Feast is a deliciously wacky horror comedy with a tinge of exploitation elements thrown in for good measure. It was a creature film that made many people squirm in their chairs owing to the monsters’ strange behavior. While many critics were critical of the premise of lustful bloodthirsty creatures in a little plot, it was a classic guilty pleasure.
Feast expanded the boundaries of permissible monster behavior, and we had a creature feature unlike anything else. The violence was frequently excessive, with gallons of blood gushing from wounds and bodies being torn apart. The final nail in the coffin was the creatures’ reproductive activity, which perplexed viewers due to its peculiarity.
It was not about extensive character introductions or complicated narratives in this gruesome creature feature. The filmmakers went straight to the narrative, in which creatures appear out of nowhere and begin slaying humans. It did not appeal to the general public or major film critics, but it did find a place on the list of oddest horror series. In this video, we will delve into the macabre world of the Feast films and tell you everything you need to know about them.
A Quick Summary of the Three movies in the Franchise
Before we go into any further details, here is a brief summary of how the movies unfold. So, the first movie starts off in the most dramatic fashion. People are seen having a good time in a bar when suddenly a man covered in blood enters the premises. He warns all those inside about a grave danger, but none of the people take him seriously until he shows them the head of one of the attacking creatures.
However, soon after, he is pulled out through a window by one of the monsters and killed. The crazy stuff just gets too real, and the bar patrons struggle to keep the strange creatures outside. A young monster finds its way in through an uncovered window and launches a vicious attack. Someone’s face is torn off while someone else loses their leg, and we are soon greeted by a bizarre sight.
The monster is seen trying to mate with a deer head that is mounted on the wall. It takes a shotgun blast to stop the monster, and it drops into a freezer where they seal it shut. However, peace is momentary, and to make things worse, the only working phone in the bar has been shattered by a shotgun blast.
We encounter another disturbing behavior of the monsters when the parents of the slain creature reproduce in a matter of seconds after mating. The movie is all about the remaining survivors trying to perfect an improbable escape as the monsters start attacking with renewed fury. A glimmer of hope arose when one of the people made it to a truck, but the optimism was brief as she drives off by herself. In the end, it is a massacre as the survivors fall in their hopeless fight against the monsters.
Feast II: Sloppy Seconds was released in 2008, three years after the first movie, and is almost a direct sequel. The plot picks off from where the first movie ended, and Biker Queen, the twin sister of one of the characters, is seeking revenge for her sister’s death. She heads to a deserted town with four friends, and it looks like the town has already been overrun by the vicious beasts.
They continue looking for her sister’s killer, ignoring the slaughter that has taken place, and it doesn’t take long for the monsters to attack again. Yes, the same trend of survival horror in a creature feature follows. We have more disturbing moments, such as a character throwing a baby to the monsters to distract them and escape. There are gruesome moments where some characters suffer horrible deaths through disembowelment and other morbid means. The climax of the movie hangs in the balance as we see the protagonists in a helpless situation preparing to fight the inevitable!
The third and final film of the Feast trilogy was released in 2009 and is called Feast III: The Happy Finish. Remember the girl who got away in a truck in the first movie without saving the others. She finally meets with a satisfying end when a monster beheads her. The story again picks off from where the second movie left, and we see the remaining survivors cornered on the roof of a building.
They manage to get away to a police station, but the monsters follow them there. Among them is a person named Slasher who has plenty of used cars that can help in escaping, and the task now is to get to them. However, the hopes soon turn to despair when Slasher is raped by a monster and impregnated. To our horror, we watch a monster burst through his stomach, resembling a Slasher hybrid.
Eventually, Biker Queen and one of her friends board a bus and plan to escape the hellish region. When their bus fumbles and monsters swarm it, help arrives unexpectedly in the form of a man named Short Bus Gas. He has some unique ability to repel the creatures and guide them into the sewers to make it to the big city.
In this film, we see horrible instances of mutation and insanity that the creatures caused in the people. In an anti-climactic ending, there are only a few survivors remaining, and just as they think the trouble is over, a giant robotic foot crushes one of them! Are the makers leaving room for a sequel? We will come to that towards the end of this video.
Catchy Characters and Deviation from the Convention
We have already spoken about how the Feast franchise broke a few barriers in terms of the conventions of slasher horror flicks. For instance, it was pretty difficult to identify the characters that would last till the end. People who seemed easy targets survived while those that seemed promising were done away within a flash. The carnal urges of the Feast monsters were also something that we hadn’t seen before.
It was an engaging narrative where horror was carefully blended with humor. It was subtle and obvious at the same time, and there were times when it seemed more like a parody of the usual creature features.
It was a narrative full of unexpected twists. For instance, just as someone seems to escape in a car, it runs out of gas. Just when you think that babies will be safe, they get slaughtered by monsters. The sense of desperation prevails, but you would still see characters delivering ridiculous dialogues just to keep up the fun quotient. The violence is disturbing, but we would be lying if we said it wasn’t funny in places. The baby being thrown at the monsters to distract them had us laughing our lungs out! Let us take a quick look at some of the characters featured in the movies.
One of the main characters is that of Bartender, who is an army veteran and currently works at the bar serving drinks to the patrons. He was seen in the very first scene when the monsters started attacking. He has been one of the few survivors and a recurring character in the sequels as well. The Hero, whom we thought to be the savior, had the most dramatic entry. This was the blood-soaked man who enters the bar trying to warn everyone about the monsters.
