Blood Diner

    

   

Blood Diner

1987

Director- Jackie Kong

Cast- Rick Burks, Carl Crew, LaNette LaFrance, LaNette LaFrance, Lisa Guggenheim, Max Morris, Drew Godderis, Tanya Papanicolas, Michael Barton

           

     As children Michael and George (Rick Burks and Carl Crew) watched their uncle Anwar get gunned down by the police after he chopped up a bunch of co-eds. Before he died, he exhorted them to follow the goddess Sheetar, an ancient goddess with sorceress powers.

            

     Fast forward 20 years and the brothers are all grown up and running a health food restaurant. They have, in fact, been studying Sheetar and have a plan to bring her to life in an avatar. They dig up their uncle’s corpse, remove his brain and he guides them as they set out to build her a body. They must construct the vessel from the dismembered bodies of wanton, immoral ladies. They begin by shooting up a studio where a bunch of girls are filming a topless aerobics video (hey it was the 80s). They ransack the fresh bodies for parts. Meanwhile, they are serving up the leftovers they don’t use to the customers in their restaurant. They make a veggie burger that tastes just like meat and there is a good reason why.

            

     Once they have the vessel for Sheetar ready, they must prepare for a “Lumerian Feast” the ritual that will bring their goddess to life. This involves capturing a virgin for Sheetar to eat once she arrives (obviously) and a “Blood Buffet” where the attendees are all turned into flesh eating zombies.

            

      The movie is utterly crazy. Its silliness level is about on par with Troma. It has strange characters like a rival restaurant owner that has an ugly dummy as his only customer, a police chief that gut punches his detectives, a wrestler named Little Jimmy Hitler and more. If you’re not sure whether to take the movie seriously, it begins with the disclaimer that  “All of the mutilations, bodily dismemberments and cannibal rituals were performed by seasoned professionals.”  So while the movie doesn’t take itself seriously, neither was it made lazily. There is an obvious effort to make something different and entertaining. It has an excellent soundtrack of mostly classic doowop but also with some punk and new wave.

           

    It was originally intended as a sequel the 1963 movie, Bloodfeast. There are a lot of similarities, but somewhere in the production stage, they decided to let it be its own film. When it comes to cannibal movies, Blood Diner isn’t scary like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or clever like Motel Hell, but it’s original and isn’t afraid to be weird, which goes along way with me.

The Masque of the Red Death

 

The Masque of the Red Death

1964

Director- Roger Corman

Cast- Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher, David Weston, Nigel Green, John Westbrook, Skip Martin, Verina Greenlaw, Patrick Magee

            

   This is one of the Vincent Price /Roger Corman collaborations that the pair did through the early 1960’s. It, like the others, is loosely based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. The Poe story serves mainly as inspiration for a much larger story.

            

    Prince Prospero (Price) is an evil nobleman who terrorizes the locals under his power. He has people taken prisoner and executed at a whim. He is a loyal devotee of Satan and he seems intent on doing evil purely for the sake of evil. A plague, the Red Death, is ravaging the countryside. Prospero withdraws behind his castle walls and invites the landed gentry to join him while the commoners die. Prospero uses this as a chance to humiliate and degrade his peers. Juliana (Hazel Court), his mistress, is trying to get him to induct her into the deeper mysteries of devil worship. She might have succeeded except that a new plaything has caught his eye.

          

 

    He meets a young peasant girl, Francesca (Jane Asher), who is virtuous and kind. Prospero kidnaps her and holds her fiancé hostage.  He wants to corrupt her and turn her to evil. Prospero treats everyone else like dirt, but he dresses her in finery and is quite cordial, all the while espousing the virtues of a life devoted to evil.

            

    He throws a masquerade ball to celebrate the fact that he and all of his hangers on are safe from the plague while everyone else dies outside.  However, an uninvited guest shows up. It’s not Satan, as he hoped, but rather the spirit of Death itself. Will it spare Prospero as reward for his life devoted to evil? Will it spare the virtuous Francesca? Will it spare anyone?

