Kill Them and Eat Them

Conall Pendergast's Kill Them and Eat Them is a very self knowing, grade Z, mutant/mad scientist comedy horror film. It's about a mad scientist (like there are any other in movies like this) known as Dr Gore who is experimenting on humans and turning them into mutants! Super low budget gory mayhem and bad acting ensue!

This is the second full length outing from filmmaker Conall Pendergast, his first being the even lower end Flesh Freaks. Thankfully this film is a huge step up in terms of just about everything. As where Flesh Freaks felt incredibly haphazard in hindsight, KTaET actually shows some filmmaking skills, even if they are on a "next to nothing budget" with actors that act all over the place and with splatter that makes one want to laugh more than cringe.

Regardless, I enjoyed this movie a lot more than Flesh Freaks from the onset. Although the acting is all over the place, the actors that seem "in on the joke" make a lot of their material work on the level one would expect from an old HG Lewis flick. I half expected some of the actors to literally wink at the camera. I bet making this was a lot of fun.

The soundtrack and sound editing in general are much better in this film as well. I can actually make out what everyone is saying and dialog doesn't fade out from scene to scene. And I really don't know what I think of the sludge metal soundtrack. The music itself is fine, some of it even outright jamming. It's just the way it's implemented that makes it sort of jarring. I actually like Metal being used in film for soundtracks, but I typically prefer it actually written as a score more than just some song tossed in to add effect.

The gore and splatter effects, and general make up and creature effects, are absolutely hilarious. Initially we only get one mutant at the beginning that reminded me of the Elephant Man. But as the movie progresses, we get an assortment of hilarious monstrosities with giant goofy grotesque heads and giant monster claws. And as for the splatter, again, it's a huge step up from the prior film. The splatter elements were present in Flesh Freaks, however mostly condensed to the films last half. This movie attempts to keep things more interesting by having something weird or gruesome happening every few minutes. It's constantly entertaining and usually pretty innovative.

Like most grade Z flicks, I am not trying to sell this as some excellent film. What it is though is a competently made grade Z film. It does exactly what flicks like this should do, entertain for dopes like me. What more could I ask for?

If this is a horror movie....i don't know...i laughed so much...it's filmed with hand-cam or something like that...the "monsters" are funny...very funny...like some guys in Halloween masks...no special effects...OK, there is some, but with this zero experience i have, i can make them too....so, forget this movie...for real;) I like horror movies, but this one was a funny thing...i really can't understand why are these movies...or for who or for what are they made...i'm talking about this one and some others at this level. If you have a sense of humor, than watch a little bit of this...laugh...and simply forget it, there are a lot of good movies waiting for you....:))

What we have here is the story of science gone spasmodic, as the demented Dr. Gore (his real name is Williams, but Gore is certainly more appropriate) carries out his experiments. Once gainfully employed by an all-powerful company known as The Company, he bailed when his experiment started raising eyebrows, and is now out to gain his mad-scientist degree on his own. Aided by an assistant even madder than he is, Gore is busy transforming homeless people into decaying "skeletoids" who will do whatever he tells them (including grocery shopping).

The acting is calculatedly amateurish (the entire cast seems to have been fed a steady stream of grade-Z horror films) and the dialogue clunkier than a 1960 Dodge. But the film's also got plenty of wit; when the evil assistant explains his nefarious plans, he hits one of the best reasons for using cannibalistic zombies to do one's dirty work: "They'll conveniently eat the evidence of any wrongdoing." Gross, sure. But the whole thing's a hoot.

Kill Them and Eat Them is a film I wish more movies from the Tomb of Terrors box set aspired to be. Yes, it's extremely low budget with questionable acting and production values but it's not confusing, incoherent and doesn't take itself too seriously. It almost feels like if Carl J. Sukenick and Nathan Schiff moved to Canada and collaborated on a mutant gore-fest.

The plot involves a man called Doctor Gore creating mutants from kidnapped people to try to conquer the world or at least most of Ontario. The setting is a decaying industrial warehouse district in the shadow of downtown Toronto. The mutants are the highlight here with their homemade masks and furry clawed hands. The masks don't look like they really fit the actors properly but that only adds to the goofy charm. There's some comic relief here like a mutant having a hood put over it's hideous visage to go grocery shopping with it's big clawed furry hands still exposed. The mutants here actually have personality and a sense of humor. The gore is messy, plentiful and exuberant. This is from the director of Flesh Freaks so if you enjoyed that (I did) you'll probably like this too. Easily in the top 5 films of the Tomb of Terrors set.

This video does a good job of making itself entertaining to those who love ridiculous low budget movies. It's part horror and and part spoof. It's shot with a handheld video camera, so if you aren't a fan of shaky cam, this is not for you.

My biggest complaint is the audio quality. It sounds like they only had the on camera mic, so dialog from across the room is often indiscernible making the plot hard to follow at times.

Even if you don't always know what's going on, it's still entertaining. There are lots of goofy one-liners and nonsensical props. They often times go out of their way to to point out how little they had to work with whether its commenting on the child's microscope set or their guns which are very obviously held together with duct tape.

The soundtrack is solid and the infection animations are entertaining. For what this was and considering the budget they obviously lacked, I had a good time watching this and telling coworkers about it.