Screw It, Cannibal Women In The Avocado Jungle Of Death Is On Tubi, Go Watch It

By Robert Scucci
| Published 16 seconds ago

There are movies that take a little while to show you what they’re all about, and then there’s 1989’s Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, a movie whose title tells you almost everything you need to know before you even press play.

Almost.

Because the title doesn’t tell you that Bill Maher is here.

Long before spending his Friday nights complaining about whatever people younger than him are doing, Maher was wandering through the California wilderness as a macho idiot named Jim in a movie about feminist cannibals threatening the United States avocado supply. I genuinely wish younger Bill Maher did more crap like this before becoming an insufferable gasbag, because seeing him get dropped into something this profoundly stupid is way more entertaining than it has any right to be.

And I mean “profoundly stupid” with nothing but affection.

Welcome To The Avocado Jungle

In Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, the federal government has a serious problem on its hands because the Piranha Women, a tribe of cannibals living in the mysterious Avocado Jungle, keep killing the men sent in to harvest the nation’s avocado supply. Their solution is to recruit feminist studies professor Dr. Margo Hunt (Shannon Tweed), who is tasked with convincing the Piranha Women to abandon their home and relocate to a reservation condo in Malibu. Margo brings along her student Bunny (Karen Mistal), while Jim (Bill Maher), a swaggering chauvinist who couldn’t be less qualified for this particular assignment, serves as their guide.

Once inside the jungle, Margo discovers that her former colleague Dr. Kurtz (Adrienne Barbeau) has become the Piranha Women’s leader, while Bunny becomes increasingly fascinated with their way of life. There’s also a rival tribe known as the Barracuda Women, whose ideological disagreement with the Piranhas comes down to whether sacrificed men taste better with guacamole or clam dip. Jim, meanwhile, spends a considerable amount of time learning why being aggressively sexist is a poor survival strategy when you’re surrounded by women who eat men.

Cannibalism Is A Spectrum

If you’re worried that Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death has something important to say about gender politics, relax.

The entire movie is basically one extended argument between exaggerated versions of men and women, with everybody so completely ridiculous that taking sides feels beside the point. Margo teaches feminist studies at Spritzer College. The submissive men living peacefully in the jungle are called the Donnahews. Dr. Kurtz wrote a book called Smart Women, Stupid Insensitive Men. The government’s idea of assimilating the Piranha Women involves introducing them to aerobics and Cosmopolitan magazine.

This movie was made in 1989 and absolutely refuses to let you forget that fact.

The jokes aren’t subtle, and plenty of them land with the sophistication of somebody throwing a folding chair across the room. But Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death moves quickly enough that another completely ridiculous idea is usually waiting right behind the one that didn’t work. Shannon Tweed plays Margo remarkably straight, while Bill Maher is legitimately funny as a guy whose personality makes him the human equivalent of a gas station boner pill.

Then there’s Adrienne Barbeau, who seems perfectly comfortable ruling over a tribe of cannibals from a throne in the middle of the California wilderness, as she should be.

Guacamole Or Clam Dip?

The thing I appreciate most about Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death is that nobody involved seems embarrassed by it.

This is a movie where feminist scholars sword fight over control of a cannibal tribe while the United States government worries about avocado production. Bunny decides joining the Piranha Women sounds like a pretty good idea before learning that her initiation ceremony involves sacrificing Jim. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the movie decides the big ideological divide separating two tribes of cannibal women is how they prefer to eat their men.

Writer and director J.F. Lawton would go on to write Pretty Woman and Under Siege, which makes this movie even more fascinating as an artifact, like when you remember the kind of films Peter Jackson directed before working on the Lord of the Rings films. Before writing one of the biggest romantic comedies of the 1990s, this man made a movie where Adrienne Barbeau rules the Avocado Jungle and Bill Maher runs around acting like exactly the kind of guy the women living there would want to eat.

Everybody has to start somewhere.

We Used To Make Movies

I don’t know if I’d call Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death a good movie in any traditional sense, but I also don’t particularly care.

It’s the kind of low-budget nonsense I’m always hoping to find when I’m scrolling through Tubi late at night. The entire production has the energy of people realizing nobody was going to stop them, so they kept pushing forward until they had something resembling a finished movie.

Nobody needed an elaborate mythology explaining the Avocado Jungle or a serious explanation for why there are rival cannibal tribes living somewhere outside San Bernardino. Somebody came up with the phrase Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, figured out how much money they had, and made the damn movie. Sometimes that’s enough.

As of this writing, you can stream Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death for free on Tubi. Don’t pay for this one, and you’ll definitely feel like you got your money’s worth.

CANNIBAL WOMEN IN THE AVOCADO JUNGLE OF DEATH SCORE