Human flesh pop-up butcher shop in Smithfield to promote new Resident Evil installment

Capcom is running a "pop up human butchery and morgue" at Smithfields meat market in London to promote the new Resident Evil installment. It'll be open for two days: Sept 28 and 29.

WARNING: Gross imagery within. Click through at your peril.

Once open, Resident Evil fans and unsuspecting members of the public will be treated to a glimpse into the gory world of Wesker & Son, the fictional butcher with a penchant for human flesh.

Once at the butchery, members of the public will be invited to sample and purchase a dizzying array of edible human limbs including hands, feet and a human head, which will be available to buy directly from the shop. As well as these specially created products, gamers will be able to buy 'Peppered Human & Lemon Sausages' and 'J’avo Caught Human Thigh Steaks' along with some specially made pots of Red Herb and Green Herb. All proceeds from the sale of the meat will be donated to the Limbless Association, which provides information and support to the limb-loss community.

In addition to the pop-up human butchery and morgue, Resident Evil fans will be invited to attend two days of lectures at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Pathology Museum, which have been designed to explore some of the themes in the game and their links to real life. Dr. Morgaine Gaye, a Food Futurologist who will discuss future trends in human food consumption as well as explore cannibalism through history, will conduct the first of these lectures on Friday, 28th September, while Prof. John Oxford, one of the world’s leading virologists will discuss viruses and examine whether the game’s infamous C-Virus could ever become a reality. Gamers and members of the public wishing to attend either of these lectures need to register: cannibalism/viruses.

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• [Ric]

  This is a bit grim.  It’s there during the day – if someone put this out where my kids could see it: I’d saran-wrap the fvcker who thought up the idea myself…

  • [a mouse]

     no one cares about your kids

    • [Es See]

      Seriously…. Its A.) To promote a movie. B.) Was I the only person who watched EVERY horror movie growing up? Why are people all about putting their C.H.U.D. children in these bubbles where god awful CGI effects are “too much” for kids to handle. Personally I think you do a lot more damage letting them listen to Katy Perry and GAGA’s rip-off dog and pony show. I do really think this is too good of a marketing idea to be associated with the clusterf*ck series or diluted, 3-D (D for disappointment), waste of Milla’s time and all around bag of clown shoes. I cant wait til your kid grows up and rebels against you for not exposing them to life and letting them live it. The joke will be on you eventually for being such a hater!!!! hahaha

      • [Melissa Barnfield]

        It’s not to promote a movie, it’s to promote Resident Evil 6 the game… I agree with everything else you said though, I too grew up watching all the horror movies going, and it didn’t do me any harm… 

        • [Brad Bell]

          His kids are 3 and 5 :-) He’d rather they didn’t stumble upon the store front. A very reasonable expectation.

          I wouldn’t want my kids to see it either. I wouldn’t want to have to explain it. Plus, I seriously doubt they would be capable of processing it. These are people who don’t know what a TV commercial is – too difficult to explain. This is also why it’s fine for them to see Gunther von Hagens *real* dead bodies at a show, but it’s not fine for them to see pretend torture-cannibalism PR on the street. 

          I think it’s a great display though. Very artful. The ham body is particularly good. And it *is* very reminiscent of Mark Prent (below), who I also admire.

        • [Alex Herlan]

          Here’s the thing: 

          Not wanting to have to explain things to you children is exactly whats wrong with parenting today.

          If they’re too young to understand, explain it anyways until their bored out of their minds with their inability to comprehend. Problem Solved.

          If they aren’t too young, you should damn well be explaining it.  It might be hard, but that’s your problem, not society’s. You’re the one who wanted kids (speaking to all parents)

          The idea that this could somehow traumatize your child or be hard to explain is ignorant and silly at best. Its ok when its animals but not when its humans? Doesnt make sense to me. Meat is meat, flesh is flesh, blood is blood. We’re all made of it. Deal with it. Dont see whats so hard to explain about that. Hard for the child to proccess without getting upset? Maybe. But thats life. Its a bitch. Why’d you bring them into this world only to shelter them from these inevitable realizations of our mortal nature? Whats so valuable about an ignorant childhood?

          I’d love to see the science behind most parents desire to shelter their children from these realities when they obviously would give any logical person a competitive advantage to be comfortable with, the earlier the better.

          I question anyone’s decision to have kids who isn’t completely comfortable with parsing the topics of violence, sex and human anatomy and mortality.

          Pro tip: If you cant explain fake human body parts in a butcher shop to your kids, you shouldn’t have had any.

