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Synopsis: The Lotus Cat Food company is on its last legs. The meat distributor wants cash up front and their ingredients are running low. The owners hit on an idea: why not use corpses from local cemeteries and mortuaries to stock their food? To this end, they pay off a grave digger and a couple of morticians (who apparently spend too much time in contact with formaldehyde) and their in business. Sales go like gangbusters. Meanwhile, the cats who eat Lotus Cat Food accquire a taste for human flesh and begin attacking and killing their masters. Eventually, even human meat becomes scarce and our pet food entrepeneurs resort to killing their own supply of meat. It's up to Doctor Glass and his busty nurse, Angie, to get to the bottom of things before things go too far....

Mathoms from the Back Closet: I recently ran across a box of videotapes in my back room dating from the period when I was buying movies to stock the late, lamented Big Lizard Video fiasco. This particular movies was in that box, along with Oasis of the Zombies, She-Freak, and Terminal Island, among other cinematic crimes against humanity. So, fool that I am, I said to myself: "Y'know, I haven't reviewed something REALLY awful for quite some time now." I settled on The Corpse Grinders based on the fact that (a): I hadn't seen it before; (b): I had no desire to sit through Oasis of the Zombies, since it was directed by Jess Franco and I don't get paid for this, so I'm NOT going to voluntarity sit through a Jess Franco movie; and (c): it has a dim (very dim) cult following. More than that, it was co-written with Arch Hall Jr, whose screenplays for Ray Dennis Steckler in the 1960s resemble the cut-up novels of William S. Burroughs, only without the talent. I approached it in the spirit of those famous last words: "How bad can it be?"

Well, let me tell you . . .

Curious Facts: The Internet Movie Database lists this The Corpes Grinders as a "horror/comedy" film. Maybe it is, but not because of the content of the film. It's funny, I guess, since it's NOT Ted V. Mikel's worst movie (the IMDB lists him as being the second unit/assistant director on the nigh unwatchable Orgy of the Dead). It's horrifying, I suppose, because it wasn't Mikel's LAST movie, either. 

Bad Bad Taste: The film has a sub-low budget grottiness to it that is a chore to look at. Even the cardboard grinding machine that figures so prominently in the film fails to look as comical as cardboard props SHOULD look. The dialogue is spoken in flat monotones by a cast that would be hard pressed to find work in community theaters in Peoria, let alone Hollywood. Exacerbating this problem is Mikel's insistence on cutting between the speakers of each line as if he wanted to make sure that the audience was EXACTLY sure of who was speaking. Additionally, the characterizations are murky at best, with strange lapses like the bizarre interchange between two morticians ("Mortuary humor," they apologize. I've known morticians. I worked as a grave digger once. I NEVER heard morticians speak like that, even the crazy ones). And then there's our hero's complusive drinking between operations. I don't know about you, but the notion that MY doctor was swigging Jack Daniels between patients fills me with a mortal dread the likes of which this movie never even comes near. But I digress. All of these failings are actually the movie's GOOD points. The film's very premise crosses the line that John Waters once defined as the difference between "Good bad taste" and "Bad bad taste." But it only gets worse: mix in a revolting cat autopsy, numerous scenes of ground human meat flopping out of the grinder, a deaf office worker with only one leg, and a widespread cruelty to the animals in the film, and you have an artifact that is guaranteed to offend just about every sensibility. The only thing it really misses out on is sex--although, even here, it makes a game stab at it in a scene in which the girl from the FDA goes home, strips to bra and panties, and then gets killed by her cat. 

I will give this film one passing mark: it's not AS boring as many films of this type. Mikels is often lumped with directors like Al Adamson and Larry Buchanan (and later, Fred Olen Ray, Jim Wynorski, and Albert Pyun), but unlike those filmmakers, he seems to have a rudimentary grasp of narrative. Oh, don't get me wrong: The Corpes Grinders IS boring when it's not being patently offensive--and it's an eyesore, to boot--but there is something to be said for shock value.

Ugh. That'll learn me...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

For some reason, the notion that the makers of Orgy of the Dead had the money to hire an assistant director strikes me as being almost as funny as the idea that that film needed a second unit. I mean, how much to you expect to get for a $1.78, which I surmise was Orgy of the Dead's ACTUAL shooting budget. Mind you, this was 1960's dollars and cents, which probably went a LOT farther then as it does now....Back