Frog Baby in the house, here this time for a little change of pace. By that I mean instead of digging into the vault of antiquity, I’m croaking a little love toward a fairly recent underrated horror gem. That’s right, this time out we’re taking a bite out of John Gulager’s 2005 release of Feast. Some may recall the flick was the 3rd and final creation of the Affleck/Damon reality program Project Greenlight, in which they offer a novice filmmaker a chance through competition to get their first feature made. The first film of the series, Stolen Summer, was utterly forgettable. Their second film, The Battle of Shaker Heights wasn’t that great either, though one could argue it contributed to Transformer boy Shia LaBeouf’s breakout as a leading man. But it was the third film in the Greenlight series that proved the most entertaining – Feast, about a small town bar being ravaged by a vicious menagerie of alien species.
First of all, the flick suffered a doomed releasing slate as Bob and Harvey Weinstein dichotomized from Miramax/Dimension to form their own releasing avenue The Weinstein Company in 2005. Feast, despite its merit, got lost in the shuffle. But don’t be fooled folks, just because the film didn’t get a wide theatrical run doesn’t mean it fails to kick ass. It’s a small, low budgeted action horror piece that has a grip of energy and enough moxie to make you oversee the fact it literally takes place in entirely one setting – a dingy dive bar somewhere in the desert. We meet a glut of characters by way of cool intro captions, both funny and pretty original (at least for the genre). We’ve got the old timer bar keep, the crude fat redneck, the cripple, the hot waitress, the slick hustler, the geeky loser, an adulterous letch, the works. Then some dude pops in warning of a “storm of hell” headed toward the bar, he shows off an alien corpse he defeated en route to safety.
Of course, he attracts the monstrous beings right to the bar. Everyone inside, despite not getting along time, must band together and fight the fuckers off if they want to get out alive. Some will, some won’t – but damn is it fun getting there. The film features what I call gross-out horror – giant streams of green alien vomit, an eye ball stretched out and ripped by its cord, an alien penis excised and squirming on the floor – all of it used to squeamish effectiveness. As the flick moves along, survivors drop like flies until a small pocket of them finally get tough enough to muster a way out. Despite showing some hambone acting most of the time, and having stretches of indiscernible action sequences (lighting and flashy camera work) – the flick plays like a good old fashioned monster movie that moves along very fast and never gets mired in torpidity. It’s a fun flick, the kind you watch with some friends and sixer or two. In fact, Feast has spawned 2 sequels (both directed by Gulager) that were shot simultaneously – one titled Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds (released in 2008) and the other titled Feast 3: The Happy Finish (DVD premiere on Feb. 17th of this year).
3 Best Parts:
-Seeing the grade-A acting by Henry Rollins as he’s reduced to sporting a pair of pink sweat pants.
-Judah Friedlander’s unwillingness to die, despite having buckets of alien puke dumped on him, his eye gouged out, maggots infesting his wounds, etc. etc.
-A quick cameo by Treach (Anthony Criss) of Naughty By Nature fame, squaring off with horror stalwart Clu Gulager of all people for superior acting chops.
As always, catch me next month for another peek at an underrated horror gem – see you then!
