Feast 3

2009

Jean-Claude Seagal: "But the beasts bit off both my arms."

The bartender (Clu Gulager): "Man-up, sonny boy. You only need your legs to kick ass."

When the Gulager family assembled the sequel to Feast, they came up with about two and half hours worth of footage which they (I presume) considered worthwhile. Too long for a B movie. The best decision available to them seems to have been to split it into two films, ala Kill Bill, so they came up with Blood Feast 2 and 3. That presented some problems, of course.

(1) The films are very short, especially part three. This film begins with a re-cap of part two and ends with a long sequence in which a mariachi sings over the closing credits, describing what happened in all three parts. In between, the actual film runs about 67 minutes. (The actual running time including everything is 76 minutes.)

(2) Part two has no ending. In essence, it is really not a complete film, but merely the first half of a hypothetical long film which was not practical to release.

If one considers the matter solely from a financial perspective, they seem to have made the right decision by splitting the two films. They will get two rentals or sales instead of one, and those who see part two will have little choice but to part with another rental fee, assuming they want to know how the movie ends.

Setting aside the monetary angle, one would conclude that they really should have cut the film significantly, resulting in one taut 90 minute horror comedy. As it stands now, the gore scenes go on too long and many of them take place in the dark. Some of those are lit by a sort of strobe light effect, resulting in a headache-inducing experience. And that's a shame, because the combined Feast 2-3 has the elements necessary to make it an absolute classic of horror comedy. The dialogue can be hilarious, the character's names and mini-bios are a real hoot, the outrageous gore is funny in small doses, and some of the plot developments are laugh-out-loud funny.

This film develops its plot gags in two different ways.

1) Great surprises. One example: a stranger called Shitkicker rolls into town, and he's so tough that he convinces the humans that they can overcome the monsters by taking the fight to them. He's about to lead them to war, and he's teaching the bimbo how to use a revolver. Sexual tension is generating between them when she accidentally pulls the trigger and blows his head off. Hope destroyed. The film plays with genre conventions like that, constantly avoiding the presumed route and providing the unexpected twist, right up until the very end.

2) Complete illogic. The demented prophet, Short Bus Gus, who is obviously not the sharpest thorn on the rose, convinces the humans in the small town called Smalltown that they should abandon their plan to escape using vehicles, and should instead make it to "the big city" by crawling through the storm drains. We already know that Smalltown is in the middle of nowhere and, just a few minutes earlier, the late, lamented Shitkicker had told the group that he had been driving an entire day without seeing anyone. So the city would have to be - what? - five or six hundred miles away? They have to crawl on their hands and knees through the storm drains, moving at about 30 feet per minute. Even in the unlikely event that the storm drains and sewers span the entire desert to the big city, you can easily figure that such a trip would take them months, even if they could crawl non-stop. Plus nobody among them is familiar with the layout of the underground route. Oh, and by the way, the preacher has a magical ability to make the beasts go away, so if the stragglers were to stay on the street, the preacher could easily use his powers to allow them to find as many vehicles as they needed.  So, when the preacher makes the storm drain suggestion, what do they do? Why, they follow him into a manhole, of course. What else?

Feast 3 can be marvelously over-the-top, and I did laugh a lot at some of the antics in this film and the previous one, but I also caught myself yawning through long, repetitious sequences. Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.

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Feast 2 ended with about fifteen minutes in which Melissa Reed and Chelsea Richards were topless continuously. Since part three is just the same movie continued, Reed and Richards return for another nine minutes or so of toplessness at the start of this one. The scenes are not edited. This is the first nine minutes of the film shown continuously. The footage therefore includes several scenes not featuring "Tit Girl" and "Tat Girl."

Melissa Reed dies soon and fully clothed, but Chelsea Richards provides an additional two minutes of nudity about a half-hour later, when she dies with her boots on - and her top off.