Now available on DVD
Cast:
Jenny Wade as Honey Pie
Clu Gulager as Bartender
Diane Goldner as Biker Queen
Martin Klebba as Thunder
Carl Anthony Payne II as Slasher
Tom Gulager as Greg
Hanna Putnam as Secrets
Juan Longoria GarcÃa as Lightning
Directed by John Gulager
Review:
Feast 2 is a sequel completely unhinged. Ga-ga blitz-o gonzo filmmaking that’s raw and uncensored. A stand-up Grand Guignol comedy act where the performer onstage insults everything and everyone, and there’s no escaping his wrath.
Say you’re in a situation where an insensitive thought fires through your mind. You to keep it to yourself, thanks to the brain’s inherent reasoning process. John Gulager’s second go at his Project Greenlight‘s offspring, which reunites him with sicko scribes Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, carries no such mechanism. It tells you how it is with unbridled glee, and if you don’t like it, well, don’t let the door – or in Feast 2‘s case – any bodily fluids hit you on the way out. If madcap monster madness, with a rampant mission to offend, is your bag, please apply within.
Picking up immediately where the first flawed, but nonetheless amusing, Feast left off – with the survivors of a bar-set monster siege driving off for safer grounds – this entry introduces a whole new gaggle of goons and calls upon a few familiar ones, including the cantankerous Bartender (Clu Gulager, full of spry piss ‘n vinegar). One of the lone survivors left behind at the bar, he’s picked up by a gang of biker bitches led by Biker Queen (the twin sister of Harley Mom) who seek revenge for their fallen – and creature face f**ked – comrade in Feast. Bartender pins the blame on Bozo (Balthazar Getty, seen here only in a photograph) and so the action moves away from the smoldering remains of the bar to a nearby town where John Gulager is able to broaden his visual scope to varying effect.
In town, a monster massacre has occurred that pulls together a disjointed group of survivors including a car salesman (“Suck a dick everyone! I slash prices!”), his unfaithful wife, her beau, a pair of bite-sized wrestlers that go by the name Thunder and Lightning and their grandmother. When this bunch clash with the biker gang and their liquor-slinging hostage, friction ensues, however, they quickly learn they have to cooperate to evade the pervasive monster menace. They unite for one flimsy goal: To find shelter in the town’s jail – a veritable fortress where they could hole up and wait for help. That’s a tougher feat than expected because a local, blow-snorting vagrant has beat them to the punch…and he doesn’t want company.
And there you have it. Will these tenacious twerps achieve their objective? Not if the beasties have their way.
Gulager’s ride through crazytown is a trashy banquet and unapologetically hilarious – depending on your warped sensibilities. It assaults you with ruthless abandon, charging along at a breakneck pace. Room for character development? Forget it. Where could you possibly fit it in amongst the cat rape and outrageous monster autopsy sequence that tries to give Stand By Me‘s domino effect barfing sequence a run for its money? Besides, everyone in the film is a broad caricature befitting something you might find on the Cartoon Network anyway. And akin to an animated film, the flesh on these folks is easily destroyed in a raucous fashion. That goes for a certain infant who is treated like a football during an attempted daylight rescue.
The budget on Feast 2 was significantly lower than its predecessor and Gulager’s struggle to overcome this hurdle shows on screen. There’s a gawky level of juggling between ambitious style and failed greenscreen effects on display here. Early on in his Project Greenlight days, we got a glimpse at some of Gulager’s short films. And the raw talent apparent in those efforts bleeds through in Feast 2 as he plays with film stock and out of the ordinary music choices. Feast 2 feels like unfiltered Gulager. But its stylish posturing and manic energy still can’t mask the conspicuous CG blood bursts and composited backgrounds.
Indeed, Feast 2 arrives with its share of blemishes but there’s never a dull moment – which I can’t say for the first film. The world of Feast has opened up for the better welcoming more monsters (including a new hybrid beast), a Clu Gulager versus Honey Pie brawl and tough-as-nails God’s Girls wandering around the latter half of the story naked. No complaints there. For my money, Feast 2 is better than the first and is certainly the most zany gross-out horror-comedy in recent memory.
After watching Feast 2‘s mini-wrestlers tussle on a rooftop, Clu’s Bartender sighs, “I sure as shit seen everything now.” I would agree with that sentiment, but with Feast 3 on the way, something tells me John Gulager and company will find new ways to push the envelope of immoral taste.
