Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge (1999)

When I was younger I assumed that at some point I would have seen enough movies where I would feel "satisfied". Not that it would make me slow down, but a general contentment would be reached and I would be enlightened to a higher plane of movie-zen. It hasn't come yet, and as time goes on I'm forced to find weirder - often in a strange borderline boring and surreal kind of way-  films to satiate my addiction. I become more and more humbled by the idea of all the movies I haven't discovered. When I encounter something new to love I think about how it was there all along and it's just coincidence mixed with my obsessive internet research k-holes that I found it at all, and what are the things I will NEVER find?? Where are they?? What are they?? It's maddening.

I can't remember when exactly I had the epiphany about Shot on Video films. I remember that the first I saw was the Last Slumber Party, and it left an indelible impression. But it would be years before I realized that there was a small unspoken revolution in the form of directors like the Polonia Brothers, Tim Ritter and Todd Sheets. For every prolific director there are an immeasurable amount of guys making even lower budget movies, sometimes far more interesting than what it's riffing off of (sometimes not). When I discover one of these buried diamonds, I'm over the moon. Such was the the case when I encountered Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge.

Stacey (played by Debbie D.) works at a "cosmetic and fashion company" - according to the description on imdb, it isn't made at all clear from the film itself - and is up for a promotion. Her scientist friend in the lab has created a shrinking gun which is actually a squirt gun spray painted grey. When she gets her promotion she intends on using this technology to further her career (again, I have no idea what this has to do with cosmetics or fashion). After meeting with her boss she discovers that she's lost the promotion to a colleague. Her female boss explains that though she is very pretty, she needs the most "attractive" woman in the office to deal with the male clients they interact with. A plot device executed with the utmost sincerity, I absolutely laughed out loud. Stacey becomes angry, but not at her insane sexist boss. She takes it out on her competition and steals the shrinking gun to use on the newly appointed executive. Barging in on her in the shower, Stacey shrinks her in the nude and then eats her whole. That's what this movie is about. Eating little nude live women.

The effects on this thing had me slack-jawed. It was almost transgressive - reminding me somewhat of Nick Zedd's Tom Thumb in the Land of the Giants, but with no artistic motivation. The most simplistic green screen/super-imposed in-camera editing graphics were used. The imagery is so bizarre it actually is a little bit disturbing.

This angle is really awkward and unflattering, but I respect the effort.

Stacey realizes that she enjoys the taste of little tiny women, so when she discovers that she wasn't second in line for the job, she shrinks and eats the back-up choice as well.

Even though the same techniques were used over and over and, at only 30 minutes, Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge was the perfect length for something like this. Debbie D. knew exactly what to do with the crappy dialog and seemed to have fun with it. There's something about this crap that's really fascinating. It leaves you feeling kind of gross because of the sexual context of the material, but it's so incredibly UN-sexy. The perverse nature of the subject, despite being treated lightly, with the extremely low quality of production gives the sensation of watching something you shouldn't be watching. Which leads me back to the the appeal of SOV films. They're voyeuristic and personal, like someone's home recorded pornography. This movie has the presence of cheap porn even without sex.

I have a purse almost identical to this, this is need to know information, readers.

I couldn't get this movie out of my head after it ended. I was curious about other films by director Gary Whitson. Is this just a fluke or are there others this strange? After a bit of digging I discovered that he's made a startling 250 + films! Way more than what's covered on IMDB. Whitson's company W.A.V.E. Productions used to feature ads in Fangoria, Alternative Cinema and various horror fanzines in the 90's. Their business model was: You write the script and pay them to make it into a movie. Not a bad little niche as it could potentially yield a plethora of material. It attracted mostly men who would pay this money to see women act out their fetishes. Upon discovering the website and the overwhelming catalog, I began to understand their schtick. With titles like "Kidnapped and Chloroformed",  "WAVE'S Best Drowning Clips", "Strangled 8" (As in, the 7th sequel to the first Strangled), and "Bikini Girl Maid Service". These titles don't leave much to the imagination.

I was unfamiliar with the term "Vorarephilia" until I watched Eaten Alive and started doing some research. It's a fetish related to eating someone or being eaten. There's "Soft Vore", which is the fantasy of being swallowed whole while alive, and then there's "Hard Vore" which is a much more violent, cannibalistic form of Vorarephilia. Eaten Alive falls under Soft Vore - and was clearly made to satiate some random dude's weirdness.

