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The dudes who run the Lotus Cat Food Company run out of money and they "turn
to a new and plentiful source for product...fresh cadavers! " This results in people digging up graves and getting murdered. The other
problem this cat food causes is that cats who eat it attack and kill their
human owners, because they are "filled with a newly-found taste for human
flesh!" A "resourceful doctor and his pretty nurse become suspicious of the
cat food factory" and they try to stop the "grisly scheme." 1972, 73 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
If you're like me, you often stayed awake at night worrying that the pet food
you feed your no-good ungrateful cat might be made with ground up people. The Corpse Grinders takes this common fear and makes it into a movie about as good as you could
expect when the subject matter is cat food. As befitting the definitive film
about humans turned into cat food, this is the special edition which means if
you're really demented, you can subject yourself to director Ted V. Mikels'
commentary on the filming of the greatest movie ever made about cats that
acquire
a taste for human owners through their exposure to some rancid cat food. This
means you hear Mikels drop such verbal gems on you as to how he can't believe
that the Lotus Cat Food sign in the movie has become a sought after collector's
item. Yeah Ted, I can't believe it either. To give you an idea of what type
of flick you're dealing with here, imagine an H.G. Lewis movie without all the
gore or the panache (where non-acting is worshipped) that make those films so
indelibly awful. Ted manages to make a sludgy concoction that isn't offensive
enough to be memorable and the level of gore is practically non-existent (you
do see a cat gut and some assorted body parts are shown at the end of the
movie). Ted tries to keep pace with the Lewis' by having a few shots of his
ladies in their underpants, but you can tell his heart just wasn't in it (I
mean the "nurse changing clothes" scene at the doctor's office focused more on
the doctor
making a telephone call to the Cat Food Association or somewhere). In the
end, you're left with a movie that had a great title and infamous poster art,
but
upon actually seeing this thing, you realize that it is about as low budget in
the style and the brains department as they come (Could Lotus Cat Food have a
dingier office? Could their corpse grinding contraption look more flimsy?
There's no way that thing could have ground coffee, let alone chicks).  It's a normal day in Dr. Glass' office. He's just come out of surgery after
having lost his patient on the operating table. The very blonde and buxom
Nurse Angie is there to console him, but in spite of his seventies porn hair
and mustache, Dr. Glass heads right to the glass cabinet where he keeps his
medical supplies like swabs, pills, and whiskey. Dr. Glass knocks back some
what the medical profession refers to as "Code Blue Juice" and Nurse Angie
tells him that it'll be okay and not to take it too hard. Also in the
examining room with the nurse and the doctor is the nurse's pet cat. The cat
is eating some food and I think we've all been to the doctor's office where
they do operations on people in one room, while the staff's household pets are
being fed in another room. I'm also thinking that if you go to your doctor's
office and your doctor smells like a brewery you should probably get a second
opinion. Now this cat goes nutso and attacks Dr. Glass, clawing at his neck.
This results in Glass chucking the cat to the ground and probably another trip
to the "medicine cabinet" off camera. The nurse says something like, "gee,
he's never tried to rip out your throat before, doctor." Yeah, well maybe he
knew that guy that flatlined in the other room. Over at the Lotus Cat Food
company, sinister dealings are afoot. Two guys, Landau and Maltby (what kind
of name is that?) are having problems with the help. Of course, that probably
has nothing to do with the fact that they have hired the scum of the earth and
circus freaks to work there. One guy named Willie is always trying to get in
the back room. You know the room - it's marked "Corpse Grinder In Use - No
Admittance." I know that when I tell you that there is a locked room with a
corpse grinder in it, that you're asking me how in the hell can this not be
super-cool? Easy, the room is basically a badly lit basement room with this
contraption in the middle of it. It's got a conveyor belt that leads into this
large box-shaped object. I think there's some buttons and levers and maybe
some steel teeth in the front. At the other end of the box is a spigot where
the ground meat is excreted (hehehe). You dump the people on the conveyor
belt, they go into the box and ground chick comes out the other side. You
don't ever get see people being ground alive (I thought this was a special
edition or something!) and you don't get to see anything at all except the
bodies disappearing into the box. So Willie the Wino is curious and Maltby
complains about the worthless people that Landau has hired. Landau responds
that "it's patriotic to hire the oldsters" and that they're easy to can (whoa,
that Landau is a cut up!).  Early on in the film, we are introduced to Caleb, the resident graverobber. He
spends his nights digging up graves at the local cemetery and then resells the
bodies to Lotus Cat Food at a profit. I thought it was a nice touch that
Caleb's wife came by his work site and brought him some food. What kind of
wife does a guy who digs up graves for pet food makers for a living have? Why
the kind that carries around a doll and thinks that it's a real kid! Yes, this
is one of those movies where people are given crazy characteristics in an
effort to make the movie that much more "out there." You know what would
really be "out there?" Something more interesting than people making cat food
out of corpses. I would note for the record that director Ted V. Mikels has
another movie under his belt that came out after this cat food epic called The Worm Eaters. Sometimes in life your abilities are far outstripped by your unexplainable
desire to churn out low budget horror movies. So this woman has this doll and
she sits her at the dinner table and tries to feed her soup and stuff while
Caleb is trying to figure out how much Landau owes him for all the bodies.
