Format: Streaming video from Tubi on Fire!
Years ago, I did some podcasting. I also had a couple of years in the past where I accepted “challenge” films from other film nerds. I say this because one person is responsible for me watching two movies that are relevant to Blood Diner. I was tasked with podcasting about a movie called The Undertaker and His Pals, where a couple of guys who run a restaurant murder people and put them on the menu. I was also challenged to watch Herschel Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast, where a man tries to resurrect an ancient goddess by creating a “feast” of body parts.
I will talk about Blood Diner here, but I need to discuss those two films a little bit. The Undertaker and His Pals is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It’s intended to be both disgusting and wacky, and while there are some real gross-out moments, the humor doesn’t rise to the level of juvenile. I didn’t like Blood Feast much, either, but I see it as an important movie. It’s one of the first movies of its era to really lean into the gore aspects of its story, what little story there is. Blood Feast is all about severed limbs and women having their tongues ripped out, and we wouldn’t have the gore films that we do now without it.
Blood Diner exists at the junction of these two films. We start with a sort of flashback where a serial killer named Anwar Namtut (Drew Godderis) breaks into a house only to have it turn out to be occupied by his nephews. He tells his nephews to prepare to bring their goddess Sheetar (Tanya Papanicolas) to life. He is then killed by the police and we jump ahead 10 years where those two nephews are now adults and running a vegetarian restaurant.
But are they really just humble restauranteurs? They are not. Michael (Rick Burks) and George Tutman (Carl Crew) are working on bringing their goddess to life. This starts by digging up their dead uncle and resurrecting what they can, which turns out to be his brain and eyes in a Mason jar. Uncle Anwar then tells them they need to murder a bunch of “loose women” and select pieces from each, sewing together a body for Sheetar to inhabit. They then need to create a feast made of additional human body parts, force other people to eat it, and then sacrifice a virgin to complete the ritual. Because we’re going to be a little racist here as well, our Tutman brothers have hypnotism powers (because they’re Egyptian), which will allow them to mesmerize virgin Connie Stanton (Lisa Guggenheim).
Getting to the actual conclusion, where Sheetar is going to rise, is going to involve a great deal of wanton murder, body parts being chopped up, and a surprising amount of nudity that is there specifically to include nudity. A lot of what we are going to see here is going to come through the lens of two cops trying to end the murder spree, but our cops—Sheba Jackson (LaNette LaFrance) and Mark Shepard (Roger Dauer)—are idiots.
In a lot of respects, Blood Diner is a remake of Blood Feast, and it kind of is, but there’s something much worse underlying it. I’m not someone who thinks that Blood Feast should be remade, but I can understand why someone might want to do so. But this isn’t really a remake. It’s an attack.
A remake needs to be made with love and care. It should be made by someone who appreciates the original film. A remake is made by someone who sees something of value in the original version and wants to do something more with it, or to explore it in a new way. Blood Diner is made by people who hated Blood Feast and created this as a way to ridicule it. The overwhelming sense of this film is one of contempt.
Blood Diner is an ugly film that brings pretty much nothing of value to the table. It adds nothing to the film it mocks and nothing to the world of film in general. It represents about 90 minutes that I don’t get to have back.
Why to watch Blood Diner: I have no idea why you’d want to watch this.
Why not to watch: It’s not just bad; it’s disrespectful.