There's something undeniably yucky about the whole thing. This film, and W.A.V.E. in general. After I watched Eaten Alive, I spent hours on the website reading synopsis' and looking at strange pictures. They seem to be violent in nature, towards women. Not in a way I'm necessarily used to from horror movies. The idea of an individual paying money to see women asphyxiating in quicksand is unsettling. Yet here I am, a woman, spending my time researching it. I became curious about Gary Whitson and found this interview, by Tina Krause who I immediately recognized as one of the actresses from Eaten Alive. It's a very generic, survey-like interview. One that seems coerced and completely biased. My first thought was that it sounds like Whitson wrote the questions to accommodate the answers he wanted to give. Though it did clear a lot of things up, like his response to being considered a fetish filmmaker...

 "What I’ve always tried to do is make a movie with a beginning, middle, and end. Something with a real storyline. I’ve refused numerous storylines whose only objective was to show some violent or sadistic scene. This isn’t to say I don’t do violent movies. But I try to make them within the context of a real story. And my feeling is everything is a fetish of some kind or another. People may just not call it that."

Fair enough. Also, I do respect that he never crossed the line to hardcore pornography. Not that I have a problem with porn but you can either make strangulation films or porn, to do both is just excessive. It seems like it would be the natural progression, but instead he built this weird little empire. I've since seen two more movies from the W.A.V.E. catalog and surprisingly with mostly female casts, there hasn't been a lot of male aggression directed towards women. I'm sure I just lucked out there, but it's worth noting. I also like that most of the actresses seem to return for every movie which somehow softens the blow of the subject matter. Not to mention that these are campy as fuck. It's not all rooted in sexual proclivities either, they also make adventure film inspired by old serials, Sci-Fi and your run of the mill vampire/zombie/monster movies. I'm especially intrigued by a few Mermaid fetish films on the site. I will SHELL out money to see that! I feel like I stumbled into this unlimited resource of whathaveyous that are untouched by man. Not all of them, but well over half I can find no mention of anywhere on the internet except the website itself. At $20-$30 a pop, this should keep me busy for years or until I lose interest.

Eaten Alive was followed by trailers and alternate variations on the effects.

Despite it's reputation, W.A.V.E Productions has my full attention.! I have a few more queued up to be watched and a list of titles I plan ordering from the website soon! I don't anticipate anything will ever live up to Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge, but I'll never know unless I do the work! Feel free to explore their website yourself!...



W.A.V.E    P.R.O.D.U.C.T.I.O.N.S

Gore-Met, Zombie Chef from Hell - 1986

To keep with the general spirit of food and SOV movies, yesterday after Microwave Massacre I decided to finally throw on Gore-Met, Zombie Chef from Hell. It's been in my collection for quite a few years, which I often feel guilty about. That is until those moments come where I'm too broke to buy movies and I'm feeling lazy, cozy and relieved that I've stock piled a ridiculous amount of movies which are seemingly on the back burner indefinitely.

Besides having one of the most creative/retarded titles of all time, GORE-MET, Zombie Chef from Hell is just as incompetent as it would suggest. For starters, let's just delve into the ridiculousness of the title. The idea of a Zombie Chef is really confusing. Zombies are pretty much like carnivorous robots. They simply consume. The idea of the sophisticated preparation of human flesh by an undead being is Hi-larious.

Does it actually live up to the title? in short; YES. While Gore-Met might be a nonsensical cluster-fuck, it fills a very tiny void of film history that could only exist in a dimension where sorcerers wear sweatshirts and serve each other "slimy slider" cocktails in a North Carolina dive bar.

The plot, or whatever resembles one, revolves around an ancient cult/sect called (and I am not fucking kidding right now) "the Righteous Brotherhood".....

Read it again slowly...

the RIGHTOUS BROTHER-hood. 

Am I sensing a hint of fanboy-ism on director Don Swan's part? Just to warn you from here on out this cult will now be referred to simply as the Righteous Brothers.

When the Righteous Brothers discover that one of their most powerful members has killed the high priestess in attempt gain total control, they drag him out to the forest and cast a curse on him that will make it so he never dies but must constantly consume human flesh so that he doesn't slowly rot away. A fate worse than death. Jump ahead 600 years or so and "Goza" (who I, and I'm pretty sure every other person who has EVER seen this movie mistook for "Gozer" of Ghostbusters fame) is now working in the ugliest, shittiest, most repulsive looking bar I've ever seen. Goza works as the head chef, where he apparently cooks and consumes the customers himself, and also (for whatever stupid reason) serves human flesh to the public. Working as his bartender/assistant is Blozor. A big hulking dork of an ancient warlock who has no real power except to knock someone's head off with a simple punch to the face.

The Righteous Brothers have realized their error in allowing Goza to live, so in attempt to put him in his place and strip him of his power there's an epic battle of wizardry which involves absolutely no special effects at all. Simply the staggering talent of two amateur actors. One in a Hawaiian shirt, the other in a simple pull over hoodie. With heated dialogue and dramatic hand gestures, we the audience are treated to the most pathetic and inept battle sequence of all time. Not even kidding here. I was so conflicted between the excitement of the soap opera-like dialogue and the anti-climatic action sequence that my internal organs entangled themselves in a barftastic explosion of hysterics which ended with me rolling off my bed, out of the bedroom, out my apartment, into the streets where I laid there until I car came by and hit me, I died and was reanimated by the Righteous Brothers, had to live off of flesh to stay alive, and the cycle started all over again with someone else. This is the impact that Gore-met, Zombie Chef from Hell will have on your life.

