']]}AUGUST 28, 2007
GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)
Every now and then, I get a movie from Blockbuster that just sort of puzzles me when it arrives in the mail. Such was the case with today’s movie, Raw Meat. I didn’t know anything about it, have no recollection of adding it to my queue, and in fact wasn’t even sure if it was horror movie for a while (other than the title).
The film begins with a guy who looks like Magritte’s Son of Man endlessly walking around a blurry city as the opening credits drag on for eternity. Ordinarily this would be enough for me to shut it off to at least confirm it was a horror movie, but since I spied both Donald Pleasence AND Christopher Lee in the cast, I figured it HAD to be. About a half hour later I got my confirmation, as a mutant guy living underneath the subway slits a dude’s throat and lets the blood pour into the mouth of his wife (also a mutant thing). Hurrah, it’s horror!
Even if it wasn’t I probably would have kept watching though, because Donald Pleasence is an absolute delight in this one. He’s not as batshit insane as usual; instead he just seems sort of drunk throughout the movie. He randomly throws darts around, obsesses about tea (he IS British), makes inappropriate jokes, etc. He also reminds me a bit of John Hodgman, one of the best Daily Show personalities (and fellow blogger!). There’s a scene late in the film where he just sort of argues with a bartender while his partner plays pinball that had me in stitches. Oh Donald, why couldn’t you have survived watching Halloween 6? Everyone else did.
As for Christopher Lee, I am at a loss to explain his appearance here. He almost literally appears out of thin air in the middle of a scene, has a little face-off with Donald, and then is never seen or spoken of again. I suspect he happened by the set one day and they quickly threw him in there and had him just say whatever came to his head (Donald’s reaction to his appearance certainly seems to support this theory).
This one isn’t too well known, and that is a shame. It’s a wonderful little British chiller with a decent enough horror villain (by the way, the film Creep, with Franke Potente run Lola running around a subway chased by a monster, really ripped this one off) and as said, a truly wonderful Pleasence appearance. I urge you to go check it out at once.
“But the first thing you gotta do is get some TEA!!!”
What say you?
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