dir. Dante Dammit

Dante Dammit’s Tastes Like Pork begins with a friendly warning—if we are squeamish, or easily offended, we should avert our eyes now and select a different picture to peruse. The brave few who decide to continue will be greeted with a fuzzy, dream-pink montage of candles and flowers, and a love song that wouldn’t sound out of place in the 50s. We are then presented with the stars of the film; an unnamed cisgender woman (Grace Volpe), and an unnamed transgender woman (Aurora Lowther). They dine together with the characteristic awkwardness of two women on a first date. Conversation fizzles and dies. Eventually, they decide to get to the meat of the issue, as it were, and retreat to a more intimate setting—not a bedroom or a boudoir, but rather what closely resembles a serial killer’s basement. 

At first glance, these women have no real chemistry together. There is nothing that the viewers might immediately identify as a spark between them, nothing that denotes them as a compatible couple. 

And yet, they do have one—rather eccentric—desire that binds them together. 

 The cisgender woman wants to eat a penis. The transgender woman wants to have her penis eaten. I dread to imagine the catering at the wedding. 

As grotesque as the premise is, this is a film with an odd amount of tenderness. Both characters are uncertain of themselves, virginal and tentative in a way that seems incongruous with the violence of the acts portrayed. The cannibalistic cisgender lead is no Hannibal Lecter, smooth and sophisticated—one of the funniest moments of the film is when she attempts to encourage her partner to arousal, with some truly terrible dirty talk that made me wince more than the actual cannibalism. And the transgender heroine is quick-witted and sarcastic and visibly anxious about the proceedings. This evident humanity displayed by both women makes the subsequent violent removal of the latter’s penis all the more startling. As a simulacrum of sex, it is suitably prolonged, graphic, and about as inappropriate to watch with your parents in the room. When teeth do not suffice, a saw is used. 

(For the viewers who are preoccupied with health and safety, not to worry—the severed appendage is cooked before it is consumed.)

After the act is done, the two women seem to have diametrically opposing reactions. The transwoman lead is relieved, both literally and figuratively lighter—although she spends the rest of the film in an ice bucket, clearly in some degree of pain. The ciswoman is remorseful, assailed by memories of the incident as she cooks. Her monologue on her guilt is both poignant and entertaining—”I think there might actually be something truly and deeply fucked up with me…I did watch like Silence of the Lambs very young.” Anyone who has ever felt ashamed of their desires can certainly relate to the earnestness of her confession. Unfortunately, it falls on deaf ears. The transwoman is asleep—at least, we hope she’s merely unconscious, and not in a more sinister state from some truly DIY gender-affirming surgery. 

Tastes Like Pork is a delightful dish of a movie, a light and refreshing change from what we might typically expect from cannibalistic horror tropes. Dante Dammit marries humour and horror, a couple as unlikely as the film’s stars. To all you horror gourmets out there, I hope you’re hungry for a real treat of a film.