  • [Jon Uniql D’souza]

    Are that lazy? You can’t take three minutes to talk with your kids and tell them that it is a joke shop? You seem to jump to violence quite quickly… which is stunning. You seem to be put off by your children seeing something ‘violent and gross’ but the first place your brain goes is to commit an act of violence against another person – did your paren’t ever explain hypocrisy to you? 

    • [blueelm]

      I kind of agree. Wouldn’t this just be like not visiting an area where there is a strip club with your small children, or not visiting dark or scary themed rides at amusment parks with your kids, or any matter of other things where you recognize that you’d rather not visit it with your kids? Somehow I doubt they failed to advertise this.

  • [Jen Onymous]

     I’d put your kids in the case, just to make sure that they don’t pass on your self-righteous attitude of “It takes a village to raise MY child.”  The rest of the world doesn’t have to dumb itself down because you’re too lazy to parent.

    • [LambaGora]

      Not wanting exposure to violence or the suggestion of violence isn’t dumbing down. Finding violence entertaining is one of the most un-evolved things we do as a species. I wouldn’t want my kids to see this: I’d quite happily live in a world where everyone was revolted by the idea of violence. Though to achieve that the rest of humanity would obviously have to find a way to re-home the entire USA to a different planet, which could be tricky… 

      • [pablohoney]

         This exhibit is in London….

        Anyway the world is filled with violence, the world *is* violence. Better start building that spaceship to mars.

      • [Jen Onymous]

         You don’t like something, therefore the rest of the world is prohibited from liking it.  Nice.  Do you own a TV?  Allow newspapers in your house? 

      • [jonw]

        Actually, a penchant for finding violence entertaining IS an evolved trait of the human species. Most animals only do violence out of necessity.

      • [Emily Clements]

        Yeah because no other country takes part in making violent films or advertisements or even committing violence in general. That was completely sarcastic by the way. This planet wouldn’t be violent free without the United States, that’s just a blatantly ignorant statement. Violence is a normal part of this world and people shouldn’t and don’t teach their kids that the world is all sunshine and lollypops or else there would be a lot of kids accepting candy from strange men in vans. I admit that exposing children to large amounts of violence isn’t really what’s best for them, but being unable to explain that this isn’t real to your child seems very problematic. You sound a bit like one of those parents that doesn’t let their child seem Mufasa’s death in The Lion King.

        Also, as the guy above said, this is in London. Please read before posting comments that make you look bad.

  • [Ken]

     My sentiments too Ric.  Go back to your video games “a mouse”. 

• [Val Lindsay]

  Meh. A butcher shop is just as unsettling yet we’ve accepted that for centuries. I’m amazed PETA hasn’t latched onto it, really…

• [Vanessa Ruiz]

  The amount of thought, effort, and detail that went into executing this human butcher shop is phenomenal!

• [Kommkast]

  Cloned long pig! The taste that you love!

• [Robbo]

  Mark Prent did all this back in Toronto in ’72 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Prent

• [kmoser]

  No pun intended but the idea seems in poor taste. It’s like having a butcher celebrate Jeffrey Dahmer.

  • [Jon Uniql D’souza]

    How so?

    • [msbpodcast]

      Uh, Dude, Google him. Jeffrey Dahmer was the latest cannibal to capture the imagination/attention of the news media. Ed Gein was merely a blip in the long history of cannibalism. There are even neurological prion diseases that you can get strictly from eating human brains.

• [Marc Mielke]

  I’m surprised they could talk an actual butcher shop into doing this. I think it’s funny and pretty damn cool, but the store’s GOTTA be taking a huge hit in sales. As inured as I am to virtual/fake atrocities I don’t think I’d spend as much on meat after seeing even a totally fake display of cannibalism. 

  • [richardjohn]

    It’s not a butcher shop, it’s a really big meat market with lots of butchers in. They mainly sell to other businesses as far as I know.

• [Bryce Caron]

  I just want to point out that human hands would be the least palatable cut from the body. Adult humans wouldn’t be that good to begin with, but at least some other primals would be suitable for braising. Hands? Not enough meat to warrant the effort.

  • [austinhamman]

     but since humans dont walk much or do much their meat would be like veal.
    but yeah, hands would be terrible to eat, faces too.

  • [mzed]

    You could make stock out of them.

    • [Logan Provo]

      http://i.imgur.com/SmfWp.jpg Take that hand, throw it in a pot with some carrots and onions and baby, you got a stew goin’!

