Review by Tristan Bishop
88 Films have gotten a fair bit of stick round these parts for their ‘Grindhouse Collection’ releases – Mostly due to the fact that nearly all the films released under that banner never saw a big screen at all, let alone one of the legendary grindhouses. The Corpse Grinders redresses the balance however – This is a film that played grindhouses, drive-ins and everything else in-between. In fact, The Corpse Grinders made an awful lot of money on release, which is probably as much to do with that amazing title as much as the content of the film.
Having said that, however – check this plot out. People are being attacked all over town by normally peaceful domestic cats. A doctor and nurse (who are also lovers) start to investigate the attacks, and the trail soon leads them to the door of Lotus Cat Foods (“For cats who like people”). It transpires that Lotus Cat Foods have hit upon the idea of a special ingredient in their products – namely human flesh. The managers (who only employ elderly or disabled workers) are getting fresh supplies from a local gravedigger and his English wife (who resemble the titular characters of Roald Dahl’s The Twits), but soon take to dispatching and grinding down intruders with their corpse grinding apparatus – a wonderfully shonky machine that looks like it took all of half an hour to put together.
Director (and producer, and editor, and music director) Ted V Mikels is a bit of a legend in trash cinema – not only for such lurid and entertaining films as The Astro Zombies (1969), Blood Orgy Of The She Devils (1972) and The Doll Squad (1974 – now widely held to be the uncredited inspiration for Charlie’s Angels), but also for his personal life and personality – He once lived in a castle with a group of women, and has one of the greatest moustaches ever to grace a face. He’s still cranking them out too; in fact a belated sequel to The Corpse Grinders was made back in 2000.
The Corpse Grinders was obviously influenced by Herschell Gordon Lewis (whose early gore films made a large profit), sharing Lewis’s camp sensibilities, colourful imagery and shoddy sets. One aspect of Lewis’s films The Corpse Grinders doesn’t share, however, is the outrageous gore: there are a few moments of violence here (warning to moggy lovers – a cat autopsy, albeit obviously fake, is the strongest scene in the film), but the grinding machine itself is bloodless – the bodies go in (or in some shots obviously behind!) one end, and sausage meat comes out the other. Thankfully the script and performances are a level above Lewis’s usual standard, with some extremely grotesque characters giving the whole thing the feel of a twisted satire on capitalism, and there’s some brilliantly unnecessary coloured gel lighting that puts one in mind of Mario Bava’s heyday. It’s still inarguably Z-grade material (music cues well up threateningly during tensionless moments, and one actor portraying a deaf woman seems to be making up sign language as she goes along), but it’s way better than you might expect from a film that once nestled at number 2 on IMDB’s bottom 100 list, and in these days when any idiot with a camcorder is pitching their gritty found footage suckfest it makes you learn for the days when people bothered to make films fun.
88 Films’ disc comes complete with a snappy ‘making of’ featurette; basically Mikels being interviewed on camera, which is very interesting if you’re into the ‘make-do’ world of low budget film-making. There’s also a feature length commentary from Mikels which I’ll admit I skipped through, but the guy has an impressive memory for names and details. The print used looks like it might have come straight from one of the grindhouses mentioned in the banner it is being released under – plenty of splices, cigarette burns and scratches, but otherwise looks pleasingly colourful for a film of its age and lineage. If you’re looking for a vintage gore film, you should probably pass on this, but for anyone interested in golden area of independent exploitation, you’ll have a blast with this release.
The Corpse Grinders is available now on Region 2 DVD from 88 Films.