FLESH
EATING MOTHERS (1989)
Directed by James Aviles Martin
Elite Entertainment DVD
Reviewed 04.05.05
Review by Joseph A. Ziemba
THE FILM
Suburban roulette for the cannibal
set? Sounds about right. All I’d
like to know is this: where in the
world did they find these people?!
Dan Clowes must have had a brain
leak.
Falling somewhere between Troma
and John Waters, just not quite
as dumb as the former and definitely
not as smart as the latter, Flesh
Eating Mothers is a true one
non-hit wonder. Director James Aviles
Martin (his only credit) apparently
rounded up a group of friends and
decided to make a morality based
horror film dealing with the rampant
spread of a cannibal-inducing STD
in a small town. Sounds pretty interesting,
at least for trashy poops and giggles,
right? There’s only one problem.
No one related to any aspect of
this picture really knew what they
were doing. That’ll get you
about halfway through...
A small town in Anyplace, USA has
a rash of dysfunctional families
and wandering libidos. Inexplicably,
some kind of STD is following around
the adulterous town stud. A few
days after this Joe Isuzu look-a-like
makes hairy, sweaty love to each
homely housewife, the old bats go
crazy for human flesh; especially
the innards of their children. After
a few gory chomps, the runaway kids
band together with a wrongly accused
cop, a nebbish scientist, and his
bombshell assistant to doll out
the antibiotics. A cop tries to
inject some religious mumbo-jumbo
for twenty seconds. We’re
gagged with some awkward (humorous?)
animation under a microscope. Two
moms pull apart a cat. Can the kids
reach the mommas (now resembling
Jack Nicholson’s Joker) before
the “shoot to kill”
cops do? Could the whole thing be
some kind of cover-up for a crooked
cop and/or the filmmakers’s
thinly veiled religious beliefs?
I’d love to answer that, but
the script never gave me a chance.
As things started out, I bought
it. The acting was atrocious, the
production values ultra-cheap (locker
room = high tech lab), the pace
was quick, and the literal Casio
soundtrack was frightful. Lots of
really fake gore too. My kind of
movie! The film had a dirty look
(smell the must in that doctor’s
office) and seemed to be throttling
the line between horror and tongue-in-cheek
weirdness with ease. About halfway
through, things started to stall
a bit, as the characters stood around
talking for awhile...and awhile
longer. From there, the film shifts
on over to the “horror comedy”
side of things, injecting lots of
wisecracks and dumb jokes at the
expense of the mom-zombies. So instead
of continued glee, the fun was cut
short due to a choppy script, lazy
direction, and uninspired ending.
It’s the high water mark of
inexperience, but the results weren’t
too fascinating. And somebody PLEASE
turn off that screeching rat/zombie
sound effect!
AUDIO AND VIDEO
Long obscured aside from Academy’s
R-rated and unrated VHS tapes, Elite
presents Mothers in a satisfying
anamorphic widescreen print, totally
uncut. There’s not a scratch
or imperfection to be seen and the
gritty 16mm photography gets a stellar
treatment. Colors are bold and the
grain is thick. If Mothers
ever had a theatrical release, I
imagine it would have looked something
like this. The mono sound was just
fine, all the better to hear that
CasioTone 101 work it on out.
EXTRAS
Just the usual chapter stops and
an amusing trailer, which gives
away nearly every gore scene in
the film.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In the grand gamut of 80s howlers,
“Flesh Eating Mothers”
is just kinda ok. It offers up a
different slant than the norm, but
can’t decide between eccentric
horror and unripe humor. Fans will
want this disc on their shelf bar
none, but a rental will do it for
everyone else. |
Couple of the year
He brings the partay
Stiiiii-rike!
My, how you've changed
|
