Blood Diner (1987)

Well that’s it, the final review of my 2023 October Challenge. This is the low budget horror comedy “Blood Diner” from 1987. The movie was the third of four movies directed by Jackie Kong in a short career likely only made possible by the VHS boom of the 80’s. The movie was written by Michael Sonye, who has had a reasonable career as an actor but only has writing credits for six movies. This is the highest rated on IMDb at 5.3/10. His lowest is rated at 2.8 out of ten. This is one of those movies where much of the cast have only appeared in this one film and many of the ones that have been in other things use shots from this movie as their bio picture on IMDb (Or have no picture). This gives you hint of what to expect!

Bon Appétit.

The plot of the movie revolves around a pair of cannibals and their “Vegetarian” diner. Two brothers and their dead uncle (Now a brain in a jar) are planning to perform an ancient ceremony to resurrect the ancient Lumerian goddess Sheetar. To do this they have to make a number of preparations that mostly involve killing young women, preparing a cannibalistic stew that will make those that consume it turn into feral zombie like cannibals and prepare the sacrifice of a virgin. On their tail are a pair of tough yet bumbling police officers, investigating a what appears to be a serial killer targeting vegetarians.

Junk Food.

Okay, so I’m just going to say it: This is a bad movie. Whenever I review a fairly average movie I usually say “It’s not terrible but…”, well this one is terrible and there is no real “But” to that. There are some good ideas, but the execution of them is so poor that most viewers likely won’t even give it that much credit. It is poorly acted, poorly scripted, badly paced (Rushing from one joke/murder to the next without giving any of it room to breath), music that seems absent half the time it is needed and overstays it’s welcome when it is not, the gore was so comical that it lost all impact and worst of all, it just wasn’t funny.

Most of the humour falls flat. Most of the jokes are either casual but cartoon like violence or general gross out stuff. There were three scenes that were sort of funny. One was the intro, specifically the radio broadcast about the psycho. Another was where one of the brothers has to keep running someone over before he actually dies and another where a woman having seen her friend being chopped up goes to run away, but then runs back because she forgot her handbag. That was it. The rival chef’s ventriloquist dummy could have been funny in theory, but didn’t really work in practice. It felt out of place and just came across as pointless and dumb.

So Bad It’s Bad.

The acting is especially bad. I’ve watched a lot of low budget B-movies, so I have a pretty good tolerance for bad acting, but this was next level bad. Pretty much all the actors playing the police were dreadful. The worst of the bunch was Sheba Jackson as “LaNette La France” and it’s no surprise to see this is her only credit on IMDB. Max Morris was almost as bad as the Police Chief and joins Sheba in the “This is my only acting credit” department. Fortunately Rick Burks and Carl Crew, who played the two cannibal brothers were just regular bad, though the script they had to work with didn’t do them any favours. Drew Godderis also managed a tolerable performance as the brain in a jar psycho uncle, though he is helped by just being a voice actor.

I get the impression half of the joke here is meant to be that the film is really bad. This kind of thing never really works for me. Things being intentionally bad always fail to reach that “So bad it’s good” category. Most humour works best when played straight, most funny low budget movies work best when the makers treat it seriously, no matter how crazy the ideas they are working on are. Here it seemed they spent too long laughing at their own jokes. Really a lot of this plays like a series of sketches haphazardly thrown together, with most of it adding nothing to the overall story.

Concussion.

Ultimately, this is one big fail. The concept could have worked, but not with this director, writer and most of these actors. Some people may be able to get a kick out of it and I think being drunk and/or high will help. But coming in dry, it’s just plain bad. I give it a few points for trying to be fun and for the half decent concept, but the most generous I can be with this one is a low 3.5/10. On a side note, I like the trailer. It’s better than the movie. That’s all. Happy Halloween and whatever your viewing tonight (If anything), I hope it’s better that this!