Rabid Grannies

"They Love their grandchildren...well done!" This is the tag-line for the bizarre foreign horror flick "Rabid Grannies". This film is distributed by Troma films and despite the negative reviews it has received, I found it to be a lot of fun! Yes the acting is bad...the effects aren't terrible for a B movie but they aren't great either but that's not the point here. There are several horribly offensive scenes such as the one where the child is murdered or the one where the overweight gentleman literally has his ass eaten out. The murder of the priest is also religiously offensive but if you're a religious person, I doubt you'd be watching a film titled "Rabid Grannies". This film is just plain fun to watch...it has just the right amount of blood, guts, gore, murder, madness, mayhem with a little lesbianism and demonology thrown in for good measure!

Now here's something cool! "Les mémés cannibales" ("Rabid Grannies" in English) is mostly a schlock-fest, but also poking fun at the lives of rich people. A pair of kindly old women are having their birthday party with the relatives present, but one of the presents is from a devil-worshiping nephew, and its contents turn both women into bloodthirsty monsters! Go figure!

The movie reminded me of Peter Jackson's "Braindead" (called "Dead-Alive" in the US) just a little bit, with also just a faint hit of the "Evil Dead" movies. The movie also lampoons the family's greed. For the most part, though, I think that the people making the movie just wanted to have fun and see what sorts of things they could show. The dubbing is terrible, but who cares about that? All in all, it's a very fun, disgustingly hilarious flick. Just the sort of movie for Troma to release.

Right, given the age of the movie, the title of the movie and the plot synopsis of the movie, you just know that you are in for one cheesy movie. And the movie is exactly just that, campy and cheesy.

Given the fact that the movie is from the late 1980's, then it wasn't particularly impressive, not even for that time of age. I remember there was far better horror movies around back then. And "Rabid Grannies" is listed as a comedy horror movie, but there is surprisingly little comedy in it, unless you count the horrible dubbing and questionable acting as comedy, or if the lack of coherent plot qualifies as comedy, I will just leave that up to the individual viewers to decide for themselves.

The story in "Rabid Grannies" is about a birthday party held at an old castle for aunts, when a mysterious stranger appears at the front gate with a strange present. The present contains a diabolical gift that turns the two elderly women into demonic creatures that are hungry for the flesh of their relatives, seeking to torment and kill them in the most gruesome of manners. Time is ticking for the family as the demonic duo wrecks havoc and destruction upon them, one at a time. Can they survive the ordeal and make it through the night alive?

The story in itself wasn't all that bad, but unfortunately it was executed by questionable actors and it wasn't particularly helped along by the horrible dubbing of English speaking voice actors - who all sounded constipated and were yelling most of the time instead of speaking.

There is a little bit of gore in the movie, that actually works out well enough, but it is hardly enough to make the movie interesting to watch. And the demonic creatures sort of look like parodies of wicked, evil creatures, so it is a little bit hard to take it all seriously.

Personally, I found "Rabid Grannies" to be somewhat of a struggle to actually get through, because my attention kept drifting away from the movie, as there was just too many scenes that were questionable, laughable or downright irrelevant for the actual movie.

If you enjoy movies from the late 1980's and haven't already seen it, and if you have absolutely nothing else to do, then perhaps watching this movie might be right for you. But otherwise, there is nothing worthwhile appealing to this movie. I have seen it now, and can honestly say that I will never see it again, nor do I consider my cinematic history of movie watching enriched in any way by having seen this particular movie.

The original title of the movie is "les mémés cannibales", which translates as "the cannibal grannies", so why they opted to title this movie "rabid grannies" is beyond my comprehension.

I am giving this movie a 3/10 rating because of the small amount of gore and mayhem that was in it and because of the original idea, which was the only two things that really appealed to me. The rest of the movie is not worth mentioning.

Just because this film bears a typically Troma-like title, and features the Troma logo on the packaging, don't make the mistake of thinking it is a Troma production—because it isn't.

It is, in fact, a low-budget Belgian film that was simply picked up for distribution by the studio, and, as far as I am concerned, it is much more enjoyable than the majority of Lloyd Kaufman's own B-movie output.

In this delightfully silly and very gory romp, a group of greedy relatives gather together at the mansion of their two elderly aunts, in order to attend their birthday celebrations (and hopefully worm their way into their aunts' wills). However, when the old women open a surprise birthday present (sent by the black sheep of the family—a practitioner of the black arts), they become possessed, transform into vicious, drooling, bloodthirsty monsters, and proceed to tear their party guests limb from limb.

If you're a fan of visceral OTT slapstick horror—particularly Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy (which this film is obviously heavily influenced by) or the early work of Peter Jackson (whose similarly daft Bad Taste came out the same year)—then Rabid Grannies should be right up your alley. Director Emmanuel Kervyn spends the first thirty minutes introducing us to his raft of absurdly unlikeable characters (none of whom really deserve to survive 'til the end credits), and the next sixty dismembering them in as many inventive and silly ways as possible. It might not be Oscar winning material, but it's a whole heap of fun!

Considering the limited budget, the juicy effects on display are pretty damn good, and the film sure doesn't hold back with the nastiness: one man has his limbs hacked off, before being impaled (between the legs) on a pike; a fat guy gets stuck trying to escape, and has his ass eaten; and even a little girl gets reduced to spare parts by the demonic old dears!

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

I should have researched this movie on here before I watched it.Knowing it was French would have helped a lot.I spent too much time trying to figure out if the audio was dubbed and where it was filmed.Once I figured out it was dubbed, I understood why every character had a different accent.Most of the people sound like Americans trying to fake a British accent while a few sound almost French.The most confusing thing was that they were driving on the right side of the road.Do they do that in France?I assumed all of Europe would drive on the left side.Anyway, this was an above average Troma movie even though the plot doesn't make any sense.The premise is that a bunch of relatives of two rich old ladies have to go have dinner with them for reasons that are never made clear.The old ladies turn into demons and everyone just hides instead of trying to leave.This is a must see if you like or want to like Troma.