Blood Diner

Well, quite frankly, I knew what the makers of this film were attempting to do: put together a horror-gore-spoof in the tradition of Herschell Gordon Lewis basically stealing much of his plot elements from Blood Feast. Two brothers dig up the brain of their dead uncle and then listen to him(it) tell them how to bring back an ancient goddess of evil. Naturally, a virgin and the body parts of tramps were needed for sacrifice and a blood buffet(movie definitely steers clear from using the word "feast"). The film succeeds with what it was trying to do, yet it is painfully far from a cinematic success. It is obvious the people involved in the film gave it their all, but the actors made me wince more than once with what they were doing. Now bad acting is a staple in a Lewis production, but the actors in this film consciously tried to be funny with a script that had few laughs. A couple moments made me smile: the biker guy and the kid in the truck with the mambo music, the policeman wearing clothes that no one probably ever wore, and the absurd dummy and ventriloquist diner cook. But the rest, the annoying brain and eyes in a glass jar that talked, the weird penchant for Hitler(used in a wrestler's name and two night club singers), the atrociously directed death scenes(the one with the batter was just soooo bad), and so much more. The acting leads really try way too hard to make something out of nothing(which is another name for the script used here!). Blood Diner is an obvious homage to Lewis and his style of film-making, but it is a rather trite, tiresome, and uneven spoof at best. Yes, there is gore and blood and body parts, but like any Lewis film it has not relation to reality at all. Nor will this film produce even a twinkling of a fright!