Rabid Grannies

Rabid Grannies is a fantastic comedy/horror film from Belgium, which has been (poorly) dubbed into English and distributed by Troma. Not only does this film possess one of the best titles in cinematic history, it also boasts innovative direction, great gore effects and some wonderfully tasteless humour.

The film is based on a simple, yet very effective premise. Two old ladies invite various family members to their large estate in order to celebrate their birthday. As the family gathers for dinner, a package arrives from a disowned cousin, which the two old grannies quickly unwrap. Inside the package is a box containing an evil spirit, which takes possession of the women and turns them into blood hungry demons. From this point on, the grannies gleefully decapitate, dismember and torture their guests with a high degree of wit and originality.

Despite the obvious budgetary constraints, the gore is well done and original. Highlights include one of the grannies literally biting her rotund nephew's butt off and the scene in which the grannies lure their granddaughter to her death. All of the violence has a strong undercurrent of black humour, which thankfully is never constrained by the bounds of good taste. Examples include the fate of the cowardly priest and the throwing around of severed body parts. I highly recommend the unrated European version of the film as the Troma edition, at least in Australia, is missing a significant amount of carnage.

Rabid Grannies (literally translated "the cannibalistic grandmas") is an unusual and highly amusing horror film, which is destined to become a cult favourite. I think it is time for Emmanuel Kervyn to hurry up and make another picture. Rabid Grannies 2 would be a nice place to start.

There is great fun to be had here. Please, do not watch this film and expect ANYTHING redeeming because you will not find one single thing. This is Troma, expect bad acting, plenty of gore, random sex and nudity and an insanely ridiculous and nonsensical plot.

Two Aunts (yeah, I know it is called Rabid Grannies.....) are holding are birthday party and they invite the family to their huge mansion. All the family arrive (a lesbian couple, a gun maniac, a horny cousin, a family and another couple) for dinner to be held at night. When dinner is finished and present time comes the two aunts open a package that was delivered by an old lady earlier that night. It is from the black sheep of the family, a satanist. The present turns the two aunts into big, ugly demon creatures who proceed to eat everyone they see (including a poor little girl).

After half an hour of stupid dialogue, awful dubbing (and acting for that matter) and random stupidity the gore kicks in. There isn't a whole lot of it but there's a good amount and it's usually extremely funny and gruesome. Most of the movie is pure comedy though, with such scenes as one of the grannies wearing a suit of armour (dunno why), a fat man getting his arse eaten and a little boy saying, "That's smashing!" while watching a guest being eaten.

3½/5

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.

Apparently Belgium produces something other than chocolate; crap movies. This little gem was picked up by Troma, and it's easy to see why. Every character is nasty, and the makers have enough bad taste (and, dare I say it, guts?) to not only have a child killed, but dismembered. You don't see that in a lot of american movies. The make-up and gore effects are actually pretty good, compared to a lot of other Troma films.

The first half hour sure is slow, but the unpleasant characters and the unbelievably bad acting keep it entertaining. Unsurprisingly, most of the 'actors' never made any other films before or after this one. And rightly so, because they give some of the worst performances I have ever seen on screen. Nodding and grimassing at every line and dubbed in very unnatural british accents, they are more amateurish than a school play. Like the two gravediggers in Plan 9.

When things do get going, it's just your basic 'everyone gets picked off one by one in various imaginative ways' kind of plot. A lot of cut off limbs, Evil Dead-style slapstick violence and even more horrendous acting keep it enjoyable throughout. If you like that kind of thing, that is.

"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!