The Meat Eater

Another excellent review submitted by the Wise and Powerful Danimal!

THE STORY: Before beginning this review, I have a brief announcement to make.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for your attention.

It's the 1970s, unfortunately. The Crest movie theater is for sale. Some old man is watching the Frank Capra film, Platinum Blonde, alone by himself at night in the projection booth. When it's done, he wanders off and eats a rat in gory close-up. The old man will watch Platinum Blonde twice more in the course of this film, so as if The Meateater weren't already bad enough, it has the gall to contrast itself with a classy '30s film by a good director!

Somewhere else, shoe salesman Medford Webster comes home to his wife. Peter Spitzer plays
Medford, and I only want to know who on God's earth ever mistook this man for an actor. I am
talking about a performance so bad that Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough looks like Audrey Hepburn by comparison. For the entire length of the movie, there's no relief from Spitzer and his nasal, petulant voice. The rest of the cast wasn't any great shakes, but next to Spitzer's mind-rending awfulness, none of them looks too bad.

Anyway, Medford complains to his spouse about how rotten his life is. Then he finds that his bid on the Crest Theater has been accepted, and the family leaves town to take up this new business. The Crest has been closed for five years; because the last owner showed porn films there, nobody would attend. The Websters show nature films, thus packing the theater. Um, right, that sounds exactly like real-world movie theater economics to me.

Medford hires a projectionist named Raymond, a nerdy guy who seems chiefly interested in ogling Medford's daughter, Jeannie. In fact, you get the feeling that Raymond was probably the most disappointed man in town when the previous theater owner packed up and left. You also get the feeling that Raymond's going to be dead soon. You'd be right. As for Jeannie, she's pleasant enough to look at, but she's got a voice somewhere between bass and baritone. Luciano Pavarotti's voice is more feminine than this girl's. More importantly, she's a flighty, brainless, spineless, and incredibly whiny person.

On opening night, Raymond fumbles around a lot in some excruciating "comedy." He has a hard time playing the sound for the nature film. Unfortunately, he succeeds in the end, and some of the worst narrative ever spawned for a nature film is played into my cowering ears. Then the old man from the opening scene electrocutes Raymond. Hurrah! As Dr. Freex would say, "Die, comic relief! Die!"

The nature film is turned off, and a light from behind the movie screen reveals a hanged man to the audience. The theater patrons all flee from their seats screaming, much as the watchers of The Meateater itself must have done. The police arrive and break down the door to the "backstage," where they find the hanged body of Crawford, who I think was the theater's previous owner, and who didn't leave town after all as everybody thought.

Mrs. Webster finds an old stuttering guy mooning about in the theater, mourning his brother Ben who long ago was burned alive in the theater. Ben was a projectionist and one night the nitrate film caught fire, burning him alive. You will notice I did not say "burning him to death." No points for guessing that Ben is the old man who's been watching films by himself and who killed Raymond.

Anyway, the Websters show the same nature film again a few nights later to another packed house (these citizens sure like nature films). Ben strangles a long-haired bespectacled teen guy. Meanwhile Jeannie, who is working the theater concession stand with her mom, throws a babyish temper tantrum and runs off. The killer intercepts her and drags her off to an isolated room in the second story of the theater.

Ben, who is of course horribly disfigured by burns, protests his love to Jeannie, because she looks just like Jean Harlow from the movie Platinum Blonde that Ben is always watching. That's right folks, this whole movie should have been titled The Phantom of the Movie Theater. Just like The Phantom of the Opera, except cheap and tasteless. After the show is over and the patrons are gone, he shows her the long-haired kid's corpse as a "surprise," then drags her down into the seats and forces her to watch Platinum Blonde. Jeannie's parents finally notice that she's missing and start looking for her.

In the most amazing sequence in the film, Mrs. Webster calls the police to help find Jeannie, then
looks across the street and notices that the light is running in the theater's projection booth. She
instantly realizes that Jeannie might still be in the theater, and hangs up on the dispatcher to run off and find Jeannie herself! She has run off without her key to the theater, so she has to break the glass doors to get in. She then grabs Jeannie (who is carrying on and screaming and being generally useless) away from Ben and drags her up the aisle to the front of the theater. Lo and behold, Ben's harmless brother is standing at the broken door, so Jeannie and Mrs. Webster turn around and run back down the aisle toward Ben!!! Somehow Ben misses them and he chases them around for awhile. When they evade him, both Ben and his brother climb to the top of the theater. Why? Because the bad guy always climbs the tallest structure in sight at the end of the movie. It's in the union regulations!

So Ben's brother pleads with him to stop the carnage and then throws Ben off the top of the
theater to his death on the concrete below, splattering his brains everywhere. Yecch. The Websters sell the theater and go back to selling shoes. And somebody (who? I don't know or care) is still watching movies alone at night in the Crest Theater. The End! Casualties: two boys with glasses, one homicidal maniac, and one rat. Crawford doesn't count. He was dead before the movie began and I'm not even sure whether he killed himself or Ben murdered him.

This is almost as bad as '70s drive-in movies get. You may have some slight understanding of how stupid this movie is, but you cannot realize how slowly and boringly all these stupid things happen. The film moves along at the torrid pace of a stroke victim in a walker.

I will not name most of the actors in this movie. They have their lives to live, and have a right to leave this unfortunate episode behind them. But for Peter Spitzer, let there be no mercy! This
man, who did not shrink from claiming the timeless classic Gas Pump Girls as his lone credit in the Internet Movie Database, chose to leave this movie off of his resume. And director-screenwriter Derek Savage will burn in hell for this.

Best Lines: "All creatures, great and small, cavorting on God's big, bad playground." -This, God help me, was the narration of that nature movie, which I had to listen to at least 46 times.

"She has your looks and my brains."- Medford describing his daughter Jeannie to his wife.
Believe me, this was not the compliment he thought it was.

1) The townsfolk won't watch porn films, but will watch the same nature film over and over again? Give me a break.

2) After Ben falls and breaks his skull open, Jeannie deliberately sticks her hands into the gooey
mess, then looks at her palms and screams! Why the !@#$% did you do that, you idiot?

3) Why did the Websters sell the theater at the end? The murderer was dead, for Pete's sake!

4) Seduction by dead mouse. Boy that Spitzer has charm!

5) There is a shot, which will be etched in my nightmares for years, of the Websters driving
along screeching "I Wish I Were An Oscar Meyer Wiener." It has no purpose whatsoever except to inflict pain on the viewer.

6) After Raymond is killed, the paramedics bring the wrapped-up "body" out on a stretcher.
Except it's perfectly obvious that whatever's under the plastic is way too small to be Raymond.

NUDITY AND SEX: None.

HUH? : I don't see how this movie could have been good even as drive-in fare for people to neck
by. I mean, genuine scares might cause your date to hug you for moral support, but there are no scares in this movie, just scattered grossness. I don't think many dates were put in the mood by
decomposed hanged corpses and spilled brains.

The publicity stills that appear on the back of the video box do not appear in the film itself. I
hate that.

Mrs. Webster spends half the movie wandering around doing absolutely nothing. At one point she wanders into Ben's brother's house, which is plastered with posters for the magician Simon Birch. You might think Simon Birch is eventually going to be important. Nope.

THE TALLY: You saw this one coming, folks.

For loathsome sloth and boredom, for irredeemable vileness, and above all for Peter Spitzer, this Assistant Demon orders that The Meateater pass all eternity in The Devil's Drive-In, where countless mosquitoes shall suck its blood, the projector shall be out of focus, lines shall scar the face of the films, and the sound shall be unrecognizably distorted for ever and ever. Amen!