For a movie with such a deliberately exaggerated title there's very little gore and no real "zombie". Customers complain about hair and jewelry being in their food so I wouldn't really call him a "chef", and "hell" isn't even really a factor at all. All of that considered, somehow (despite what other reviewers may say) Gore-Met delivers. For being as clumsy and incoherent as it truly is, there's an undeniable gonzo quality that is a rare treat in a film from any decade.

In closing; is Gore-Met a decent film? Definitely not. Will you enjoy it? I doubt it. Should you love and obsess over it? YES. Proceed with the lowest of expectations and the highest dose of whatever your preferred substance may be and marvel at the glorious inadequacy.

Microwave Massacre -1983

I feel almost ashamed for having never seen today's dose of absurdity. It's been a constant blip on my radar but there's always so much to see it somehow just kept getting put off. Until today! It's cold and rainy over here in Pasadena, which is a refreshing change since we were in a heat wave just a few weeks ago. The weather made me crave pizza and pajamas. Pizza and pajamas makes me crave 80's Shot on Video horror movies. Couldn't have picked a more perfect day to watch Microwave Massacre.

Donald is an average Joe. He works in construction and enjoys bologna sandwiches and cheese burgers. While his co-workers partake in simple manly lunches he's forced to endure over ambitious crab sandwiches (as in, an entire king crabs in the shell between bread) and other fancy schmancy fodder. All courtesy of his wife's new over-sized microwave, this is the case for all of his meals. She's such a horrid cook that he snaps, bludgeoning her with a giant pepper shaker. After waking up the next day from a post-murder black out, he discovers his dismembered wife in the microwave. Naturally, he wraps her pieces up in foil and keeps her in the freezer for safe keeping. At this point he decides to clean out all of her pre-made wrapped up meals, so in the garbage they go. He walks away, leaving the door opened which allows her hand rolls out into the pile of Lean Cuisine foolishness. Several hours or maybe even a day later he gets hungry and decides to eat the frozen food he had discarded OUT of the garbage (George Costanza style), which is pretty vile unto itself, only to discover that the delicious bloody meat he's enjoying is the arm of his late wife. Oh dear. From this point on the movie is a haze of him somehow luring sexy broads, mostly hookers but not exclusively, to his house where he makes a meal out of them.

Comedian Jackie Vernon (the voice of Frosty the Snowman!) plays Donald, in his final feature film. He has a Rodney Dangerfield-eque delivery and considering the material he handles the role with just the right amount of aloofness. Like this old timer comedian just kind of wandered on set one day and they offered him twenty bucks and a sandwich (hold the arm).

While I understand the wife's desire to create pretentious elegant dishes (refer to my instagram) I feel that the real message here is of the horrors and uselessness of microwave meals. I love flipping through old cookbooks in thrift stores, and even buying them if they're extra horrifying. It always astonishes me to see the things that were trendy to eat in the 50's-70's. It was more about convenience, color and how far it can stretch than freshness and edibility. Bad food plateaued in the 80's with the rising popularity of microwaves which led to a slew of  "Microwave Cookbooks". You know what I'm talking about. The ones that claim you can roast a whole turkey in that radiated death box. Microwave Massacre is clearly parodying this bullshit mentality. The combination of food and film, or better yet, food and horror films is one of my greatest pleasures. I'm rambling a bit here but what I'm saying is I totally understand Donald's plight and his wife probably deserved to die.

I always feel the need to give every movie I review some kind of thumb-up/thumb-down in case it isn't clear from the way I've discussed it. I rarely mention movies I don't enjoy, and even if they're tough and I rib on them a bit like Zombie 5 or Mad Doctor of Blood Island, I never regret watching them. This isn't even one of those instances, I absolutely loved Microwave Massacre. It reminded me of some of H.G. Lewis's later efforts mixed with some hyper-sexualized Russ Meyers cleavage shots, a likable doofus of a main character and lots of silly looking body parts. My only real disappointment with the film is that the microwave does not massacre anyone. Naturally I was expecting a classic case of "Killer Appliance", but I'm still quite content with the Blood Feast-like premise. The idea of organized suburban cannibalism is quaint. It's a gem of a film and if I must visually convince you....

P.S...I feel the need to add that that weird long man thumb does not belong to my dainty bird-like female hand.

P.S.S....also, I am aware that birds do not have hands.



Goodnight!