FRANKIE STUMBLES ONWARDS TO THE BITTER END#12
27/10/21
AUNTIE LEE’S MEAT PIES – I was already groaning when I put it in the machine, but ALMP turned out to be pleasant surprise. Expecting the kind of Troma-esque castoff I least wanted to see, I found instead a mildly sleazy bad-taste comedy that blew up into sicko horror with a climax of neon-lit psychedelic freakery (and a big snake). Karen Black (!? I didn’t think she went in much for micro-budget gore comedy) tenderises all and sundry in her role as smalltown California’s resident pie-making cannibal, whilst Michael Berryman gurns his way through a very non-PC rendition of someone with various life challenges. I knew this would be a winner even before it turned the corner into weirdo stylisation. As always, you never know till you try with films like this; I don’t get lucky that often these days, but I did here.
28/10/21
I DRINK YOUR BLOOD – How could I not follow up with IDYB, arguably the most notorious ‘pie’ flick of them all? I love it for the fact that it’s exactly the kind of film that people hope for but never usually get when they hear the words ‘seventies grindhouse’, a film that distils the kind of madness that others of its ilk only ever seem to serve up in dribs and drabs. “Let it be known… that Satan was an acidhead!” Lines like that could have been ripped straight from the pages of a trashy seventies NEL paperback, which IDYB, with its focus on satanic hippies and outraged squares, closely resembles. There’s even a Vietnam-era subtext for po-faced tw@ts like me… but don’t let that stop you, it’s mostly about the mayhem caused by meat pies laced with rabies courtesy of a disgruntled kid with a god-complex. If you’re up for something nasty that leaves you feeling a bit feverish, IDYB might be your kind of poison.
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