The Corpse Grinders

With a tagline like “The Corpse Grinders turn the bones and flesh of young lovelies into screaming, total savage blood death!” I knew I would be in for a tasty treat.

This obscure little title has somehow achieved semi-cult status in recent years, but after watching it I’m hard pressed to explain why. Granted, the plot is borderline brilliant, in concept at least: The unscrupulous owner of the Lotus Cat Food Company, on the brink of bankruptcy and unable to afford the usual gourmet meat that goes into his expensive ‘Fancy-Feast’-style cat food, does what any rational businessman would do in his situation: starts canning human remains. He gets a good deal on bodies from a crazy couple who live in a graveyard and proceeds to toss the corpses, clothing and all, into a machine that mashes them up into kibbles ‘n’ shits. Much to his surprise, the new recipe is a hit with the local cats, and the Lotus brand cans begin flying off the shelves, faster than this film at Blockbuster Video. Oh wait, I was thinking of any movie but this one. Anyway, while the new cat food has revitalized Lotus’ fledgling sales, it appears it is not without side effects: local cat owners begin to notice their beloved pets behaving oddly (if you consider your cat clawing out your larynx ‘odd.’) Yes, it seems that cats all over Southern California have developed a taste for human flesh!!! As you can guess, many, many bloody kitty maulings ensue.

Now, you have to admit this movie starts off pretty promising, despite the storyline’s resemblance to your average R.L. Stein Goosebumps plot, ala “Duck, Duck DOOM,”"Hide and Seek… of the DAMNED!”, or “Simon Says DIE MOTHERFUCKER!!!!” Wait, that last one might not be a children’s book. Anyway, before I get too far into this, I should mention that this movie was clearly shot on a shoestring. In fact, if I had to guess, it cost about $37.50 to make. To its credit, though, every cent of that $37.50 makes it on screen. Now, we’ve all seen films that do a decent job of concealing their miniscule budget or use the lack of funds to their advantage by replacing special effects with creativity. Blood Simple, El Mariachi, Clerks, Gravesend and Slacker come to mind. Notice The Corpse Grinders isn’t in that group. No, I didn’t forget to include it. The reason this movie wasn’t mentioned is because it FUCKING BLOWS. Any coolness or scariness this “film” (using the term loosely) exhibits early on is promptly shot to shit shreds. Director Ted V. Mikels, who you may remember from the moving, understated period piece Blood Orgy of the She-Devils, makes Tobe Hooper look like M. Night freakin’ Shyamalan.

But back to the ’story.’ Ordinarily, it wouldn’t take a brain surgeon to deduce a connection between a recent string of cat-attack victims and the popular new cat food that they all fed their pets, but in this movie, it does. Cue our hero, a respected local surgeon (who drinks what looks suspiciously like alcohol between operations), and his top-heavy head nurse, who he’s sluicing on the side. They are understandably disconcerted after about the fifth patient in a row to enter their hospital is conspicuously lacking a trachea, so the two junior detectives embark on some Encyclopedia Brown-worthy sleuthing to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Neither of these actors went on to appear in anything of any merit, which is not at all surprising given the performances they bust out in this badboy. Of note is the nurse’s frequent costume changes, which seem to vary from shot to shot at times. One of their patient’s death scenes is particularly hysterical, as the camera follows her home and we watch her undress so she can drink a can of beer. Seems logical to me. As she puts it away, her beloved Siamese cat goes apeshit and flies at her face, where it latches onto her jugular and she dies instantly. About midway through I noticed that all the bloodthirsty cats so far had been Siamese, and then I realized that the director must not have been able to afford multiple cats and used the same one in every scene. I’ll give you a second to laugh.

All the filmmaker appears to have tried for was a fun, realistic little scare flick. And at this he fails in spectacular fashion. Take, for example, the exciting “climax,” which consists of the Doc and his woman confronting the dishonest Lotus Cat Food owner. Their showdown quickly degenerates into a gory clusterfuck of rabid kittens lacing into the bad guy like hyenas on a wounded antelope, while somehow knowing to leave her and the good doctor alive. The evil guy gets his comeuppance at the hands of his creations. You could cut the irony with a knife. Or, if you don’t have a knife handy, a spoon. The posters claimed “A nurse will be standing by to provide free blood pressure checks to anyone at the theater upon request.” How about free euthanasia? Now when a horror film is mind-numbingly boring, the gore is laughably fake, the entire thing pretty much takes place in only three poorly-lit rooms, and the suspense is as nonexistent as its production values, would your first reaction be “That’s gold!”? Neither would mine, but Ted V. Mikels failed to consult either of us and amazingly, through what must have been a series of staggeringly serendipitous events, managed to not only release this bucket of manatee shit in a triple bill (which included the infamous The Undertaker and his Pals), he also somehow succeeded in turning a profit and shitting out a sequel, the straight-to-video, creatively titled The Corpse Grinders 2 (which employs a nearly identical storyline, except the cats are aliens this go-round). After half an hour of watching this, you will want to murder yourself in your sleep. After murdering everyone involved in the making of this movie, starting with Ted V. Mikels and working your way down. And then their families. And their pets. And their pets’ families.

Thankfully, this suckfest clocks in at a merciful 72 minutes, so the torture is relatively short-lived. But man, what a suck-filled 72 minutes it is. The actual corpse grinder machine looks like it was assembled out of cardboard by third world sweat shop flipper babies, and it spits out what uncannily resembles raw hamburger from the other end. The Lotus owner forces a mentally challenged janitor and a deaf mute woman with a peg leg to operate this machine, the latter of which clearly does not know sign language but flails her hands around anyway in an apparent attempt to conceal this obvious fact. Although, given the average intelligence of this film’s target audience, it’s a safe assumption that it doesn’t know sign language either. In conclusion, this film blows. Run, don’t walk, to the video store and rent anything but this, unless you are under the influence of many, many psychoactive substances, or you have masochistic friends like mine who enjoy subjecting themselves to trash like this for a good laugh.

-Penny Dreadful, 2003