I was going to review Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil, but it was boring as hell. Long story short, just watch the first three films as they’re better. Instead, I came upon this, which was far more interesting.
Feast is a 2005 comedy horror film directed by John Gulager and is the first film in the Feast series. It’s also a super rated-R film, containing tons of blood, rape references, and lots of gross-out humor.
The film is about a bunch of bar patrons fighting off a group of monsters.
It begins by introducing all the characters in the bar with their own The Faculty/Megaman boss-style title cards, detailing the characters’ occupations and their life expectancies, even if most of them are inaccurate.
The main character to note is Tuffy (Krista Allen), a waitress who works parttime as a prostitute. More on her a bit later.
The cast are joined by Hero (Eric Dane), who brings them the severed head of a decapitated monster, warning that more are on their way. He says he’s the guy who’s going to save their asses…but is then decapitated himself by another monster.
They’re soon joined by Hero’s wife, Heroine (Navi Rawat), and a small monster that runs around causing complete chaos: cutting off Harley Mom’s (Diane Ayala Goldner) leg, killing Vet (Anthony “Treach” Criss) and Edgy Cat (Jason Mewes), and destroying the bar’s only phone.
The cast do manage to capture the monster in a small freezer. Tuffy and her client, Bossman (Duane Whitaker), who was accidentally shot in the foot during the chaos, come downstairs to see the carnage.
Realizing that there are monsters, Tuffy runs back upstairs to get her son, Cody (Tyler Patrick Jones). Now, according to his title card, Cody’s supposed to have a long life. Guess the monsters didn’t read it, since after slapping Tuffy away, one of them devours him, horrifying Tuffy.
Also, Beer Guy (Judah Friedlander) gets puked on by the same monster, which slowly rots him. He attempts to leave to get help, but Heroine shuts that down.
After the group reinforce the bar, they kill the small creature, shocked at how hard it was to kill. Not-Tony Robbins, Coach (Henry Rollins), hangs the creature’s carcass outside as a warning to the other monsters.
However, one of them eats the baby’s carcass and does it “doggie style” (their words, not mine) with another before shitting out two more creatures.
It’s then that we get exposition. After dropping off their daughter, Hero and Heroine were going out for the night when they accidentally hit one of the monsters. Out of revenge, the rest of its pack chased the couple to the bar.
Bossman is pissed that they brought this horseshit to his tavern, but Heroine says the monsters would’ve come to the bar eventually.
Heroine and Coach decide to grab Bossman’s truck so the group can escape. To help them, the others turn Harley Mom’s corpse into a bomb…except she’s still alive. When she begs for help, she’s raped by a monster and gets blown up.
When the plan fails, Heroine runs back to the bar, but gets shot by the group’s cowardly asshole, Bozo (Balthazar Getty), and gets eaten by the monsters.
With everything going to hell, Tuffy decides to take lead, even getting a new title card, christening her “Heroine 2”.
The monsters attack again, killing Bossman and Coach. Tuffy and the others literally make a Donkey Kong-style barrel trap (which they said by name earlier) to shoo them away.
During the chaos, the ditzy, Ms. Fanservice waitress, Honey Pie (Jenny Wade), makes it to the truck, so she can use it to save the others…except not really. She drives off and leaves them to die.
The monsters break inside the bar and attack, killing Beer Guy (who had earlier had his eye ripped out, rotted further, and became brain damaged). Bozo’s brother, Hot Wheels (Josh Zuckerman) decapitates a monster with a bear trap.
Bozo and Bartender (Clu Gulager) pin the last monster down with a table, and Tuffy takes aim at it with a shotgun…but it goes about as well as you’d expect by now. The shotgun is empty, the monster nearly overpowers the three, and Bartender has a heart attack.
Tuffy uses the shotgun to knock out the monster’s teeth and shoves her arm down its throat, chocking it to death.
When the sun rises, Tuffy, Bozo and Hot Wheels leave, probably going to find Heroine’s daughter. The film ends with them driving away…except the car breaks down, but they get it to work again.
Well, there is a mid-credit scene. Grandma (Eileen Ryan), who had earlier locked herself in a storage room with a bottle of booze, is attacked by another monster.
As you can see, fate craps on the cast throughout the film. You’d also probably notice that each character’s name is related to what they do in the film.
Tuffy, aka Heroine 2, is the film’s true protagonist. She’s basically an expy of Barbara from Night of the Living Dead, being the central character during the beginning and ending, but sitting on the sideline during the middle.
She is the film’s most interesting character. True to her name, she does become “tough”.
Bozo is also true to his name, being cowardly and often messing up. He kills Heroine 1 (albeit by accident), and he has an epic one-liner against the final monster, preparing to burn it with a Molotov…but the monster extinguishes it with Bartender’s blood.
Despite his cowardice, he still somehow ends up being the deuteragonist.
Hot Wheels is Bozo’s wheelchair-bound brother. He ends up as the tritagonist by default, but he does make plans, such as creating the distraction bomb. Aside from Cody, he’s the nicest character, though he does object to Tuffy looking for Heroine’s daughter.
Heroine initially does the most to help the situation. It’s implied Hero would’ve been just as helpful, but we’ll never know for sure. It’s also implied that Tuffy will likely adopt their daughter now that she’s childless herself.
Honey Pie’s main thing was to just stand there, looking sexy, and scream when messed up things happened. Her leaving everyone to die was a dick move. Actually, it reminded me of Tracy from Diary of the Dead, a character who basically does the same thing.
Beer Guy is the comic relief character, despite all the terrible things that happen to him. He also suffers a Rasputin-esque death, having a ton of shit mess with him until he’s eventually killed.
Most of the other characters are plot devices and red shirts. Bozo thought Grandma would be an exposition character just because she’s “old” and seen things.
The monsters were the main antagonist. They’re a bunch of unknown, horny creatures dressed in animal pellets, wearing deer skulls as helmets, and are sometimes covered in blood. They hump anything they see, and attack humans unprovoked.
Well, they do attack Hero and Heroine after their car hits one of their kind, but it’s implied that they would’ve attacked the others at the bar eventually. While the film never reveals exactly what they are, their appearance suggests that they’re either a species of skin walker or wendigo.
Feast was disgusting. It relies a bit too much on sex and gross-out humor. Plus, the whole rape aspect will turn some off. Personally, I’ve seen grosser films, but this is one for those with strong stomachs.
There are two more films in the series: Feast II: Sloppy Seconds, and Feast III: The Happy Finish, which reveals what happened to Honey Pie.
Overall, I halfway recommend Feast. The dark humor can be funny at times, and the film is aware of itself (hence the title cards). But it’s bogged down by gross-out humor (the worst kind of humor) and sexual references, especially rape. Personally, I did like Tuffy, even though she worked as a prostitute and sat out the film’s middle. For me, I think seeing this film once was enough.
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