Eating Raoul

Meet the Blands, the aptly named middle-aged square couple. He's a wine expert, she's a nurse, and they need money to finance their dream restaurant. Trouble is, they're barely making ends meet. What's worse, the apartment complex they live in is infested with swingers, back when swingers were as commonplace as yuppies are now. Mary and Paul find the answer to their problems when one of the swingers tries to put the moves on Mary in their apartment. Paul whacks him with a frying pan, killing him, and they discover the fella's carrying a lot of cash. Bingo! Light over heads! What makes this goofy premise work is the absolutely hilarious, dead-on, deadpan performances of Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov as the Blands. They don't give what you'd call comedic performances, but what they say and what they do seems funny, as they are a duo of decorum surrounded by a storm of decadence. Their performances, combined with a witty and biting (pardon the pun) script, make this an absolute delight, a must for lovers of off-beat movies.