by Victoria Potenza, Staff Writer

Food and cooking are an expression of love very much tied to my family and my Italian heritage. Yes we all need food for fuel but the act of eating is also tied to a lot of happiness and pleasure. A satisfying meal; whether it be a beautifully prepared dish from a fancy restaurant or your mom’s classic recipe that is perfect every time, is truly one of life’s greatest gifts. And there are so many good films about food; Big Night, Pig, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Ratatouille.

While horror is great at taking the things we fear and presenting them to us, it also likes to make the things we love horrific as well. Which is why food, restaurants, and chefs are perfect vessels to bring forth new and sometimes gut wrenching horrors. With the highly anticipated horror film The Menu, soon to be released, starring a favorite villainous actor,  Ralph Fiennes, viewers are sure to have an array of new terrors in store. While the chef/restaurant industry as villain is a newer trope we are seeing that is tied to the gentrification and patriarchal themes emerging within the food industry, food, dinner, chefs, and cooks have all played a hand in bringing us guttural terrors. 

The Dinner Table as a Horror Venue

The dinner table, in general, is a symbol of communal family time. By 1950s conformity standards it was the time when the father would come home from the office, the kids would come back from school, and the housewife would serve the meal she painstakingly made. There they would share stories about their day and spend a few precious moments bonding before they go their separate ways again. At least that is the Americana portrait that Norman Rockwell would have portrayed. Plenty of us have sat through awkward dinners or scarfed down food so we could get away as quickly as possible. So the dinner table itself can be a perfect place to showcase the breakdown of familial and communal structures. 

Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has one of the most iconic dinner table sequences in horror. After the crazed family of cannibals finally captures Sally they strap her down to a chair at the head of the table. Slowly the family comes together, each person more disturbing than the next. Sally cries and screams as the family attempts to recreate a traditional dinner table scene while making it known Sally will be the next pig to the slaughter. House of a Thousand Corpses and other films have paid tribute by creating similar scenes in which a family of killers “invites” their victims to dine. The ability of these films to pervert the traditional symbol of the dinner table and dinner time makes a clear statement about these traditionally held middle class values. 

Other horror films use our expectations of dinnertime as a safe space to catch viewers off guard. Alien is the most classic example of this. In one of the few moments of calm the movie has, the crew sits down to eat and laugh until terror is literally birthed onto the table when John Hurt’s chest bursts and a baby xenomorph joins the dinner.  You’re Next breaks a tense dinner amongst a feuding affluent family by introducing us to the intruders who have come to kill them. Some films center tension around the dinner table, like Kusama’s The Invitation, where a couple’s motives for a dinner party will be revealed. Or Midsommar where a community's secret ceremonies await a naive group of students.  Even a crowded restaurant is not safe in Leigh Whannel’s Invisible Man, when it becomes abundantly clear that being invisible means you can murder in a well populated area. 

Recent releases like Hereditary, Get Out, Terrifier 2, and Pearl have also crafted iconic dinner table scenes that are sure to join the ranks of these classic horror moments. 

Food as Horror 

Nothing makes you lose your appetite like a well placed, horrific food scene in a movie. Using food, something tied to pleasure and nourishment, as something gross or horrific is one of the most visceral moments in any horror film. Drag Me To Hell has a particularly gruesome and awkward scene. Christine hopes to have a nice meal with her boyfriend’s well-off family but after being hexed by an older woman she is plagued with hallucinations. When she tries to take a bite of her “harvest cake” she sees an eyeball at the center of her dessert looking up at her, and when she stabs it blood and puss covers the table. 

Poltergeist and The Lost Boys both use maggots to make audiences squirm in their seats, one covering a chicken wing a character is trying to eat, while teen vampires play a prank on a new kid by making him envision a chinese takeout box of rice as the wriggling baby worms. Freddy Krueger also likes to play with food as there are two iconic scenes in installments of the franchise. In The Dream Master, the meatballs on a pizza transform into screaming faces that Freddy pops into his mouth. And in the next movie, The Dream Child, one of Krueger’s victims is forced to consume disgusting looking entrees until she dies. 

