Blood Diner

Another of my recent DVD purchases was this six-film horror box set that I picked up mostly because I recognized the title Earth Girls Are Easy and, at the low price, who cares if five of the six movies are bad? Not long ago, I finally put one of the DVDs in the player and sat down to watch Blood Diner.

The Tutmans, Michael and George, are a pair of brothers living in one of those tract housing sections of Los Angeles of the sort that sprang up for movies like No Down Payment after World War II. A brief introductory sequence introduces us to the two brothers as children in the early 1960s, with a harried mother who leaves them alone for a few minutes, telling them not to open the door for anybody, and she means anybody. Unsurprisingly, the door gets opened, but not really of their choosing, as a man with a cleaver breaks down the door, and introduces himself as... their uncle Anwar! Apparently he's a wanted serial killer, but before he goes back out to surrender to the police, he gives the boys what he claims are amulets in praise of a five million-year-old goddess.

Fast forward 20 years, and Michael and George are all grown up, but still living together since neither of them has gotten married. They never forgot about those amulets Uncle Anwar gave them, because we see the two brothers in a graveyard at the site of their uncle's grave, digging it up! They're looking to get his brains and eyes, so that they can get further instructions on how to fulfill the prophecy that is symbolized by the amulets he gave them all those years ago.

That wacky duty is to build a mannequin of the goddess Sheetar -- out of parts of many women, so one woman's leg, another's arm, a third's ears, and so on. (They should have found The Girl from Jones Beach.) After so doing, they are to create a cannibalistic dinner with organs from several other women and create a blood feast that will really bring Sheetar to life, although what's going to happen with Sheetar thereafter is an interesting question.

So the two brothers set up a diner which they claim is vegetarian, but is really serving cannibalistic meals with the organs of the women they're killing to create the mannequin. However, one complication happens when one of the brothers falls in love with one of the patrons at the diner. There's another patron, a trencherman who provides some of the intentional comic relief, who suspects something is up.

Some other people suspect things are not quite right with the diner, notably a rival diner owner who has a stuffed ventriloquist's dummy sitting at the counter. There are also the police, with a chief detective and his lascivious underling. The chief brings in a special investigator from outside Los Angeles who knows more about investigating crimes like this (after the brothers shoot up a topless aerobics studio!), and the underling starts putting the moves on her. Will out brothers be able to complete their quest?

Blood Diner is a movie that is on any objective level terrible. I don't think I've ever seen the names of any of the cast, which is probably because by and large none of them is any good. The plot is nonsense, and the script doesn't serve the plot well at all. And yet, I loved this movie, precisely because it was so bad. The plot's ridiculous makes for a lot of unintentional humor, and there's enough gross-out horror thanks to the murder and cannibalism themes. And, of course, a lot of nudity to ogle. But I think the best for me was when the movie gets to the climax. After an hour or more of being hilariously tacky, the movie tries to class up the place by setting the climax to the overture from Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser! At least I as a classical music fan found the juxtaposition hilarious.

Still, I have to admit that Blood Diner isn't going to be a movie for everybody. I did say it's terrible, and some people probably aren't going to see the unintended humor, or be put off by the level of gross-out content. I would argue, however, that with a title like Blood Diner and knowing that this is an 80s B movie, a viewer probably shouldn't be expecting much cinematic quality in the first place.

And, as I said at the top, the box set is ultra cheap, so even if you only like one movie from the set, you're not out too much money. For fans of 80s horror, I think they'll like at least this movie (I haven't seen the other five set so can't comment on them).