The Corpse Grinders

If you love low-budget movies from the '60s and '70s, especially ones with bizarre story-lines and characters, then The Corpse Grinders is a must-see. The concept of the movie is much cooler than the actual movie itself, but that's what makes it fun.

Cats begin attacking their owners, and a doctor and his nurse girlfriend (who both look and act like they are straight out of a vintage porno) suspect the Lotus Cat Food Company for being responsible for the grisly accounts. Meanwhile, the owners of the Company are making numerous trips to the cemetery to spice up their ingredients, and their income.

Not much suspense going on--but bad acting, almost-nude girls, and cool Halloween-ish graveyard mist keep you watching, even if you are getting anxious to get up and actually put your mind to doing something useful.

The Corpse Grinders is about as cheap and gritty as you'd expect, which is actually the best thing I can say about it. Even the worst low budget films of this era have that cheesy charm built into the celluloid itself.

As best I can figure out, The Corpse Grinders is about people who use human bodies to make cat food and then the cats that eat it turn into bloodthirsty monsters, attacking people at random as two boring scientist-type people try to figure it out.

The acting is as awful as you'd imagine, there's no pace to speak of, and at less than 75 minutes, it feels like it's at least an hour too long. Most of the film isn't even enjoyable on a "so bad, it's good" level. Don't waste your time.

What happens when dead corpses are ground into meat and added to grain for a canned cat food factory is the heart of what The Corpse Grinders is all about. It turns out that this canned cat food has an effect on the cats, having given them the taste of eating man, now instinctually placing within them the desire to eat more human flesh....dead or alive. Pussy cats all over Southern California begin their preying on human owners due to their newly initiated killer man-eating instinct(Hey, I didn't make this up...it's the explanation used in the film!). Ted V. Mikels is responsible for this low-budget film geared at repulsing the audience rather than scaring it. Mikels tries to pull off a Herschell Gordon Lewis shocker here, and is, well, fairly successful. Yep, there is real bad acting. None of the actors looks sincere, but there are a couple of real hot babes. One is the much talked about secretary that disrobes to panties and bra and watches TV with a can of beer prior to being attacked. Monika Kelly plays the inebriated doctor's very busty blonde nurse who seemingly needs to change every time she goes out. Ok, I can live with it if I must. The rest of the "cast" is a who's who's of amateurish performers. Caleb and his dotty English-accented wife are truly some of the most ridiculous characters to be seen in any film. He goes around barking orders like someone totally unrehearsed in the art of stagecraft while she clutches a baby doll and screams being chased in one scene, stopping long enough for her attacker to hear her and then begins to scream again. Sanford Mitchell as the lead, the head of the factory, is just awful. These performances are not real boring though. They are so bad that they are very amusing to watch and that really sums up this film in a nutshell. It is very, very, very bad and yet a real hoot to sit through. I thought I was in for another snooze-fest like Astro-Zombies before sitting down to The Corpse Grinders, but I was pleasantly surprised. This film is nothing like that film other than it is equally very cheaply and ineptly made, but it has far more interesting scenes and is what is known as a "so bad it is good" film.

the best part of this movie is the deaf nurse. the actress obviously doesn't know sign language, so her solution is to act out random hand movements that sort of look like sign language. i find that hilarious.

THE CORPSE GRINDERS is a film that wallows in its own cheesyness, and that's meant as a compliment! On a bigger budget it would have been just another lackluster horror flick, but with its meager budget the premise works. Seems a maker of pricey gourmet cat food needs a cheap ingredient source and turns to buying corpses from a corrupt gravedigger. The cats who eat the food turn psycho and attack their human masters and eat their flesh. A doctor and his blonde nurse play detectives and try to find out why the cats are attacking. The acting is pretty lame coming from some of the actors(the guy playing Landau, the head procurer of corpses for the cat food people, seems to think menace can be conveyed by whispering in a flat monotone), and the corpse grinding machine looks like it was constructed by 8th graders, but the real joy of this film is Ann Noble, writer and star of the film SINS OF RACHEL, as the gravedigger's wigged-out(and bewigged)wife. Noble wanders in and out of the movie, toting a grimy, naked doll that she talks to and feeds soup, and ultimately meets an untimely end at the hands of Landau and his crony. An odd character in a film otherwise populated by standard types.