He had a shotgun in his hand, and just as he assures everyone that he would protect them, a monster pulls him out through a window. They purposely used comical names for the characters such as Honey Pie, Slasher, Secrets, and Lightning. Biker Queen was another tough character who took the fight to the monsters besides looking to avenge the death of her sister. It is largely due to such colorful characters that the movie was as entertaining as it was!
The Origin of these Underrated Gems
The Feast franchise owes big time to the Project Greenlight that was launched by the likes of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. It was a TV series that focused on giving first-time filmmakers a platform. The winning team would have an opportunity to develop a proper feature film, and in the third season, director John Gulager and writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan were the winners. It had a star-studded executive producer team consisting of Wes Craven, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon.
The movie had high hopes, but the limited release was greeted with a dull response. The critics bashed the unusual content, and the audiences didn’t really fill up the theatres. Thus, it ended up being a commercial failure, only to be appreciated later when people realized the true worth of this entertainer. The two sequels were direct-to-DVD films, and John Gulager continued the narrative without breaking the continuity.
The original script for the first movie reportedly had many more action sequences that were edited out because the producers did not want to go overboard with the budget. The director has admitted later that the first movie was always under a lot of pressure because of the constant presence of the cameramen from Project Greenlight who were observing every move.
However, for the second project, though the writers remained the same, constant attention was missing. This probably allowed the team to work more freely, although most people find the first Feast movie the best one in the lot.
What Are Feast Beasts?
How can a discussion on the Feast franchise be complete without a detailed analysis of the grotesque creatures in the movies? One of the best things about these mysterious creatures was that the makers never really cared to explain their origin. We don’t know what these monsters were or how they suddenly appeared in the town.
Were they government experiments gone wrong or simply aliens? While all these questions remained unanswered, it did add to the suspense that surrounded them. It is believed by many that the government was trying to form an army of super-soldiers, but the experiment went horribly wrong, creating these carnivorous mutants that couldn’t be controlled.
The Feast Beasts were basically intelligent bipedal humanoid monsters that hunted down their prey in packs. They had majorly carnivorous tendencies and were always hungry for more. They walked upright just like humans and had two arms and two legs. However, they had only three fingers on each hand, and these ended in sharp claws that could rip their prey to shreds.
Their long sharp teeth were deadlier than a chainsaw, and the scenes where they tear into the flesh of their victims will give you a fair idea about their strength. These monsters were freakishly strong, and they attacked in dozens. They usually towered over the humans and were around seven feet high with a strong build.
Their claws and teeth weren’t their only weapons, and they also had a deadly acid vomit that would corrode the victims by melting and burning them. There was another striking feature that made them a big threat even when one was cornered. These humanoid beasts had a cry for help that would draw the other monsters towards the location for help in no time! Their armor wasn’t impenetrable, but their speed and hardy nature didn’t make things any easier for those fighting them.
Their Disturbing Mating Habits
This has been the root cause behind many controversies that surrounded this movie. Religious groups across the country opposed a few Satanic tendencies in these creatures. They had humanoid genitalia and could mate with just about anything. It could be animals of any species, including humans, and the monsters would spawn a hybrid creature in no time!
These creatures seemed perpetually lustful and would hump anything in sight eager to procreate. There are scenes where the monsters forcibly mate with their victims, and the offspring would take seconds to burst out of them. We got a faint idea about their intelligence when they smartly avoided the traps that were laid out for them by the survivors. They seemed to understand the plans that were hatched to get the better of them and were absolutely merciless when they slaughtered their victims.
The Tiresome Monster Suits
If you see the monsters in the franchise, you will get a fair idea of how tricky it is to implement them on screen. The easy answer to that was the monster suits that were put into good effect, but they did come with their own set of challenges. For starters, the ridiculous monster suits were ridiculously designed and almost like little heat chambers.
The people who had to don these suits would get tired after being inside them in the hot weather conditions. In fact, the production team allotted them tiny fans that could be placed on their laps when they had the chance to catch a break.
At times, they even had to be provided with little oxygen tubes up their nose because the suit would get too suffocating. Running around in these suits proved to be a tedious task, and after a single run down the street, the people would be exhausted. For the second film, the location was a small town where people didn’t take too kindly to the shooting hazards. The makers had to be very careful not to piss off the grumpy locals and ensure that the filming continued smoothly.
Our Final Words
If you observe the storyline, Feast III wasn’t really closure for the franchise. This is where fans were hoping for a sequel to finish things off once and for all. However, it has been a rather long wait. The director has admitted in an interview that the script for the fourth film in the franchise is ready. However, he couldn’t provide a timeline as to when the movie would be made. As fans of the franchise, we certainly hope that the waiting ends soon and we get to enjoy another entertaining monster flick!
Yes, we are aware that we just glorified a franchise that is nothing more than cheap thrills for many. People find the content offensive, the gore repulsive, and the story inadequate, but we have our reasons to love this project.
It paved the way for the most ridiculous ideas to be implemented in the world of creature feature flicks. The narrative is surely sloppy and messy with blood and violence, but the director knew his way around such stuff. In a nutshell, all we can say is that there is a seamless transition from one film to another, and the three movies can be a fun binge-watch with a couple of beers!