Have You Ever Watched: Feast
This is the seventh in a recurring series I will be doing highlighting obscure, unknown, forgotten and underrated horror movies. The goal is to bring to light great horror of yesterday and today that just are not on most people’s radar. Just assume spoilers will be included. Enjoy.
Everyone has a best friend, right? Let me tell you a little bit about mine. Once upon a time I was a young thundercat just starting out my career in IT. I worked on a help desk for a moderate sized company, an entry level position that I acquired with my recently minted adult education degree and my first “white collar” job. Now I had always worked “blue collar” jobs before this, demolition, constructions, factory work etc and the rules and regulations about behavior and appearance were not as strict. No one cared if you had tattoos, or didn’t shave in the morning so transferring to this new industry I made sure I wore long sleeve shirts to cover up all my tattoos, I talked with the most proper English I could muster and I wore a tie.
One day a new guy started at the office, a guy I had never seen in this office space world, this guy was my soon to be best friend. He wanders in day one with a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-Shirt on, camo shorts and more diamonds on his wrist and neck than a than an early 2000’s rapper. I had to talk to this guy, he looked like a “normal human” instead of an office drone. I was not wrong, we immediately became good friends having much in common in interests like heavy metal, pro-wrestling and of course horror movies. Not just any horror movies, bad, ugly, obscure, absurd horror movies like C.H.U.D. (which he has the movie poster of) and Rawhead Rex.
Now when you have a friend whose interests are so similar to yours it’s difficult to shock and surprise them with something new. We always did the back and forth, did you see this? Have you watched this? Have you heard of this? And so on and so forth but one day he stumped me, he mentioned a movie I had never seen. FEAST. So, I said to him, “no bro, I’ve never heard of Feast, what’s it about?” and he gave the most gloriously accurate response ever.
“Bro, it’s a movie about a bunch of scumbags in this shitty bar that’s surrounded by demons who face-fuck people”
Have You Ever Watched Feast? No? OMG, let me tell you about it.
Feast, released in 2005, is what they refer to as a box office bomb. It had a budget of 3.2 million dollars and only made $650,000 in return. Now with a movie like this the Wikipedia usually says “…despite critical and commercial success, the film has acquired a cult following…”. This is not true for Feast. The only time you hear people talk about this movie are those who stumbled upon it during it’s initial release like my friend did or those introduced to it by someone else but the consensus is the same, this movie is awesome! It has a cult following deep within the world of cult followings.
The description provided by my best friend is accurate; the story does follow a group of scumbags trapped in a shitty bar that’s surrounded by face fucking monsters. The opening sequence of the movie introduces us to all the various scumbags and hooligans in the dive bar in a sequence similar to character introduction in Smokin’ Aces or the beginning of Walking Tall which names the character, gives a bit of backstory in a one sentence blurb and details their expectations to survive the film in a very tongue in cheek way. It’s worth noting none of the characters have “real” names, the bios give them names like Coach for the 3rd tier motivation speaker played by Henry Rollins or Bozo for the village idiot played by Balthazar Getty, but no one in the movie ever refers to anyone by any name.
Soon after we are introduced to the “scumbags” in the bar, a mysterious blood soaked, shotgun wielding mysterious man enters the bar and warns everyone that evil is coming. This character is introduced as “Hero” but soon after his introduction the monsters burst through the window and bite his head off and all hell breaks loose. The cute bar maid “Honey Pie” gets soaked in blood, the bartender, “Bartender” shoots wildly hitting the bar owner, “Bossman” and they finally fend off the monster just as Hero’s wife, aptly named Heroine, enters the bar looking for her now decapitated husband. The movie opens in a fairly slow way introducing all the characters in the bar, 15 of them in total, so it takes a while to get to the nitty gritty, but once the “Hero” gets his head ripped off in just one of the scenes that’s a middle finger to standards and norms it’s non stop action and gore from here on out.