  • [bkad]

    Well, yeah, but human hands are one of the most recognizably human. Nothing else on the planet looks like that. (Primates have different proportions). Meanwhile, a steak would look similar to other steaks, probably. Meats can be are hard to identify post-butchering.

  • [Itsumishi]

    I dunno. Ribs don’t have much meat on them, but they’re pretty tasty. Wings don’t have nearly as much meat on them as other parts of a chicken, but they’re still pretty damn good! Quails don’t have much meat on them at all, but they’ve got to be one of the finest birds for eating around.

    Heard the expression, the closer the bone the sweeter the meat? HANDS ARE ALL CLOSE TO BONE!

  • [Jaan Q]

     I saw an old cannibal interviewed for some PBS documentary years ago and when he was asked his favorite part of the body to eat, he said hands.  I immediately thought of how tasty pigs feet are.

  • [jonw]

    All the tendons and connective tissue should make great soup. Chicken feet, ham hocks, etc.

• [Mister44]

   What are they really  made of? I’ve seen bread shops that make very convincing body parts.

• [RJ]

  Whoever created the body parts did a great job. I’d be interested to know how they did it, especially with Halloween coming up.

• [Halloween_Jack]

  The problem with this sort of explicit splatterpunk stuff is that, after a while, you just get numb. I mean, after you’ve seen crime scene photos of Ed Gein’s house, the only reaction to this is “gosh, that sure seems like a lot of work for a one-off promotion.” 

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Violence in entertainment loses its luster quite quickly when you work in a hospital, too.

    Meh. I’ve seen worse.

• [Scott Daris]

  Hands are like chicken wings – low ROI.

• [Mauve Ranger]

  Can you actually buy stuff there? Because I’d love to buy a hand or two, freeze it and cook it up for Halloween… 

  I’d have to eat alone because I’m pretty sure I’m the only person I know who’d get a thrill out of tucking into a “human hand” X-D 

  <- the world's least squeamish woman? Well, a nominee for the title at least, surely.

• [yahoo-NG7SFRA627KJCKU4T3LFUUAVXA]

  Cool idea, extremely well thought out publicity campaign too. Just wondering, the lectures, will they be recorded for those living outside the UK?

  • [Wesker & Son]

    Yes we are recording the lectures and will post online

• [Registered…]

  This is a very neat idea to promote a movie. Too bad society is so uptight the politically correct nazis won’t get it and will want it removed. And really? If someone’s kids are so dumb they won’t get it’s not real then blame poor parenting skills for that. My kids have always known from an early age to distinguish between make-believe and reality especially when it comes to special FX used on TV or in movies.

  They should consider bringing this to Canada for a permanent Halloween theme. We have a few scary theme attractions where gore fans would love this kind of silly stuff.

  I’m not a big fan of Resident Evil’s franchise normally but this has me intrigued and I’ll be sure to watch the movie if it’s released as well as the game.

• [Jen Onymous]

  I’m still waiting for an answer RE how these were made…meat substrate?  Pastry?  Combo thereof (ie cleverly-made meatpies with animal bone underpinnings and a pastry crust, artfully painted)? 

  This reminds me of an exhibit that I once saw in the Meatpacking District.  The area used to have a few taxi garages that had small kitchens in the front that served up plates of rice with one topping–usually a chicken or vegan curry–for a buck or so to the drivers.

  One enterprising artist worked with the front kitchen and the drivers to take lifemasks of their faces, and then made tofu models of their faces.  These in turn were served up by the scoop, looking up from several different flavors of curry sauce.  The owner of the joint seemed bemused by the crowds of arthounds suddenly invading his business, but was very happy at the enormous cashflow generated.

  The curry sauce was pretty damn good, even though the tofu was a bit chalky (apparently the artist needed to use a bit more edible lime than usual in order to make it take the shape of the silicon molds better).

  • [Wesker & Son]

    Hi Jen over the coming weeks we are going to reveal more information but I can say these were sausage meet encased with a mixture of thinly sliced meat. 

• [Dean Putney]

  Are you sure it’s open on the 29th? That’s tomorrow, and I’m nearby, but the Smithfield Meat Market website says that it’s closed on Saturdays and Sundays…

  • [Wesker & Son]

    Yes we are open outside normal Smithfield hours, come along

    • [Dean Putney]

      Unfortunately I slept in too late and wasn’t able to come without missing my train. Bummer!

• [blueelm]

  Wait! This is in London? Today? I want to go… let me take a shower.