (I think in b/w and from the late 1960's), then this is a bonus on the DVD of Ripping yarns.

The original story is about someone accidentally falling into a vat of the chocolate mixture, but instead of the stuff being thrown away it is made into chocolate bars and sold much to the disgust of many. However the new taste proves a hit and the trend is continued with other people being killed off and added to the stuff.

I think it is from the late 1960's but it could be wrong, and it might be early 1970's, but it is quite dated in appearance, picture, sound and general acting - unless they're being ironic in style...

My review was written in March 1988 after watching the movie at a Times Square screening room.

"Consuming Passions" is a thoroughly unfunny misfire, equating poor taste with black humor. British-made effort from Samuel Goldwyn Co. (of which the late Goldwyn Senior would clearly disapprove) integrates cornball elements from such warhorses as "Sweeney Todd" into a very flat satire that is barely suitable for midnight screenings.

Pic originally was developed with the active participation of several Monty Python members, with Goldcrest (since departed from the project) involved as well unr the working title "The Chocolate Factory". Final result is credited as based on a (little-known) play "Secrets" by Pythonites Michael Palin and Terry Jones, but Paul D. Zimmeman ("The King of Comedy") and Andrew Davies' script is witless and vulgar.

Nominal plot, a sketch stretched to feature length, has naive management trainee Tyler Butterworth arriving at Freddie Jones' chocolate factory and accidentally pushing three workmen into a vat. Unable to stop the assembly line, Butterworth to his horror discovers the men have been processed into the first batch of Passionelles chocolates, a brainchild of new company manager Jonathan Pryce.

Under Giles Foster's mechanical direction, every plot twist is telegraphed at least a reel ahead: Jones and Butterworth's unsuccessful, frenzied attempt to retrieve the tainted chocolates; test results which prove that only the cannibal-contents Passionelles meet with consumer approval; lengthy segue to Butterworth's "Burke and Hare" assignments to fetch corpses to keep the popular 6% human content Passionelles in production, etc.

Only surprise here is top-billed Vanessa Redgrave, taking an ill-advised stab at comedy by playing, with Melina Mercouri-esque voice, a Maltese woman whose insatiable sexual appetite gets Butterworth in trouble. Redgrave's extraneous cameo, at first amusing, is padded via endless repetition and becomes embarrassing. Toilet humor here makes the "Carry On" films seem a paragon of good taste by comparison, and at least they were amusing.

Pryce gets a few cheap laughs from his garish clothing, but his facial tics and affected vocal pattern (performing each sentence with "Yeah!") are tiresome. Jones hams to no effect and Prunella Scales, erstwhile perfect comedy foil for John Cleese in his "Fawlty Towers" tv serie, has little to do as a secretary wearing funny-looking miniskirts. Sammi Davis, as Butterworth's romantic interest and the closest to a normal character, is very appealing with a Liverpudlian accent.

Helping to sink the dubious enterprise is casting of Butterworth in the lead role -he simply isn't funny in a part that would require an established talent on the level of Michael Palin to carry the picture. Tech credits are solid down the line, offering needed visual distraction.

A tasteless sight gag involving an AIDS-prevention warning got the only belly laugh at the screening.

Dark chocolate and "dark comedy" mix well in this outrageous British comedy. Innocent first day employee accidentally dunks three workers into a mixing vat of chocolate, and thus begins his lesson on how big business operates. The bosses are only interested in profits, at the expense of all else. When our meek hero goes to inform the "loved ones' of the terrible accident, all hell breaks loose in the "black comedy" department. The casting and locations are perfect, and despite the derivative storyline the film seems fresh. Highly recommended, and for fans of British dark comedies such as "Car Trouble.", this movie will not disappoint. The DVD is rather pricy, but definitely worth it. MERK