Landau keeps stiffing (hahaha) him on his money whenever he makes a delivery,
telling Caleb that if he waits there will be more money for everyone. I think
it goes without saying here that Caleb and his wife look like a couple of
escaped mental patients who are as familiar with hair conditioner as Dr. Glass
is
with an accredited medical school. Later we see some old hag just laying on
her bed in what appears to be a filthy slip (this movie has the highest per
capita amount of scuzz that I seen recently) and her cat is nearby eating.
Soon the cat attacks her and her scuzzy boyfriend (or he might just be a
drifter hanging out on her steps) comes in and sees the carnage. He takes the
woman to Dr. Glass (this is an easy one doc, she's already pre-dead) and when
he and Nurse Angie hear the tale of the cat attack they look at each other and
realize that the city is being overrun with an epidemic of cat attacks, because
when there are two similar events and one has happened to you, that makes it an
epidemic. They ask the drifter to bring the cat back to the office so they can
examine it. We watch as Dr. Glass plays around with some guts inside this cat
and somehow they determine that there may be something human in it. Is this
the nastiest doctor's office you ever heard of or what? Glass and Angie go
back to where the woman was killed and notices that even though she was dirt
poor she fed her little baby Lotus brand cat food, just like Nurse Angie's cat
liked! Though I have no idea why they care, they start to do some Hardy Boys
and Nancy Drewing around and visit the government agency in charge of pet food
(Pet Food Administration though I'm unsure if that's a cabinet level position
yet). They get little info there except that whomever applied for the license
to make Lotus cat food had decided not to go through with it.  Following this
the movie takes a little detour and we follow the secretary of this government
guy home where she lounges around in her bra and panties until her cat can be
bothered to attack her. That's the last we see of her, though her boss
mentions on the phone to Dr. Glass later that she had been attacked. Too bad
Nurse Angie wasn't her roommate and had a little bit of that Lotus if you know
what I mean. That's the kind of corpse grinding a guy could get into. Glass
and Angie visit the wife of the guy who applied for the license to run
Lotus. He's disappeared or something and somehow they get the address of Lotus
and they go and pay them a visit. All the while they're doing their amateur
detective routine, a mysterious guy is following them around. Since all he
does is follow them, we know he's probably some kind of good guy secret agent
that works for the Pet Food Administration or something and will end up saving
our meddling duo from certain death (probably at the hands of the corpse
grinder). They show up at Landau's office and come up with some bogus story
about how they're going on a trip and are taking their cat and need a case of
the cat food to take along with them. As bad as that story is, you should hear
the story they come up with they return to the factory after hours to snoop
some more ("we came back from our trip early and need more cat food" - are
these people mentally deficient in some way?). Maltby is nervous, but since
Landau is a true psycho, he obliges them and tells Maltby to give them a case
of the stuff they made before they dumped their partners into the corpse
grinder (I'm assuming that the machine had a different name prior to that).
Glass
and Angie get their cat food and go back to the doctor's office to examine it
in their lab. The lab results show that it is only regular old cat food made
out of lips and assholes and nothing else but probably horses, kangaroos,
sawdust, hair, tapeworms, and the assorted bone fragment. Can you imagine if
you were a patient there and your own lab results were delayed because the
alcoholic doctor and his bimbo gal pal were testing pet food? Disappointed,
Angie goes off on her own to check out Lotus (after a not nearly gratuitous
enough clothes changing scene) and leaves Glass a note that she'll be
back. Nurse Angie snoops around the factory and gets caught by Maltby. Maltby gets
her onto the conveyor belt of the corpse grinder, but stops long enough to try
and molest her. Just when all seems lost, Landau shows up. He's been busy
killing Caleb and his wife and he and Maltby have had a parting of the ways
when it comes to Lotus Cat Food's business model, so he shoots and kills
Maltby. Then he feeds him to the corpse grinder. Landau turns his attention
to Nurse Angie, but Dr. Glass shows up. Glass doesn't do much of anything
except get shot and fall down the stairs. Then just when all seems lost again,
this mysterious stranger shows up and shoots and kills Landau. Landau's body
is covered in cats that up until now have been nowhere to be seen. The
mysterious stranger identifies himself as a P.I. that was hired to investigate
one of Landau's original partners (the first one he fed to the corpse grinder)
disappearance.
Everything ends as the P.I. says something inane and inappropriate to Dr. Glass
like, "looks like you'll be the one who needs a doctor now" and then everyone
shares a hearty chuckle. The best thing I can say for this movie is that at 73
minutes, Mikels keeps things moving along. Unfortunately those things have to
do with killer cat food, unconvincing cat attacks, and the scurviest bunch of
people you've seen since the carnival last rolled into town. The dude who
plays Landau is kind of fun to watch because he's one of those "don't sweat it"
guys whenever people keep snooping around and kills people that get in the way
of his business scheme (isn't there an easier way to make money dishonestly?)
with nary a second thought. He probably will also go down in screen history as
one of the few screen villains that knows and uses sign language. In the
film's most bizarre stroke (aside from ever being made at all) Landau has an
old, deaf, one-legged employee that he has to sign to! Is the circus in town
or what? She doesn't figure into the plot a whole lot (and doesn't get killed
- see this movie has its heart in the right place), but their scenes are the
best in the film. And I think it goes without saying what sort of grade this
movie gets when the best part of it involves a deaf, one-legged woman who
doesn't have anything to do with the plot. On my trailer scale, this one gets
a singlewide (older model, heavy use, good fixer-upper, needs to be fumigated).
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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