Feast 3 [DVD]

The Feast franchise is like antibiotics. One is not enough, it's incomplete. Kind of like the Godfather series. Once the first is begun, like antibiotics, the whole regimen must be taken, and while doing so there may be agony and moaning (like Godfather III).

After reuniting with the cast of characters from the cliff hanger Feast II - the midgets, the awesomely topless biker chicks, Whisper & Slasher, Honey Pie & The Bartender, we soon get a few superb additions to the movie; one named S*#tkicker and another named Jean Claude Seagal. Yes, Jean Claude Seagal. If there is a cooler name, and a more hilariously overt parody of already lampooned characters (SNL and Mad TV skits don't count), then I have never seen one. Together they add just enough suave machismo and unpredictable catastrophes ("It's just a flesh wound") to keep the movie rolling along.

The most important aspect of all three Feast movies is the potpourri of gore, wisecracks, blood, and extremely heavy-handed WTF scenes. Whereas the classic money shot of Feast II was the baby volleyball scene, this installment challenges and treats the viewer with two classic scenes. An alien colonoscopy that vividly displays a fecal matter covered human head via the first ever corn-hole cam gushes out of the alien excretory system, bouncing on the ground like a half deflated basketball. The other scene can best be described as a cross-species, homosexual, inter-racial, box-car, prison anal rape...and I'll leave it at that.

An attempt at the rest: the biker chicks are the BAMFs, a prophet with cerebral palsy, a bizarre alien/zombie lair with strobe lights and a sweet techno soundtrack, trendy camera usage (night vision and shaky camera), front kick decapitations, and a classic mariachi ending during the credits that attempts to summarize the ridiculous awesomeness of this trilogy.

Four years ago, when the first FEAST came out, I was pleasantly surprised, but a bit too disgusted to tell many people about it. When I discovered that two sequels were filmed last year, I sat down with all three films and watched them front to back. Here's a brief recap:

Feast
The basic scenario: a scattering of rastabouts are trapped in a bar by a family of malevolent creatures with large underbites. The characters try, mostly unsuccessfully, to find a way out without getting killed. Meaning virtually everyone gets killed.

Because the movie is staunchly amoral, the gore is obscene. Everyone from the jaw-chiseled hero to the helpless toddler is up for grabs, and in ways that are designed to make you squeam. The movie helps viewers out by offering up stat cards the first time a character is introduced, including the probability that the character will be dead by the closing credits. It's a bit of smart playfulness that makes the proceeding hideousness a little bit easier to handle.

Personal state: bemused, slightly nauseous, took two antacids, probably the pizza. Four stars.

Feast II: Sloppy Seconds
I'm not ruining anything for you by saying that one of the characters to die in the first film was a sneery biker chick referred to as Harley Mama. In fact, she suffered an especially gruesome death (which is saying a lot), and now her twin sister has discovered her remains and is off an ill-advised revenge quest. She is accompanied by an unlikely survivor from the first film, and together they encounter many spectacularly horrifying things including:
--a baby ... that's all I'm saying about it. A baby is involved.
--every single bodily fluid you can name, one after the other
--the violation of a cat
--a liquefied grandmother
--and so on

This installment introduces a new character archetype called "The Puker." See, if the creatures vomit on you, you either melt away after time, or the melting stops and you develop an irrational affinity for blood. But not for the blood of other Pukers. It's not THAT irrational.

The creatures are more clearly seen this time around. They run around giddily, mating and eating; they appear to be what humanity would evolve into if all money and electricity disappeared from the face of the earth. Meanwhile, our cast of characters commits all kinds of grotesque acts, all in supposed self-interest. [...] Or, more accurately, that most people think it's funny. But I found it distracting.

In their attempt to top the first film, the makers turned the second movie into a pornographic satire of the original flick. A catapult is created using the clothes of two breasty biker chicks who spend the remainder of the movie mostly nude. A man ends up with a pipe in his head but suffers only minor swelling. Except for the Mexican wrestlers, Thunder and Lightning, every character was viciously selfish. The movie pushed the envelope until I had no more pushing room left.

And yes. What did it for me was the baby. I guess that was supposed to be funny.

Personal state: experiencing abdominal distension, some light sobbing, phone call to mother. Two stars.

FEAST III: THE HAPPY FINISH
This is another immediate continuation from the previous film, with our gang moving underground in their quest to safety, guided this time by a mentally handicapped Prophet who has an unusual ability to ward off the creatures. As it crawls through labyrinthine sewage systems, the movie achieves new depths to its depravity, including violence of cartoonish dimensions. (Seriously. Wile E. Coyote would fit right in here.) At first I'd rationalized that the movie was offering a kind of social commentary. In fact, as the third movie unspooled, I was reminded by what Dawson said, "As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy." It made the movie seem smart again.

The ending, not so much. It's abrupt, it's stupid, it's completely out of left field, like the filmmakers just said, "I'm tired of this movie. Let's stop." There's a tease about a possible fourth (and an amusing song over the final credits), but the whole thing felt like a shamefaced shrug to me. As if the makers didn't want people to be too offended, so they finished with a silly little "See? We didn't mean no harm!" When, of course, they did.

Personal condition: smiling, a little headachy, slight dry mouth, not altogether unsatisfied. Three stars.

The best way to think of this movie is the horror genre version of Napoleon Dynamite: it is so over-the-top in terms of absurdity and grotesque-iness it will either take a while to sink in (for the positive reviewers here) or not at all (for all the negative commentors). Unfortunately there's only one way to find out which group you'll fall into (and it's not by reading this or any other review here).