31 Days of Horror: "Blood Diner"

by Sean McTiernan

Of all the movies we’re discussing this month,Blood Diner is the most divorced from reality. It makes an incredibly consistent argument for its own distance from verity. While most films take place in somewhere at least tangentially relatable, Blood Diner drives across that line it in a flaming Cadillac. A Cadillac made of cannibalism, Nudie suits and wrestlers called Eddie Hitler.

Two brothers, Mike and George, run a vegetarian restaurant. They are also cannibals and so tend to include human remains in their food. And cat corpses. Of course, their restaurant is insanely popular. The implication here is: if you put a dead man’s asscheek in vegetarian food, it will probably taste better than all other vegetarian food. The brothers belong to an ancient cult. Their tradition was handed down by their uncle, seconds before he was gunned down by police after he raped and murdered an entire glee club. Blood Diner is the story of Mike and George trying to sew together women’s body parts so they can resurrect the goddess Shitaar with their dead uncle’s brain inside. Oh and they still have to run the restaurant. And there’s some wrestling and at least three musical numbers. So no, not really the proto-mumblecore movie some of you may have been hoping for.

One of my favourite minor horror characters is this fat vegetarian trucker. When asked his name he says, “You can call me Vitamin, see?”. Despite the groaning you are doing inside your head, this is an extremely excellent joke and deserves to be admired. Especially since no “real” name is given, and this pudgy beardy man is known as “Vitamin C” for the rest of the movie. He repeatedly enthuses (in an oddly-dubbed voice) about the boys’ cooking and seems obliviously friendly, despite how frequently he gets the shite hammered out of him by one of the brothers. These beatings are occasionally so severe they induce vomiting. (Also frequent: the horrible dubbing. I don’t even know if it’s intentional but I’d like to think so.)

There’s very little competition for single funniest scene in Blood Diner. I mean, how many movies have produced such a casually-received car crash?

When not preparing for the resurrection of Shitaar or cooking vegetarian meals with dog dicks, brother George Tutman is tormented by the existence of wrestler Eddie Hitler. Eddie is a bleach blond jock whose only real attempt at a costume is a swastika arm band and a moustache like the dude in Sparks. It’s a rare film that takes time out from its demon resurrection/cannibal vegetarian restaurant plot line to resolve a wrestling match, but this is a braver movie than most.

The reason the movie is so blithely offensive and unrealistically insane is quite simple: it cares about its audience. Director Jackie Kong knew that schlock cinema doesn’t present acting and emotional resonance very well. So why make the mistake many other schlocky movies make and insert long, pointless dialogue exchanges and expository scenes? Instead the film takes what would constitute the craziest five minutes of most campy horror movies and extends that maniac bizarreness into a whole movie. I’ve gotten this far and there are still a glut of lunatic scenes I haven’t even touched on yet. Like when George deep fries a naked woman’s head and then slices it off with a shovel. Or the machine gunning of a room full of teenage girls doing naked cheerleading. Or even the musical number at the end where Mike Tutman and his implausible quiff are backed by 6 rockabilly Hitlers.

This movie is deeply committed to entertaining and offending. If you you’re not driven to laughter and/or vomit by whatever’s onscreen, wait a few seconds and something on a whole other plane of crazy will arrive. Blood Diner is the opposite of Michael Haneke’s Cache. It’s non-stop stimulus, the plot is actually something you’ll want to follow, it achieves what it sets out to do and the ending is ambiguous in a satisfying way rather than just a feeble attempt to be arty. That’s right, I just took down famous movie director Michael Haneke. That’s how pumped up this movie’s ever-escalating adrenaline assualt has left me. This is what movies are about.

Sean Mc Tiernan has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone, though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum. You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.