Corpse Eaters

Two couples are enjoying a weekend of boating at a nearby lake and then decide to do something a little different by visiting a graveyard that night. When they get there they notice a deserted mausoleum and once inside one of the men decides to experiment with a demonic chant. This causes corpses to come out of their graves and devour one of the women and infect one of the men. The infected man is taken to a hospital but during surgery is declared dead and then transported to a funeral home. Needless to say, he doesn't remain dead for very long. Now even though this synopsis is rather brief it almost depicts the entire movie for the simple reason that the film itself is quite brief as well (about 58 minutes). This fact is just one of the faults. Throw in bad lighting, lack of cohesion between scenes and some segments running on much too long and everything pretty much points to a less-than-average movie experience. The really sad thing is that this movie had some potential. Unfortunately, the resources just weren't adequate to pull it off. All things considered then I rate it as below average.

Corpse Eaters (1974)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Producer Lawrence Zazelenchuk is the man behind this Canadian horror film, which was considered their first "gore" movie. In a pretty interesting story, the producer had two dreams in life. One was to own a drive-in, which he was able to do and the other was to make a movie to play there, which is this film. The story is pretty simple as four people stumble upon some zombies and chaos follows.

CORPSE EATERS was made for $36,000.00 and you can tell that the budget was that small. With that said, for the most part I thought it was a well-made picture with everything considered and it's certainly lives up to its new reputation. I say new because this film hardly got released back in the day and it was pretty much forgotten until it was released to VHS back in 1993. I think fans of the Herschell Gordon Lewis gore films will certainly enjoy this.

As with the Gordon films, this was here screams drive-in because it has that low-budget atmosphere that can only happen when you're shooting something without much money. The film also manages to be rather creative when it came to the kill scenes including one poor sucker who gets eaten and chopped apart at once. The gore scenes are certainly the highlight as some of them (like the autopsy) look rather cheesy but there are others that look excellent. The before mentioned scene where a person is eaten in gory details as well as chopped up looked extremely good and this was four years before DAWN OF THE DEAD.

The performances are bland to say the least and there's no question that some better cinematography would have helped. I'd also argue that there's very little to no story here and even at less than a hour the film drags in spots. Still, this is a pretty fascinating film with an interesting story behind it so zombie fans will certainly want to check it out.

An interesting little canuxploitation flick made in Ontario obviously so someone could get a quick buck on the drive-in circuit. It's cheap and very amateurish in both directing and acting. It does however display some pretty graphic gore scenes, some nudity, and an interesting gimmick at the beginning were a warning comes up before the violent bits (similar to Boardinghouse). It apparently caused some controversy and as a result several minutes of gore were cut out, and are presumably lost. There's really no reason to intentionally seek this out, but, if you are a fan of this sorta thing give it a shot, it's short at only 57 minutes and as of this review is available on youtube.

This movie has everything that makes a bad movie worth watching - sloppy editing, little to no continuity, insane dialog, bad (you might even say non-existent) acting, pointless story lines, shots that go on FAR too long...and it's perfect for MST3K-style riffing, not to mention the "Corpse Eaters Drinking Game": Scribble on forms...take a shot - Sign your name...take a shot - Catch a bad Foley edit...take many, many shots.

The only reason I didn't rate it higher than 8 is because there's not enough gratuitous nudity and because despite its insane badness, it's only an hour long - hell, a movie like this should have been at least 20-30 minutes longer!

Lawrence Zazelenchuk was an owner of drive-in on Route 69,just outside of Sudbury.With the budget of $36 000 he made "Corpse Eaters"-the first Canadian gore film about zombies emerging from a ghastly crypt filled with coffins and bones.He wanted to have a horror film of his own to play in his cinema."Corpse Eaters" is loaded with grisly over-the-top gore and violence.The graveyard and crypt are downright creepy and the zombies look very Fulciesque.The plot is cheesy and it often jumps all over the place beginning with the morgue attendants,then to our sex crazed and beer starved quartet,who unleash the living dead to the hospital and back to the morgue again.If you like zombie movies or Herschell Gordon Lewis gorefests give "Corpse Eaters" a chance.7 out of 10.