Blood Diner

I played a zombie in BLOOD DINER and believe me when I tell you, it was such a bizarre and sickening experience that I plan to devote an entire chapter to the nightmare in my memoirs. I have worked on a lot of films, and I mean a LOT, and I can say with all confidence that the depravity of the project, inhuman working conditions and incompetence of the production have been unequaled, and will be fresh in my mind if I die of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 300.

So many people walked off the set in the middle of production, that they ended up hiring homeless people and crackheads off the streets of Hollywood to fill in the ranks. They probably even gave some of them lines. Half of the female cast were literally called into casting on the basis of spreads in JUGGS magazine. The writer, who later became a good friend of mine (before I knew he had written the thing), had played Mengele in SURF Nazis MUST DIE (one of my favorite, and the most depraved of all Troma films).

Jimmy Maslon, the producer, has a reputation as one of the cheapest and most thoughtless coke-head producers in Hollywood (he forgot to feed the zombies on so many occasions, that to keep the rest of us from walking off one day, he ran to the store and bought us some generic white bread and baloney, from which we made our own sandwiches).

And don't get me started about Jackie Kong. "The Dragon Lady," as she was known to all who worked with her, will have a special mention in the book.

Suffice to say, that she once spent six hours on a 2 minute dialogue scene, while her zombies were sitting around in cheap gel make-up, which had completely melted off our faces by the time we got around to our scenes.

All that said, it actually is a pretty funny movie. I don't think any of the actors realized it was going to be though. In fact, I don't think anybody did but the zombies, who were all wasted on weed and CLUB margaritas the whole time -hic- ;-)

I avoided seeing this movie for a long time, for director Kong doesn't exactly have a good track record. Then after hearing several positive opinions of it, I decided to take a chance.

I loved it! Very sick and black, and very funny. Two hilarious performances by the actors playing the brothers, and right-on deadpan performances by others. The style of the movie and the kind of humor make me wonder if Peter Jackson saw this before making BRAINDEAD (a.k.a. DEAD ALIVE).

One flaw in the movie is the obviously low budget. Though the movie gets by many times, there are a few scenes that look really cheap. Especially during the end, where the low budget really hurts what could have been an awesome climax (though it's still good.)

Well, quite frankly, I knew what the makers of this film were attempting to do: put together a horror-gore-spoof in the tradition of Herschell Gordon Lewis basically stealing much of his plot elements from Blood Feast. Two brothers dig up the brain of their dead uncle and then listen to him(it) tell them how to bring back an ancient goddess of evil. Naturally, a virgin and the body parts of tramps were needed for sacrifice and a blood buffet(movie definitely steers clear from using the word "feast"). The film succeeds with what it was trying to do, yet it is painfully far from a cinematic success. It is obvious the people involved in the film gave it their all, but the actors made me wince more than once with what they were doing. Now bad acting is a staple in a Lewis production, but the actors in this film consciously tried to be funny with a script that had few laughs. A couple moments made me smile: the biker guy and the kid in the truck with the mambo music, the policeman wearing clothes that no one probably ever wore, and the absurd dummy and ventriloquist diner cook. But the rest, the annoying brain and eyes in a glass jar that talked, the weird penchant for Hitler(used in a wrestler's name and two night club singers), the atrociously directed death scenes(the one with the batter was just soooo bad), and so much more. The acting leads really try way too hard to make something out of nothing(which is another name for the script used here!). Blood Diner is an obvious homage to Lewis and his style of film-making, but it is a rather trite, tiresome, and uneven spoof at best. Yes, there is gore and blood and body parts, but like any Lewis film it has not relation to reality at all. Nor will this film produce even a twinkling of a fright!

Horror-comedy is something very difficult to do. So many films tried this blend of genres in the 1980s and failed miserably: Ghoulies 3, TerrorVision, pretty much anything Troma ever did. And only a few truly brilliant filmmakers were able to really succeed at this: Frank Henenlotter, Peter Jackson, Dan O'Bannon. This film is rare in that it falls generally between these two extremes. It's often very funny, and occasionally creative, but its obvious self-awareness can sometimes be trying.

Two brothers operate a vegetarian restaurant and secretly serve human flesh to their customers. They have an uncle (or what remains of him) who helps them to prepare for the feast of Sheetar by compiling a perfect woman out of assorted body parts. The bones of the plot are borrowed lovingly from H.G. Lewis's Blood Feast, but the majority of the film is pretty unique.

Unfortunately, because of their similarities, Blood Diner will always be compared to Blood Feast, and Blood Diner is just not that caliber of a film. Blood Feast brought on the sickening and sometimes too-real gore; Blood Diner's gore is cartoonish and cheap-looking. Blood Feast was technically flawed, but had enthusiastic performances and unmindfully creative camera work; Blood Diner is slick (as far as 80s horror-comedies go) and very self-conscious, but ultimately soulless in its execution.

The real key to a successful horror-comedy is that little dash of sincerity. You can have your jokes and fun, but a little sincere strangeness (or just plain scares) makes the film all the more real. If you like horror-comedy, and you've already seen Basket Case, Frankenhooker, Return of the Living Dead, Dead Alive, Re-Animator, and Brain Damage, you may want to give this a shot. It's sure as hell better than Troll 2.

What was the deal with the horror comedies from the late 80's? Movies like Evil Dead II, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Jason Lives, Sleepaway Camp II, etc. set the standards for slasher comedies but it was too late when these kind of flicks became popular. Dark sense of humor helped this movie to at least be remembered by some people.

BLOOD DINER is a decent little gore flick. With no pretentions, a weak storyline, low budget, but with whacked characters, a weird humor, and lots of blood this is a must see for die hard fans of the genre.

Watch it to witness the 80's madness.

5/10.