Since the dawn of time, man has grappled with the unknown and the unknowable. Luckily, A&E has released episodes of its Unexplained series on videocassette, no doubt with the intention that the series will help mankind more fully understand the mysteries that surround it. The Exorcists chronicles four different cases of demonic possession, ranging from the Catholic exorcism that helped inspire William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist to tribal exorcisms in Africa. Utilizing such time-tested tropes as the solemn, spooky narrator, minimalist haunted-house music, and the sort of shameless camera tricks you'd expect to find in latter-day Amityville Horror sequels, The Exorcists examines several different possible explanations for the occurrence of demonic possession. A parade of talking heads—including the perennially slumming Blatty—are trotted out in attempts to explain the mysteries of the unknown, alongside tepid recreations filmed with a Bresson-like emphasis on hands and legs. When things get slow, The Exorcists has a tendency to dwell on stock drawings of demons, as if merely showing medieval representations of demons adds something meaningful to the debate. All in all, The Unexplained: The Exorcists is pretty silly stuff, though the video does convincingly show the traditions and rituals of vastly different cultures to be equally silly. While the ostensible purpose of The Exorcists is to examine different explanations for demonic possession, The Unexplained: The Cannibals seeks to explain how and why people become cannibals. More sprawling and less focused than Exorcists, Cannibals documents a pair of well-known cannibals—Ed Gein and the Russian serial killer documented in the cable film Citizen X— in addition to exploring cases of ritualized cannibalism in Africa and during Mao's Cultural Revolution. There are, sadly, no recreations in The Cannibals, but there is a whole slew of talking heads, all of whom attempt to appear very, very serious as they discuss what the narrator repeatedly and dramatically calls "the last taboo." The chronically morbid and easily amused should enjoy The Unexplained, but for anyone else, the series is little more than standard exploitation.