            

    This movie doesn’t get into deep psychological examinations like Pit and thePendulum or House of Usher. No one is on the verge of losing their mind. Instead, this movie is about the submission to evil. Prospero has done it and his mistress Juliana is attempting to do it.  Will Francesca submit to it as well? A well done and dark tale.

Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil

 

Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil

2017

Director- Paul Urkijo Alijo

Cast- Kandido Uranga, Uma Bracaglia, Eneko Sagardoy, Ramón Aguirre, Josean Bengoetxea, Gotzon Sanchez, Aitor Urcelai, Maite Bastos

From Spain

            

    A fairy tale from the Basque Country in Spain, it was produced by Alex de Iglesia who directed El Dia de Bestia. This is a true fairy tale complete with the imagery, tone, morality, and folklore of a Brothers Grimm tale.

            

    The fairy tale was often the horror story of its day. One of the things I like about fairy tales is that the evil is always tangible. It’s not an abstract concept; it’s a real person in a real place. The evil isn’t some malleable, culturally relative idea. It’s always evil. The witch from Hansel and Grettle is a child stealing cannibal. No amount of sensitivity or retrospection is going to change our mind about her.

           

    A little girl with a burned face is a bit of an outcast in her town. She is an orphan who has been taunted her whole life, being told that her mother is in Hell for committing suicide. Out in the forest is a reclusive blacksmith whose temperament is so cruel, it drove his wife to suicide. Of course, the blacksmith isn’t entirely alone. He keeps, locked up in a cage, a demon from Hell. The little girl stumbles onto this along with a group of townspeople who believe that the blacksmith keeps a horde of gold hidden away.

            

    The demons and devils of this film look fantastic. Especially nice is a trip to Hell, complete with a parade of sinners, tormented by demons, pouring through its gates. The movie has a medieval esthetic evoking Gustav Dore and Hieronymous Bosch. There is a minimum of CGI, relying on realistic looking make-up and prosthetics.

            

     More than its look, the film is charming like a fairy tale. It is spirited and takes chances. This is the first feature length film for director Paul Urkijo Alijoa and it has that spark and ingenuity that you only see in young directors that have that burning desire to tell stories. A beautiful film and I highly recommend it.

Brotherhood of Satan

Brotherhood of Satan

1971

Director- Bernard McEveety

Cast- Strother Martin, L. Q. Jones, Charles Bateman, Ahna Capri, Charles Knox Robinson, Alvy Moore, Geri Reischl

            

    This odd Satanic thriller was written by, produced by and stars L.Q. Jones, an actor you may recognize from numerous westerns including his excellent performance in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (where acts opposite of Strother Martin, his costar in this film). Like other Satanic films of this era (The Devil’s Rain, The Car, Race with the Devil) it takes place in a generic town in the American west and features another common theme of this era, a family stumbling upon a Satanic conspiracy.

           

    A family (dad, his little girl and dad’s girlfriend) get stranded in a remote town that is in the middle of a crisis. Children are missing, adults are being murdered, and anyone who tries to escape ends up brutally killed. The family tries twice to escape and is unable. The town sheriff (L.Q. Jones) is at his wits end. As it turns out, the town is beset by a coven of Satanists, led by Strother Martin. Now that’s not really a spoiler. If you know Strother’s resume, he would have been your first suspect anyway.

            

    The Satanists are kidnapping the town’s children to use in a ritual to maintain eternal youth. The coven members are all elderly and they plan to transfer their souls into the children’s bodies. The Satanists are presented rather theatrically with red cloaks and lots ritual and ceremony.  The best part is when Strother Martin is chastising a wayward member who didn’t want to sacrifice her child to the group and he yells “Not your baby! Our baby! Satan’s baby!” Strother Martin (as he often did) played the part completely over the top but that’s OK, that’s what makes it enjoyable.

            

    Not a great movie, but an original movie. It wasn’t put together very stylishly but it’s got heart. In addition to Storther and LQ, look for Ahna Capri as the girlfriend. She is best known as John Saxon’s main squeeze in Enter the Dragon.