Cannibal Girls (1973) Full Movie Summary & Plot Explained

Gloria Wellaby and Clifford Sturges head north into a snowbound Ontario forest, seeking help in Farnhamville after their car grinds to a halt. What begins as a tense roadside scenario quickly spirals into a nightmare as an axe-wielding woman attacks, killing the boyfriend, ripping open the girlfriend’s shirt, and leaving a disturbing dab of blood between her breasts. The couple’s fragile calm shatters, and they must confront a chilling mystery that will push them into a town where old legends feel all too real.

The pair’s car struggles to run as they push into the secluded town, where a fellow traveler seeking his missing sister—a victim from the opening scene—adds an eerie, almost ritual feel to their misfortune. Stranded, the duo checks into a modest, rain-soaked motel run by an elderly woman, Mrs. Wainwright. The old host is the first to hint that Farnhamville hides a dark urban legend, whispering of a trio of seductive but murderous women known as the Cannibal Girls. The legend centers on three beautiful yet merciless figures—Anthea, Clarissa, and Leona—who lure men to their home, where they feast on them while still alive. Their grotesque ritual is aided by a strange, freakish helper named Bunker, whose existence heightens the town’s unsettling, cult-like ambience.

The film then unfolds in a sequence of brutal, staged encounters that blur sensuality and violence. In a secluded room, [Clarissa] kills a man with a swift knife strike, while [Anthea] and [Leona] orchestrate a far more unsettling assault on a second victim—each act carefully choreographed to emphasize the girls’ beauty and their merciless appetite. The third victim awakens, finds himself at their mercy, and is subjected to a terrifying ordeal: after a night of ambiguous intimacy, he is bound to a bed and subjected to the combined predation of all three women, who first lick his belly and then devour him alive. Throughout these acts, the town’s atmosphere tightens, hinting that the Cannibal Girls’ bloodletting sustains their youth and immortality.

Meanwhile, the traveler pursuing his sister is halted by local law enforcement, acting on directives from the Reverend Alex St. John, a charismatic authority figure who exerts a magnetic pull over Farnhamville. The Reverend, played by Reverend Alex St. John, wields religious confidence like a weapon, shaping the town’s sense of normalcy and fear alike. The narrative threads converge as the Cannibal Girls are implicated in the town’s most disturbing rumors, and Mrs. Wainwright’s dinner-table confidences hint that more is at stake than simple rural superstition.

A grim turn arrives when Clifford and Gloria are invited to a bed-and-breakfast where the Cannibal Girls supposedly once lived. The Reverend hosts a macabre, ritual feast in which Anthea, Clarissa, and Leona stand naked, offering their blood in a chalice to the Reverend and chanting a dark creed: “Within me and without me I honor the blood which gives me life.” The line, delivered with eerie calm, underlines a chilling philosophy that ties the town’s faith to its appetite for human life.

Thwarted by a ferocious storm and a warning about an escaped lunatic, the couple finds themselves trapped. Gloria experiences a nightmare where Clifford is bound and at the mercy of the three women, a dream that foreshadows the couple’s fragile grip on safety. In the real world, the telephone lines fail, and the buses won’t run until morning, leaving the couple with few options beyond facing the town’s other center of power—the Reverend and his ritual circle.

As tension escalates, Clifford’s suspicion and dependence toward Gloria twist into a lethal confrontation. When the sheriff eventually escorts Clifford and Gloria back to the Cannibal Girls’ dwelling, a terrible betrayal comes into view: Clifford plans to offer Gloria as a sacrifice to secure his own survival. The Reverend, however, surprises everyone by stepping back from outright violence and instead passes Gloria a mace. Enraged by her former lover’s betrayal, Gloria drives the mace into Clifford’s stomach, killing him instantly and cementing her own uneasy alliance with Farnhamville’s dark ritual.

In a final, uneasy tableau, the Reverend, the Cannibal Girls, the servant Bunker, and Gloria sit together at a table with Clifford’s corpse transformed into the meal. Gloria’s initial hesitation gives way to a grim resolve, and she begins to eat alongside the others as the ritual continues. The cannibal circle has claimed another victim, or perhaps more accurately, another participant in their endlessly renewing ceremony of blood and youth.

The film then closes with an epilogue that reframes the entire sequence as a story being told by Mrs. Wainwright to another couple stranded in town. The innkeeper’s narration suggests Farnhamville’s legend persists, a cyclical tale that blends fear, desire, and ritual into a single, shocking legend about three beauty-turned-ploodthirsty icons and the town that worships them.