1 week Ago By Chloe Govan
Interview With A Cannibal got a little too gory for comfort for one professional documentary viewer, who admitted that witnessing someone get away scot-free with a cannibalistic crime was a struggle not to switch off. The American Instagrammer , who goes by the name of @thatdocumentarygirl, shared: "I watch over 1000 documentaries every year and there's very few that I refuse to watch." However, Interview With A Cannibal is the exception as, although she recommends viewers tune in once, she has no intentions of going back for a second helping.
She cringed: "It is about a man who ate a woman in France, flew back to Japan and then never suffered the consequences for it. It is really hard to watch because they do show footage so I would not watch it again." The 34-minute screening features the true life story of Issei Sagawa, who left the world horrified when he murdered a woman and ate her flesh over a period of three days, before exploiting a loophole in the law to avoid facing punishment for his crime.
Unsurprisingly, the documentary is listed in the horror category - and viewers discover the exact chain of events that led to him roaming free in his native Japan, despite having been charged with first-degree murder and cannibalism. The crime took place in Paris in 1981 - but after the charges were dropped, he was merely deported to Japan, where no action could be taken against him, and after a period of time spent in an asylum, he was free again. The close-ups of the criminal, plus translations of the interview that have been described as "terrifyingly blunt" all add to making the film something the documentary expert would not watch again.
Download at your peril - and in the meantime, here are a few others which @thatdocumentarygirl doesn't recommend you screen even once. She was left thoroughly disgusted by Zoo, which tells the story of "a man who has an intimate relationship with his horse and dies because of it" - and branded it unwatchable and "foul". Dolphin Lover, a short YouTube film documenting a man's disturbing "romantic" relationship with Dolly the bottlenose dolphin is no less eyebrow raising - and she concluded that for this "insane" screening, "once was enough".
Then there's Earthlings, a documentary about the exploitation and abuse of animals at factory farms, labs and puppy mills to name a few - and the reviewer shared it had "scarred her for life"..
