| Blood Diner (1987) |
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| Director: | Jackie Kong |
| Writers: | Michael Sonye |
| Starring: | Rick Burks, Carl Crew and Roger Dauer |
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The Plot: Blood Diner is the classic story of two brothers and their devotion to their faith. Unfortunately, their faith is in allegiance to an ancient pagan god named Sheetar who requires a “blood buffer” in order to arise and destroy all of humanity. George (Carl Crew) and Michael Tutman (Rick Burks) were absorbed into this cult at an early age right before their crazy uncle was shot dead for committing a series of grisly murders. When George and Michael grow up, they take over in their uncle’s work and start up their own restaurant that specializes in Sheetar-prepared delicacies. Pining for his advice, the boys soon dig up their uncle’s body and remove his brain from his corpse. They speak some magic words and revive his spirit inside of this disembodied brain, which they place inside of a jar. With their dear uncle at the helm, this group looks to find as many “dirty” girls as they can and use them as sacrifices in order to wake Sheetar up from her slumber. |
| The Review |
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This movie is full of strange characters to go with its incredibly strange sense of humor. The rogues gallery of weird characters who are given an unexpected amount of screen time are part of the movies charm though. We have Vitamin C, who is essentially just some very large man who loves the food served at the Diner. He is continually beaten up by Michael (Rick Burks) throughout the movie, which makes you wonder why he would ever frequent such a diner in the first place. Michael himself is a fairly odd duck, now that I mention it. All we know about this character is that he loves professional wrestling and he absolutely loathes the pro-wrestler “Savage” Jimmy Hitler. Despite being a fairly small guy, Michael also dreams of one day stepping into the ring with Hitler. George, Michael’s slightly more sane brother, does the majority of the talking throughout the movie. This seems odd until you notice that Michael essentially acts like an ape for the majority of the picture. It is never explained why his character is so over the top and wild, despite being raised in the same household as his more reserved and seemingly normal brother. However, I like this fact and I like the dynmaic that it creates between these characters. In a more conventional film, George would be a “leading man” and he would come to his senses and tame his wild brother. Blood Diner is far from conventional, however. Finally, I have to comment on my favorite character. There’s this one character who hangs at every diner in town, throughout the entire movie, and he is OBVIOUSLY a prop dummy. Yes, a dummy. He is set at the counter and is given a voiceover that sounds a lot like a chipmunk. The fact that this character is blatantly fake is never once acknowledged. Not even when he is lifted into the sky and thrown across a diner during one sequence. Surreal and out of this world, this one character defines everything that is “right” about Blood Diner.
| The Conclusion |
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