Thursday, October 29, 2009 Halloween Countdown: Blood Diner




I learned about Blood Diner when I saw its trailer at a midnight showing of Street Trash at the Music Box Theater. The sharp tagline and goofy sense of humor on display pulled me in (plus, the trailer had zombies in it), but I had to wait for the movie to hit home video before I could catch up with it. No zombies, I'm afraid, but Blood Diner became one of my favorite trashy flicks.

The film is a sequel-cum-remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis' "classic" Blood Feast. Two brothers attempt to complete their crazed uncle's life work, the resurrection of an ancient Middle Eastern goddess via a "blood buffet", complete with virgin sacrifice. First, however, the boys must prepare a host body for their goddess, loving stitched out of various body parts taken from immoral women. Cannibalism, gratuitous nudity, lame jokes, and graphic if unconvincing violence ensue.

Okay, at this point, you already know whether or not you want to see this film. It's a prime example of a genre that flourished during the 80's video boom, the low-budget horror-comedy. Companies like Troma and Full Moon built their fortunes on such releases, but I've always preferred the smaller, even more indie flicks like this, the aforementioned Street Trash, and Psychos in Love. If you're in to that sort of cinema, then you're sure to get a kick out of Blood Diner.

The avi of Blood Diner I'm sharing today appears to be sourced from the German DVD, the only release the film has gotten as of this writing. I'm pretty sure it's better looking than the original VHS pre-record, and it's letterboxed to boot.


A comment from the film's entry in the Maltin guide has always stuck with me -
"Directed by Jackie Kong (a woman - who should know better!)"
Whatever, man.
Posted by Preterite at 3:50 PM
Labels: ,

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)