Big Meat Eater (1984)

Too much of everything

Awesome Movie

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

I like to use this picture to demonstrate the fallacy of imitative form: mere awareness of a picture's kitschy origins or its own camp qualities are not themselves a virtue. If you set out to ape bad alien sci fy, and don't add anything into the mix that is on its own clever or funny or in some way entertaining, you just wind up with bad alien sci fy. Repo Man managed to be a true original, while casting a wink at its drive in antecedents. Big Meat Eater is just on par with its earlier influences, and in no way transcends them.On its merits, BME is a terribly cheap and shoddy looking picture. The plotting is so random and haphazard that nothing that happens in the film seems in any way organically related to anything else that happens. One scene just stops and another starts up somewhere else. To call the effect incomprehensible is to suggest that BME merits comprehending. It doesn't. It's not a clever send-up, just cheap silly nonsense that somebody put together on a zero budget. It generates little conventional b-movie sizzle, in that there is little suspense, surprise or originality. It isn't even all that amusing as Bad Movie Note entertainment, in that its crazy grab bag of a plot fails to actually pull the viewer along. Random silly stuff just happens, and then more random silly stuff happens.Get a grip guys. This is not a 10 of a movie despite some of the ratings above. It's just a cheap, backyard production put together in some sleepy Canadian burg by amateurs who watched a lot of bad creature features and wanted to make their own.

If you like films that are totally bizarre, then this one is for you! Abdullah is one mean mother, with a passion for strangling people and eating ham. You should check this film out, just for a laugh. It is a low budget sci-fi, musical, comedy, cannibalistic, classic. If you get bored of the film half way through you should persevere, just for the sake of seeing the aliens, which are nothing more than little toy robots, but in my opinion are the films highlight. "I'm the Big Meat Eater, pass me

When I was young and impressionable, I saw this on TV, very late at night, and I didn't realize it was a spoof. I was terrified by the whole egg-beater hand thing, and a rotting pig's head: oh no! But now, years later, I've finally wrangled a copy of the film, and I have to wonder two things: 1) How could I ever take this seriously? and 2) Why isn't it a cult classic yet?This is an incredibly detailed film; every minute is filled with weird comments, dialogue, music, characters, effects, and then more music. The dinner-table conversations (especially the 50's-ish obsession with kitchen appliances), the butcher's goofy rants about his invented language...these are classic!And the music is -- believe it or not -- good music. It spans many different genres and does a good job in all of them, but watch for the incredibly strange, Devo-esque chemical song; the guy's new wave dance will scare you far more than any of the creepier moments in the film.As for the plot, who cares? It isn't important; in fact, I don't think the plot is there to keep you interested or to make sense; it's just an instrument to set up weird dialogue, songs, and gags. And yes, though it sometimes tries too hard, it usually succeeds.Ever wonder what you can do with a lot of talented, enthusiastic nobody's and a miniscule budget? Check it out and see.

Utterly, utterly indescribable...but I'll try anyway.Okay...a friendly butcher in a small town discovers that the meat he is discarding in his basement has turned into the super-energetic element Baloney-ium.The mayor of the small town fires Abdullah, the stoker for the city hall furnace. Abdullah gets angry and kills the mayor. He hides the body in the butcher's shop.A youthful inventor builds a spaceship out of his car, but needs an energy source.Aliens descend from the skies and turn the mayor into their undead slave. He breaks free from the butcher shop and acquires a prosthetic limb - an egg beater hand.The town is celebrating their centennial. The undead mayor hires the butcher to design a "Town of the Future" pavillion (actually an alien landing site) and gets the father of the youthful inventor to build it.Abdullah is hired as the butcher's assistant and starts serving up the town's residents and dogs.The youthful inventor is changed into mutant and later poses as his fortune-teller grandmother to...I give up.And so on. Big Meat Eater is actually quite funny...lots of singing and dancing numbers, horrible production values, the cheapest aliens of all time, and a climatic space battle at the end.Hardcore jazz fans may recognize Abdullah as "Big" Miller, the Alberta jazz-man. Seeing him on film, it's very easy to see where he got his nickname. He's one of the largest men I've ever seen who could still walk around.The only real criticisms I have of it is that it tries too hard in spots...sometimes it becomes a little too much of a self-conscious spoof. Also, the sound quality is poor at times. Abdullah is often inaudible, as is the inventor's sister.This movie...well, it's a hidden gem to say the least. I know of only two other people who have seen it. Once in a very rare while it will be shown on late-night Canadian TV. I have it on tape, if anyone's interested in getting a copy.