Flak_Magnet

Although this Grindhouse-era sleazer is the genuine article, and features enough griminess and mysogeny to merit its title, the film's relative tameness and tediousness made for a fatiguing watch. As such, this trash is recommended only to genre completists. The women are mixed, from very hot to rather plain, and they seem to be dispatched in order of their overall sexiness. That said, however, there isn't a lot of violence here, with the majority of the encounters relegated to generic harassment and lame-o psychological domineering. The story involves a pair of backwoods brothers, whose mentally ill, incestuous mother has twisted them into dementia. After years of abuse, the brothers eventually find solace in kidnapping young women and keeping them captive in a makeshift cellar, visiting them periodically for faux-childish "playtime," which involves anything from kiddie-style doctor scenarios, unwholesome "hide-and-seek" stuff, with the brother's shooting one girl as she runs away; and miscellaneous intimidation and humiliation. There is a decent amount of nudity, but no more so than your average grindhouse flick. The dialog and scene structures are repetitive, and the story is basically a joke. In the end, this one looks fugly and sounds fugly, and you'll spend the majority of the time just admiring the 70's skin. Been there, done that, friends, and I've seen it done a whole lot better than "Schoolgirls in Chains." Unless you just have to see every entry from the sleazier end of the Grindhouse front, you can pass on this one. ---|--- Was this review helpful?

Well, its a weird one. And I don't mean weird like Crispin Glover. I'm talking presidential pig mask, live-action Thomas Hart Benton painting, astronaut dairy farmer weird, people.... Anyway, this flick comes from the outer ring of the 80's, and was probably originally conceived as a stage production, in the vein of "Little Shop of Horrors." Of course, weird is a good thing, and I can't say I had a bad time here, but I left "Big Meat Eater" on a bit of a confused note, not really absorbent of what I just witnessed. There really is some nut-ragious stuff in this one, like a 500lb B.B. King look-alike in a shriner outfit, Boy George vampire vocalist, and enough meat-related gore to show up H.G. Lewis. Throw in Ed Wood-style flying saucers, wind-up toy aliens, and 4-5 pretty righteous musical numbers, and you are gravitationally close. The story involves a Rivers Cuomo look-alike, who is commissioned to head up some sort of citizen's committee, after the town's mayor is killed and then resurrected via alien possession. Meanwhile, a scientist and his father work to construct the town's futuristic sewage treatment facility, which is secretly destined to be the launchpad for the aliens' invasion. Add into the mix some Croatian fortune tellers, Troma-flavored camp, and an intergalactic Oldsmobile, and you've got the fixins for a B-movie headscratcher that really defies description. Recommend some irradiated, lobster-clawed dwarfs, eagle-eyed bongwielder princess, and bathtub absynthe with this one. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet

This is a surprisingly good made-for-TV thriller and it wins props for originality points. Stacey Keach plays a photojournalist, on the road for an assignment, which takes him into the woods of the rural south. A chance encounter with a young boy, who Keach sees carrying groceries down a desolate dirt road, leads him to the boy's home, nestled very deep in the backwoods. Once he is thoroughly "in the hollar," Keach's car breaks down, and he has no choice but to spend the night in the house of the young boy, whose three brothers and two sisters respond with eerie approval. What follows next is a strange and pretty cool story about a family of dangerous orphans, who entrap Keach and a woman in a perverse plan to reaquire surrogate parents. Despite his efforts to escape, Keach is unsuccesful, and he quickly discovers how clever and intelligent the kids' plan really is. (He also discovers that he isn't the first to be taken in by the group). Can Keach escape before it is too late? This is a story that, despite its perverse absurdity, could actually happen, I suppose, and the picture's scenarios are consistently interesting and unpredicatble. It is a good script and the cast all fit their roles well. Particularly good is John Savage (e.g. "The Deer Hunter"), who plays the group's oldest brother and de facto father figure. All in all, this is a pretty obscure, minor little film, but I'd recommend it to fans of 70's cinema, as well as anyone who enjoys a thriller involving kuntry folk. This one surprised me. (PS: In this same vein, I'd recommend the highly underrated "Hunter's Blood." It is OOP, but worth seeking).