According to Troma Entertainment president Lloyd Kaufman, Showtime once called this film unwatchable, listing the number of atrocities in the opening scene. Well, ha, ha to the mainstream (including Sundance: “They didn’t even get a rejection letter from those f—s!”), because the director is none other than South Park’s Trey Parker, and you now have another anecdote in your Beatles-got-turned-down-a-million-times archive. Sure, if I had to put this on a scale between Monty Python’s Meaning of Life and the Xena musical episode, it would probably be closer to the latter, but it definitely butchers its TV status. CTM is the story of Alfred Packer (as in, “Fudge, Packer?”), on trial in 1893 for cannibalism. As he recounts his jailhouse tale to a seductive reporter, we are transported back to the trail he led his fellow gold-miners on, occasionally broken up by singing, dancing, and dismemberment. I think the highest comedy in here is the Indian “tribe” who are actually Japanese in disguise, though I never quite figured out what they were doing hiding in America… BTW, this film was performed live at Slamdance, a la Rocky Horror!
