Ravenous (1999) on Netflix
John Boyd is posted to Fort Spencer, a Sierra Nevada outpost, after a battle in the Mexican-American War. A stranger arrives with a tale of a wagon train that turned to cannibalism.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.9/1047,069 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes49%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1847, during the Mexican-American War, John Boyd survives a battle by playing dead and is carried away with the American corpses. He captures an enemy headquarters, and his superiors promote him to captain while exiling him to Fort Spencer, a remote outpost in the Sierra Nevada, as punishment for perceived cowardice. Not long after he joins the small garrison, a half-frozen stranger named Colqhoun arrives and tells of a wagon train that lost its way in the mountains under a guide who had misrepresented his experience. After eating its horses and pack animals, the party resorted to cannibalism to survive, he says. Colonel Hart takes a small group into the mountains to look for survivors, and the fort's scout, George, warns them of the Wendigo, which curses anyone who eats human flesh with an endless hunger.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ravenous (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Three weeks into filming, Ziskin arrived on set to dismiss director Milcho Manchevski and have him replaced with Raja Gosnell; the cast were said to be unhappy and rumored to have held a mutiny, until Robert Carlyle recommended Antonia Bird, his frequent collaborator and business partner, to take over.
- Griffin's screenplay for the film drew on the Donner Party and on Alfred Packer, the real-life "Colorado Cannibal" who survived by eating five companions after becoming snowbound in the San Juan Mountains in the 1870s.
- As filming began, Manchevski said Ziskin sent him notes on the rushes every day, complaining about the amount of dirt on the costumes and the number of closeups, while screenwriter Ted Griffin rewrote constantly on set.