Thinner gives us a look into a deadly yet effective weight loss diet, as well as a bloody fruit pie. The It miniseries turns a plate of fortune cookies into various creatures featuring claws, eyeballs, and blood. Ruining a reunion dinner with a group of childhood friends. And The Last Matinee lets the serial killer much down on some unconventional and squishy, movie theater snacks. Horror can turn the most mouthwatering dish into a nauseating delicacy. 

Long Pig & The Cannibals that Love It

Now when it comes to food in horror, it is impossible to not discuss one of the most taboo of meals, human flesh. Cannibalism is one of the ruling themes of horror and one the most divisive amongst horror fans. But whether you love them or hate them it seems that cannibals are here to stay. Of course one of the most iconic of cannibals is Hannibal Lecter, whether portrayed in films like Silence of the Lambs or Manhunter or in the TV series, Hannibal. He is the crowning king of the lot killing and serving up anyone he deems “rude.” And of course Leatherface and his family, mentioned above with their increasingly long franchise, have much to offer in the way of eating humans. 

Sweeney Todd gives us a killer duo; Todd who slices the necks of the men who come to get a haircut and Mrs. Lovett who turns them into her sought after meat pies. The two are able to rise above their poverty to become big names in their respective businesses, and all they have to do is kill and serve the rich. This year’s new release Fresh also offers up a cannibal who monatives on the sought after delicacy by beautifully preparing the body parts of women he seduces and selling them to his uber rich buyers. Horror comedies like Motel Hell and Blood Diner also feature  capitalist cannibals. In Motel Hell a brother and sister team run a motel that also serves up some of their guests as ingredients for their famous jerky. And the Tutman brothers of Blood Diner are able to drive business to their “vegetarian” restaurant while also working on resurrecting an Egyptian Goddess with their ritualistic sacrifices. 

Clearly cannibalism is a good allegory in a late stage capitalist society where overpopulation, world hunger, and poverty affect so many. But it can also be used to have deeper discussions about our growing bodies and our relationships. In Julia Ducournau’s feature Raw, a young woman away at school realizes she has an ever growing taste for flesh. And in another soon to be released film, Bones and All, cannibalism is genetic and affects a small part of the population two of these cannibals face a blossoming romance while finding ways to safely feed their appetites. Raw use of cannibalism to explore female sexuality and puberty while Bones and All uses it to explore themes of both romantic and familial love. 

Chefs and Cooks

Food consumption and cooking clearly play a major role in horror films, but there is a lack of chefs in horror films. It is an area that is clearly ripe for the genre, especially considering the patriarchal and sexist elements involved in the industry. While women have long been thought of as cooks, men dominate the world of professional chefs, making up about 75% of chefs working in the United States. Women are also the driving force behind much of agriculture needed to supply the restaurant industry. So why are they lacking in the professional sphere? Why is home cooking seen as a thankless duty but chefs are held in such high regard? As horror is apt to delve into these types of issues it seems that this will become more prevalent. 

With so many white men dominating the industry, they should be the perfect villain, which is what perhaps, we will get in The Menu. The chef as villain, besides films like Blood Diner or Sweeney Todd we don’t see too many villainous professional chefs. There are fan favorite horror chefs, like Preacher (played by LL Cool J) in Deep Blue Sea, but most of the horrifying cooks are designated to the home. In Dumplings, a woman sells her magical dumplings that are the key to unlocking eternal youth, but does so in her living room. Flux Gourmet gives us the chef as an affluent performance artist. Vincent Price (a cook in real life) plays the part of a chef in order to serve up a horrifying meal in Theater of Blood. Saint Maud and Speak No Evil also provide us some sinister cooks but only in passing scenes. 

Kitchens do have the most useful weapons compared to other spaces and while their appliances and gadgets have been used in various ways it is typically not by one particular evil chef. A recent horror short Aftertaste by Christianne Cruz does set its story in a Michelin star restaurant with a sadistic chef who prays on those around him, however his role is more of a background antagonist as opposed to a lead villain although its portrayal of the problematic male chef is essential. I look forward to The Menu and what seems to be its brand of food, restaurant, anticapitalist horror. I hope it spurs on others like it but for now my favorite kitchen scene will have to go to the end of Night of the Demons in which a terrible old man gets taken down by his wife’s “special” apple pie.