I don’t know why the cannibals in Blood Diner opened a vegetarian restaurant of all businesses. I don’t know why the restaurant looks like a 1950s diner… I mean, who the hell would walk into a place like that expecting tofu? I don’t know much of anything except that the filmmakers probably ingested too much pot and too many Herschell Gordon Lewis movies. Though I generally favor horror-comedies, most of them that swing this far into comedy are duds. Blood Diner isn’t a dud. It’s genuinely funny, in a madcap kind of way, and serves the gore by the bucket.
Some of the same outlaw energy you would find in masterpieces such as Repo Man, Street Trash, and Frankenhooker is on display here. Early on, a group of topless cheerleaders are filming an aerobics routine when one of the cannibals, wearing a Reagan mask, bursts into the room and guns them all down with an Uzi. The cannibals promptly dismember the bodies to gather parts needed for an elaborate ritual that’s equal parts Frankenstein and Night of the Demons.
The cannibals are dimwitted brothers, devoted to their cultist uncle who is a talking brain in a jar. The brain will walk them through the complicated series of steps required to resurrect Sheetar, an ancient goddess. You may think the homicide detectives who are hot on the cannibals’ trail will stop the ritual from taking place, preventing the movie from showing the good stuff. You would be wrong. The movie culminates in an orgy of violence that has the detectives firing blindly into a crowd of people, perhaps killing more innocents than the cannibals ever did.
Borrowing a page out of Zucker comedies, the background actors are constantly up to ridiculous antics whenever the foreground characters are tasked with delivering pertinent dialogue. Pertinent dialogue such as the fact there’s a local wrestler known as Baby Hitler and one of the two brothers is going to fight him. This results in the penultimate candy bar scene, a wrestling match that turns predictably bloody. I have no idea why the filmmakers felt the need to include the scene, but I’m glad they did.
Blood Diner features unusually charismatic leads, much better gore than the films of the aforementioned Herschell Gordon Lewis, and a bitchin’ pace I can’t help but admire.
The Goug' Blog 