Unseen Terror 2013: Day 5

As younger children, Michael and George Tutman are "approached" by their uncle Anwar, who gives them pendants in connection with an ancient deity named "Sheetar." Not long afterwards, Anwar is murdered by the police. Years later, the Tutmans have taken up the task of murdering young women (and incorporating parts of them into their special dishes of the restaurant they run) in order to please what is left of their dearly departed uncle, and in hopes of one day resurrecting Sheetar herself.


I was completely unaware that Blood Diner was a sequel to Blood Feast, a movie that was released twenty-four years prior to this picture's own release in 1987. Does this matter? Not in the slightest, as this B-movie schlockfest makes little-to-mention of its original predecessor throughout its surprisingly short running time, and could easily stand on its own as evidenced by the cult following and memorabilia it has garnered over the years.


Blood Diner's two antagonists/main characters look lifted out of the video game Double Dragon, and their acting comes from the live-action version of the same name. Come to think of it, nobody is good here. But this picture doesn't care about giving you good performances, it wants you to be entertained. And you do have a surprising great amount of fun for the first thirty or forty minutes, especially in the hilariously campy opening (Blood Diner's own disclaimer is probably better than the movie itself). It wouldn't shock me to find out if John Waters had a bootleg of this movie sitting somewhere on his shelf. But (and there's the but), the film's a roller coaster in terms of merriment: one moment, you're frolicking in its sheer ludicrousness, the next, you're wishing it would get back to what kept you laughing so much.


There's also an attempt to humanize Michael, the more vocal and human of the brothers, by giving him a "love interest," but it feels underdeveloped and never really goes anywhere. The two detectives on the case of the brothers are also so incredibly boring that I forgot to write down any notes about them other than "one looks like Janet Jackson." Another odd note: I'm not sure if the weird obsession with 50s/60s-era professional wrestling seen throughout is meant to be a positive or a negative, but the scene of one brother wrestling a nazi character, (who is garnished with a swastika and a Hitler mustache. That certainly wouldn't fly today) didn't really help clear things up. Said brother also gets the crap beat out of him by a would-be victim at the beach, which is admittedly amusing. Unfortunately, nothing really develops between the brothers, be it positive or negative, so that's a bit of a disappointment. Their disembodied uncle, who remains as a brain in a mason jar, commands them like a Power Rangers villain more than anything else, and spouts lines like he was Razor Ramon at one point. And yes, that's two Power Rangers references I've made within the span of a week. I'm ashamed of myself.


If you can't take everything with a grain of salt in a picture like this, you're likely to loathe Blood Diner. The final twenty minutes is one of the strangest conclusions I've seen to a film, be it horror or not, since I reviewed The Devils two years ago, with a pompadour-led band leader commanding a backup band dressed like Adolf Hitlers, everyone seemingly trying to eat one another, and a naked woman's stomach opening up trying to swallow people's heads. And oh how I wished I was making that up. Beers and pizza might help you get through this one.



Tomorrow, I'm still hungry, so I decide a need a filling of THE STUFF!