Originally posted on 10/7/08
I didn't see FEAST, but that doesn't matter because FEAST II (2008) just picks up where the first one left off and plunges ahead with more reckless abandon than Rosie O'Donnell fighting over the last Ring-Ding. And I haven't had this much fun watching a gore-drenched, insanely irreverent, and just plain demented horror comedy since FROM DUSK TILL DAWN.
We quickly pick up enough info to know that in the first film, a remote desert bar was attacked by horrendous man-eating monsters. A cycle dyke named Harley Mom was killed by a sleazy guy named Bozo. The bartender (Clu Gulager) and a ditzy chick named Honey Pie (Jenny Wade) survived. And when Harley Mom's twin sister Biker Queen (Diane Goldner again) shows up at the start of this movie, she grabs the bartender and motors toward the nearest town seething with a lust for revenge against Bozo.
Unfortunately, that town is crawling with the same monsters and it's about half past dinnertime. Biker Queen rolls in with her gang of hot-bad cycle chicks who soon find themselves holed up in a garage with the motliest assortment of characters this side of FREAKS. People are ripped apart, disembowled, eaten alive, shot full of holes, smashed with ball-peen hammers, impaled through the head by pipes, and slowly melted by internal monster juices. Human and monster bodily fluids fly. A cat is raped. A midget is shot out of a catapult. And aside from all that, some of what happens is really over the top.
The talented cast is so large that I can't list everyone, but Carl Anthony Payne is hilarious as Slasher, a used car dealer who "slashes" prices, and so are Hanna Putnam as his wife "Secrets" (who's having an affair with fellow car salesman Greg Swank), Jenny Wade as Honey Pie, and little people Martin Klebba and Juan Longoria García as Thunder and Lightning, the midget wrestlers who also run the town's key shop, which figures importantly in the plot.
Special mention must go not only to Goldner as the macho bike-dyke Biker Queen, but also to her crew of gorgeous cycle chix who, in grand exploitation style, end up stark naked before the movie's over because their clothes are somehow required in the construction of the midget catapult. And the fact that I was able to write that sentence just now is one of the reasons I like this movie so much.
The budget isn't huge here but the director and his crew make the most of both their resources and their location, the small town of Plain Dealing, Louisiana. The monster suits are great and the gore effects well executed. Yes, I noticed the use of green screen in several of the rooftop scenes, but it's tolerable. The showstopper has got to be the dissection scene, in which Greg Swank thinks they can learn more about the creatures by examining a dead specimen's inner workings. This results in one of the most horrendously gross sequences I've ever witnessed, in which the dead monster manages to drench everyone in the room with gallons of vile bodily fluids of all varieties, to which they all respond by vomiting their guts out. It's practically indescribable, but it's also screamingly funny.
The DVD is widescreen with Dolby sound and English and Spanish subtitles. Extras include an intimate cast and crew commentary and two fun featurettes entitled "Scared Half to Death Twice: The Making of Feast II" and "Meet the Gulagers."
Nothing is sacred in FEAST II: SLOPPY SECONDS, and many viewers will be offended. Some scenes, in fact, may have certain viewers ripping the DVD out of the player, stomping on it, smashing it to pieces, and setting it on fire. Others, however, will simply laugh with glee, sing "That's Entertainment!", and enjoy every minute of it. The abrupt ending, unfortunately, leaves us hanging until the inevitable third film in the trilogy. In my mind, I'm already there.
1 comment:
I wish I could have enjoyed this film as you had.
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