Blood Diner (1987)

... aka: Blood Feast 2

Directed by:
Jackie Kong

Warning! The truly unusual motion picture you are about to see contains many scenes of graphic violence. It is not intended for the faint of heart nor the young or impressionable. While it is a sad fact that mad homicide and practitioners of blood cults infest our society, the producers of this film wish to express that they do no condone, nor do they want to inspire, any of the human butchery or violence portrayed in this film. If you feel like you will be offended by such material, please leave the theater at once... Note: All of the mutilations, bodily dismemberments and cannibal rituals were performed by seasoned professionals. Please do not attempt any of these stunts at home. Thank You.

And so begins Blood Diner, a foray into gratuitous gore, plentiful female nudity and a mix of some genuine laughs with even more lame and childish comedy bits. At times this thing is so low-brow it makes Troma's brand of comedy look sophisticated by comparison! It's from Jackie Kong, a real anomaly in the U.S. film industry. Hell, how many other Asian-American women directors can you think of that were making exploitation films in America?

In 1962, a woman leaves her two small boys home alone because she needs to go to the market to pick up "some God damn tampons." What a nice time for the Happy Times All-Girl Glee Club Slaying psycho, who "is armed with a meat cleaver in one hand and his genitals in another," to show up. After hacking his way through the door, the boys discover that it's just they're beloved Uncle Anwar (Drew Godderis) popping in for a visit. He hands them each a "five-million-year-old" amulet, tells them to keep practicing what he's taught them and then heads out the door and gets gunned down by the police. "20 Years Later," the now-grown brothers; Michael (Rick Burks) and George (Carl Crew) Tutman, visit a cemetery, murder a security guard by popping his eyes out with a shovel blow to the back of the head, dig up a skeletal Anwar, cut open his head with a hacksaw and then remove his brain. They recite a spell from an ancient book and bring Anwar back to life. Well, he's just a talking brain in a jar barking out orders, but you get the drift.

The brothers own the Tutman Cafe, a popular local vegetarian diner, and their uncle demands they stay celibate and wants them to follow his orders to help resurrect Sheetar, "an immortal goddess more powerful than Superman!" They're to construct Sheetar out of the body parts of as many "immoral girls" as possible and, in order to raise her from the dead, they're to find a virgin to sacrifice and cook up a "blood buffet" offering. Michael shows up at an "nude aerobics studio" wearing a Ronald Reagan mask and starts blasting the girls with a machine gun. They construct the body, but must get even more body parts, so they lure two girls back from a club for their stomachs. One is covered in batter, has her head dipped in hot oil and is then decapitated with a broom. Another is split in two with a cleaver. At Bronson Caves, a completely nude woman uses kung fu to fight off one of them, but gets taken out when a stalagmite falls into her head. As the body count rises, Police Chief Miller (Max Morris) sends out his best detective, the leisure suit clad Mark Shepard (Roger Dauer), and his new partner, no-nonsense Sheba Jackson (LaNette La France), to investigate.

After getting whatever body parts or internal organs they need from their victims, the brothers then serve the leftover "meat" to their patrons. One of the brothers is an amateur wrestler who goes by the name "Luscious Lou the Lumerian" and has a bloody match with his opponent "Jimmy Hitler." The finale takes place at Club Dread, where the boys serve up a special stew that turns the patrons into green-faced zombies, plot to sacrifice virginal cheerleader Connie (Lisa Guggenheim) and manage to finally resurrect Sheetar (Tanya Papanicolas), who has a giant fanged mouth on her stomach and uses her "power of Jupiter" to shoot lasers out of her fingertips to blow stuff up.

I honestly didn't think I was going to like this one at all after the first twenty minutes or so. And true, the acting is terrible and the lowbrow humor (puking, comic dubbing, flatulence, etc.) often doesn't work, but overall I found this entertaining enough. There are some interesting songs on the soundtrack (plus several truly strange nightclub performances), it's fast paced (something is always going on), the production values are surprisingly good and it's absolutely packed with gore. I don't think this thing goes two minutes without a head or a limb getting hacked off.

Written by actor Michael D. Sonye (a Fred Olen Ray film regular) and originally intended as a sequel to BLOOD FEAST (1963), but those plans were scrapped during pre-production; Lewis himself would deliver a sequel to his own film in 2002. It was released on VHS by Lightning and Vestron, and is now on DVD through Dragon Entertainment.

★★1/2