When you gather with your loved ones this week, be sure to give extra thanks for that turkey or soy-based equivalent on which you’re about to dine. Times are hard, but for most of us, we’re still able to eat. Nevertheless, we need to prepare for the even tougher times that inevitably lay ahead. As countless movies attest, desperate times call for desperate measures at the dinner table. Like cannibalism.

The circumstances under which “eat or be eaten” becomes the rule vary widely. Plenty of films have taken on this ancient taboo; in fact, a search for the tag “cannibal” on Spout.com yields eleven pages of results. For your holiday viewing pleasure, I’ve narrowed the list down to ten.

Alive

Often the best cannibalism stories are the true ones. The tale of the Uruguayan rugby team that crash-landed in the Andes and eventually resorted to eating the dead is one that filmmakers can’t get enough of. Not only was it the source for 1993’s Alive, starring Ethan Hawke, the story was also told in a documentary that same year, Alive: 20 Years Later. Recently, there have been two more documentaries: an episode of the National Geographic show Trapped, and Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains (2008). I wonder what’s harder, surviving 72 days in the mountains with no food, or repeatedly being asked, “So, when did you decide to eat you friends?”

Soylent Green

Sure, putting this on the list is a spoiler. But if this movie hasn’t been ruined yet by The Simpsons or one of the many other references to soylent green’s mysterious ingredient, you’ve been living under a rock. While there are plenty of sci-fi movies that depict a future where desperation leads to cannibalism, Soylent Green is notable because the taboo is the act of a corporation, rather than a savage choice by an individual.

Eating Raoul (This clip is NSFW)

A gold standard for black comedies, this 1982 film follows the story of Paul and Mary, a married couple hard up for cash. While fending off a would-be rapist, they realize they can make a decent living killing unsuspecting swingers and taking their money. Raoul, a locksmith/burglar, finds out about their scheme, and wants in on the action. He helps them dispose of bodies, until his desire for Mary complicates the arrangement. If you want to know how it ends, um… read the title again.

Zombie Movies

It’s impossible to pick just one, when there are so many great flicks about brain-hungry walking dead. George Romero, godfather of all things zombie, must be mentioned. His first film, Night of the Living Dead, was the first zombie movie where the creatures wanted to eat the flesh of the living. Romero continues his Dead series of zombie apocalypse movies, along with countless imitators. BRAAAAAINS!!!

The Silence of the Lambs

Know what we need more of? Academy Award winning cannibal movies. There aren’t enough of them. This is a total classic. Anthony Hopkins holds two records: one, the shortest amount of screen time to ever win a best actor Oscar (16 minutes). And two, being the creepiest human being on the planet.

301/302

This Korean horror film is notable because it is centered only on female characters. Two women, neighbors in an apartment building, have very different ways of dealing with the travails of life. Their differences come to a head in a final scene that you should probably skip if you have a weak stomach. You’ve been warned.

C.H.U.D.

Another staple of obscure Simpsons references, the 1984 cult classic C.H.U.D. tells the story of “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers” who are eating the homeless in New York City. The C.H.U.D.’s, once homeless people themselves, were mutated by improper storage of nuclear waste, turning them into flesh-hungry beasts.

Delicatessen

Before Jean-Pierre Jeunet made Amelie, he made some dark and freaky movies. His first was Delicatessen. It’s a darkly comic post-apocalyptic tale about a small apartment building with a butcher shop on the ground floor. Meat is becoming scarce, and you know what that means. This film is actually a great companion piece to Amelie, because it shares the playful quality and fun cast of character with the later film. And people get eaten.

Keep The River On Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale

As a young man, Tobias Schneebaum lived with the Harakambut people of Peru and the Asmat people of Indonesia, both cannibalistic tribes. In true “going native” style, he not only joined them in their wars against other tribes, he also partook or their unsavory meals. He returned in 1999 with a documentary crew, was reunited with his former lover, and confronted the scars of war and fear. Interesting bit of info: the Asmat tribe are suspected of killing and eating Michael Rockefeller, son of New York Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, but there is no proof. This was before Schneebaum arrived. But it would be pretty crazy if Schneebaum, a native New Yorker, ate one of his city’s elite. Hopefully a fictionalized version will come to the screen that’s not afraid to take some artistic license in this matter.

[minor spoiler alert]

The Road

This adaptation of the award-winning Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name was once my most highly anticipated 2008 release. Sigh. It is now my most highly anticipated 2009 release. The film version will star Viggo Mortensen as the father of a young boy, the two of whom struggle to traverse a burned, post-apocalyptic landscape. I understand that simply putting it on this list could be seen as a minor spoiler, so I won’t say anything else about it. We’ll have to wait a little while, but The Road offers hope that The Silence of the Lambs will no longer be alone as an Oscar-snagging tale dealing with the most taboo of food choices.