Stuart Gordon bringing cannibalistic true story to the stage with Taste

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Stuart Gordon is famous for re-animating corpses with disgusting, perverse results, but this may be his sickest project yet… mostly because it’s based on fact.

The RE-ANIMATOR director is teaming with writer Benjamin Brand on TASTE, which is being prepared for the stage in Los Angeles.

Taste is based on the true story of Armin Meiwes, aka the Rotenburg Cannibal, the German man who achieved international notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the Internet.

The very idea of that creeps me out to no end. Just reminds you that truth is way stranger than fiction.

Producing the play is Adam Goldworm, who was a producer on the shows “Masters of Horror” and “Fear Itself.” Gordon, of course, directed segments for both series.

Here’s a sample from Meiwes’ Wikipedia page, in case you want some of the grisly details of his unusual crime:

Looking for a willing volunteer, Meiwes posted an advertisement at a website, The Cannibal Cafe, whose disclaimer mentions the distinction between reality and fantasy. Meiwes’s post stated that he was “looking for a well-built 18- to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed”. Bernd Jürgen Brandes then answered the advertisement. Many other people responded to the advertisement, but backed out; Meiwes did not attempt to force them to do anything against their will.

As is known from a videotape the two made when they met on 9 March 2001 in Meiwes’s home in the small town of Rotenburg, Meiwes amputated Brandes’ penis and the two men attempted to eat the penis together before Brandes was killed. Brandes had insisted that Meiwes attempt to bite his penis off. This did not work and ultimately, Meiwes used a knife to remove Brandes’ penis. Brandes apparently tried to eat some of his own penis raw, but could not because it was too tough and, as he put it, “chewy”. Meiwes then fried the penis in a pan with salt, pepper, wine and garlic; he then fried it with some of Brandes’ fat but by then it was too burned to be consumed. He then chopped it up into chunks and fed it to his dog.

According to journalists who saw the video (which has not been made public), Brandes may already have been too weakened from blood loss to actually eat any of his penis. Meiwes read a Star Trek book for three hours, while Brandes lay bleeding in the bath. Meiwes apparently gave him large quantities of alcohol and pain killers, twenty sleeping pills and a bottle of schnapps, kissed him and finally killed him in a room that he had built in his house for this purpose, the Slaughter Room. After stabbing Brandes to death in the throat, he hung the body on a meat hook and tore chunks of flesh from it; he even tried to grind the bones to use as flour. The whole scene was recorded on the two-hour video tape. Meiwes enjoyed eating the body over the next 10 months, storing body parts in his freezer under pizza boxes and consuming up to 20 kilograms (44 lb) of the flesh. According to prosecutors, Meiwes committed the act for sexual enjoyment.