Flesh Eating Mothers

Good Evening. How is everyone doing tonite? How was your day? What'd ya do all day long? I brought people spaghetti and pizza for twelve hours straight. They were relentless. They wanted their fucking pizza and their fucking spaghetti and they wanted it now. And now I am drinking wine and writing this to deal with that pain. So if you are thinking that I should have timed this review (if you even want to call it that) in time for Mother's Day last week, I'm sorry.  Because you're right, I should have. But on Mother's Day, I had to bring people pizza and spaghetti, but only for about six hours. Since we're on the topic of food, let's talk about the subject at hand. 

Flesh Eating Mothers came out in 1988 and is directed by some dude named James Aviles Martin. I've never heard of James Aviles Martin, or anyone else affiliated with Flesh Eating Mothers but I'm not gonna hold that against it, at least I wasn't gonna hold it against it at first. It's got a great cover (although none of the mommies in the movie are nearly as attractive as the lady on the cover), as well as tagline ('They bit off more than they could chew' although that doesn't makes much sense to the movie's subject matter), no doubt about that, and one I remember from back in the day, although I never remember seeing the actual movie. If you recall, I was somewhat delicate in the matters concerning tape cover versus actual tape content when I was growing up and if the cover proved too scary,  I wouldn't rent the movie (hey, I was like, eight!), so while I would undoubtedly be familiar with such titles as Flesh Eating Mothers, amongst others, I would not actually see the films until much later. So when I happened upon a copy for a buck on ebay, I thought, why not? Throw caution to the wind, what do I have to loose? The answer? A buck plus three for shipping and a boring, boob free hour and a half of my time. Allow me to set the stage.

A hunter person wanders into frame. He glances around, looks down, looks around. Realizes his arm is missing. Pause. Starts screaming. A blond lady in a trench coat comes into the shot and he aims a shotgun at her, fires, and roll opening credits, featuring a totally goofy song about how great it is to live in suburbia. It's clean and nice and everyone gets along and children play and everyone eats din din together. Don't we all just want to go to suburbia right now, folks? - you get the idea of the ditty. 

So then we meet Roddy Douglas. He's just had the el sexo with a lady, not his wife (gasp!). He's got to bail on said lady, however, because wifey Sylvia, will likely be home from the dry cleaners any moment. Which just makes me wonder, how the hell long does the woman go to the dry cleaners for? I don't ever go to the dry cleaners for anything, being as how I wear jeans and tshirts all the time, but shit. It can't take that fucking long. I digress. Seems, after some stupid build up where we meet all the teens and mommies and daddies in the neighborhood (and get to know how fucked up they all are - everyone's got something fucked up going on - one's a drunk, the other a wife beater, everyone's committing adultery, you name it, it's a suburban cliche), that Roddy is the town man slut and has been sexin' up all the mommies all around the cul-de-sac. And he's beyond gross. Beyond. So is everyone else, though, so I'm not worried about it. 

Roddy goes to get checked for VD, because he's such a fucking slut, and isn't afraid to admit it either (at one point he asks Sylvia for an open marriage and she starts sobbing) and the doc tells him he's clean from syphillis and gonarreah (only, since that's what this particular clinic checks for), after offering him the card of the madam he (the doc) frequents, but Nurse Felicia notices something else in Roddy's blood sample. Seems it's some weirdness, but Doc dismisses her.

So it turns out Roddy has this vicious type of sex disease that turns everyone he's done it with into a cannibal. They almost seem more like zombies to me, but the word 'zombie' is never mentioned, although cannibal is bandied about quite a bit. Those women infected, and it's only women who have had children and also sex with Roddy that become infected, must eat the flesh of the living, preferably their children, not out of any kind of hunger really, but just because of an insatiable, sadistic desire. The one gross-out make-my-skin-crawl scene is when Sylvia, Roddy's wife, eats their baby. She kisses him first, sort of pervertedly, then starts devouring with glee. 

I think the rest of this stupid fest is supposed to be funny (think lots of ridiculous puns like 'What's eating you?'). It's either the ineptitude of the Jersey-accented cast that has never acted a day in their lives before or after this movie was shot, or the fact that the social commentary is so overt it might even be an accident, that leaves me feeling bored and tired. Yes, there's a bit of splatter and the effects are all practical. But, there is no nudity, but after I thought about it, I wouldn't really want to see anyone in this movie nude in the first place. Everybody's a bumbling idiot or a complete cliche or both. And then there's like an attempt at a plot twist, maybe? I don't know. 

All in all, it's like a big flip flop. The movie coulda been the ultimate punk rock movie, where the notion of suburbia could have been turned on its head and the moms/suburbia could have been brought down by the teens and blah blah. And it starts off that way. But then, as it progresses, the teens want to find a cure for their moms and save suburban life and blah blah. Do they want to rebel or do they want everything status quo? They, and this movie, can't make a decision. That, and the score is fucking horrible and inappropriate. Think upbeat below z-grade 80's pop throughout. Ugh. 

I'm gonna go drink more wine.