What is it about science fiction/horror musicals and why we love those so? The more cult - beyond Rocky Horror, there's Shock Treatment, Voyage of the Rock Aliens and The Apple - the better, right?
Allow me to present Canada's 1982 entry to the strange symphony, Big Meat Eater.
Directed by Chris Windsor (who also wrote, edited, produced and added to the soundtrack) and co-written by Phil Savath and Laurence Keane (who would go on to make Samuel Launt) while all three were in film school, this is the story of Abdullah (played by Clarence "Bull" Miller, who was a Kansas City blues shouter so loud he didn't need a microphone; racial tensions led him to travel the world and finally settle in Edmonton), a butcher (which has to be a pro wrestling reference) who kills the mayor of town and stashes the body at his new job, working for Bob the Butcher, who lives by the motto "Pleased to meet you, meat to please you."
That would all be strange enough if there weren't aliens floating above town, obsessed by the large deposits of Bolonium beneath the butcher shop, reanimating the dead mayor to do their bidding. Meanwhile, everyone sings, dalmatians get turned into spotted beef and mutations abound. Oh yeah, and Bob has invented a new language for the town's future-forward theme park.
What a magical time 1982 was, when a film like this could come out and find just the right people in the right video store to send the right wavelength to. Sure, we can find things easily now, but we can't get as invested, right?
There was a sequel planned, Teenage Mounties from Outer Space, that never happened. We're all the poorer for this.
Allow me to present Canada's 1982 entry to the strange symphony, Big Meat Eater.
Directed by Chris Windsor (who also wrote, edited, produced and added to the soundtrack) and co-written by Phil Savath and Laurence Keane (who would go on to make Samuel Launt) while all three were in film school, this is the story of Abdullah (played by Clarence "Bull" Miller, who was a Kansas City blues shouter so loud he didn't need a microphone; racial tensions led him to travel the world and finally settle in Edmonton), a butcher (which has to be a pro wrestling reference) who kills the mayor of town and stashes the body at his new job, working for Bob the Butcher, who lives by the motto "Pleased to meet you, meat to please you."
That would all be strange enough if there weren't aliens floating above town, obsessed by the large deposits of Bolonium beneath the butcher shop, reanimating the dead mayor to do their bidding. Meanwhile, everyone sings, dalmatians get turned into spotted beef and mutations abound. Oh yeah, and Bob has invented a new language for the town's future-forward theme park.
What a magical time 1982 was, when a film like this could come out and find just the right people in the right video store to send the right wavelength to. Sure, we can find things easily now, but we can't get as invested, right?
There was a sequel planned, Teenage Mounties from Outer Space, that never happened. We're all the poorer for this.