As they start boarding up the doors and windows a little version of the monster runs into the bar, he hops around breaking shit, chopping off a woman’s leg, ripping off the face of Jason Mewes, who plays himself, and using the age old chest bursting technique to kill the Marine “Vet” played by Treach before being shot and stuffed in a freezer while he was humping a moose head hanging on the wall. Now, I mentioned before this movie was a box office bomb but, how? It was produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Wes Craven, the cast includes, Henry Rollins, Jason Mewes, Judah Friedlander and Treach from Naughty by Nature. Why didn’t this get a huge release? Maybe it’s the many aspects that are a middle finger to the horror genre like the Hero killing (multiple times), child murder (I’ll get into it) and bad guys saving the day? Perhaps it’s the horny little demon who face fucks people? Maybe the politically incorrect language that’s commonly used? I guess we’ll never know.
Child Murder. Oh, yeah. One of the bartenders, Tuffy, is a single mom who has her son hiding in the upstairs apartment above the bar. The crew of misfits rushes upstairs to get him but a monster bursts through the window, eats him, spraying blood everywhere and then pukes green goo all over the “Beer Guy” in one truly shocking and gross scene. To me, this movie is a big Fuck You to the norms of film making and the horror genre. We are introduced to the kid briefly only to see him eaten alive in front of his mother and then puked up by a monster from hell. It’s one thing to kill the expected hero, but to kill a kid? Even Michael Myers in Halloween 2018 didn’t kill a kid. No one kills kids. Except Feast, they kill kids, in bloody, gross and unexpected ways. Hats off to the director for including that scene.
After the child eating, the movie moves forward in standard “there’s something outside” fashion and the group infighting increases as they try to decide on their plan of attack and escape. Their first course of action is to kill the little monster and throw it out to the big monsters as a warning. The big monsters are unphased by this, they just have some gross monster sex and poop out a new baby monster on the spot. Their next idea is to use a shortwave radio in the upstairs apartment but the monster breaks in, almost killing them before they can lock the monster in a room, slamming the door on the monster’s dick and leaving the detached monster penis wiggling around on the floor. Yes, monster dick, on the floor, still wiggling. Lastly, they decide to strap a homemade bomb to one of the dead bodies and send it out as bait, there’s just one problem, the body they chose is only MOSTLY dead and she awakens just long enough to know she is being used as bait, for the baby monster to face fuck her, complete with monster sperm explosion and then finally her explosion by triggering the bomb attached to her. Clearly, these people are idiots. Clearly, there is no escape from these monsters. Clearly, the fascination is monster dicks, monster sex and monster cum shots is unexpected, but welcomed.
Now, throughout the movie you never clearly see the monsters and their attacks are all basically off screen with gallons of blood being flung at the actors who are on screen. It would appear that all the special effects budget was used on the “Beer Guy” played by Judah Friedlander and the after effects of being a victim of monster puke. As the movie progresses he looks more and more sickly, his face starts to get goopy, his hair starts to fall out, he begins drooling (spit and blood) the monsters rip his eye ball out and maggots start oozing out of the eye socket. Truly nasty stuff but outstanding special effects. It’s all very gross and very realistic looking, I’m certain the maggots were real and probably some of the blood too.
As the movie reaches its final climax almost everyone dies, including “Heroine”, but “Tuffy” the single mother quickly takes her spot as “Heroine 2” and she fights her way out of the bar against the band of monsters with the village idiot Bozo and his wheelchair bound brother “Hot Wheelz” and they ride out into the sunset on a mission to find Hero and Heroine’s daughter. But throughout the whole movie, including the very end, there is one thing out of place in all this. The old drunk woman “Grandma” sitting at the bar drinking! When the Hero bursts in with a monster head and explains the situation, there she is, sipping her drink unaffected by her surroundings. When the horny monster goes into the bar ripping off faces and humping stuff, there she is, sipping her drink unaffected by her surroundings. When the finale happens and the monster’s knockdown the walls and all hell breaks loose in the bar, there she is, sipping her drink unaffected by her surroundings. It’s amazing! It’s again a very subtle middle finger to the norms and what is expected for movies and the horror genre, just like the whole movie.
Feast is a truly underrated gem and to this day remains one of the best suggestions my best friend has ever given to me. A truly insane, against the grain, bizarre, fucked up troll of a movie that gets better each and every time I watch it. Now some of you reading this may not have a best friend as cool as mine who tells you about cool movies, but listen, and I mean this most sincerely. I’m your friend. I love you. I’m here for you if you need me for anything (except money) just let me know. Now go watch Feast. You won’t regret it.
If you like this series and would like to catch up, check the archives here and feel free to follow along on letterboxd
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