Flesh Eating Mothers
Director- James Martin
Cast- Robert Lee Oliver, Donatella Hecht, Neal Rosen.
Country of Origin- US
Distributor - Vinegar Syndrome
Number of Discs - 2
Reviewed by -Tyler Miller
Date- 02/10/2020
A small town in Upstate New York becomes infected with a strange virus that makes all the women hungry for human meat. A pack of “wild” Teenagers soon discover that they now have Flesh Eating Mothers!
I’m not a huge fan of horror comedies. I enjoy most of the classics, but when it comes to the super low budget late 80’s films, They leave me cold. Flesh-Eating Mothers was another example that felt rushed and didn’t strike me as funny. The main plot point of all the mothers becoming zombielike cannibals is cute, but the script as a whole feels like one sight gag stretched to feature-length. But the 45-minute mark there is hardly any steam left.
Director James Martin gets some John Waters lite moments of bad taste with the kids and the overly horny dad, but the rest of the direction falls flat. The Blu-ray cover describes the story as Cronenberg-Esque, But there no real signs of body horror and the only shocking moment involves a woman eating a baby. Instead, Martin focuses on long takes of bizarre human moments and long dialogue scenes that drag on forever.
There is a few fun moments of gore from special effects artist Carl Sorensen (Tremors, Child’s Play). The bullet wounds and blood spray is well done. Sadly the budget isn’t there and the movie sticks with all the unlikeable characters. It’s a shame since the concept offers up some bits of social commentary. That’s not to say every movie has to reach a level of satire. But if your going to make a horror comedy at least take the horror elements seriously. I’m sure there are a lot of fans of this movie and these types of tongue-in-cheek comedies, But I was left bored and checking the time.
Flesh-Eating Mothers makes it’s North American Blu-ray debut from Vinegar Syndrome. The print is taken from a new 2k transfer. While fine, the print is still rough around the edges. There are a few moments where the colors are completely washed out. This is most likely from the film’s actual production. The rest is finely kept in a lovely 1080p HD transfer. The picture is slightly softer on the DVD.
The film comes with a 2.0 English DTS-HD audio mix. It’s pretty rough with a few batches where I had to raise the volume to almost peaking levels. The effects and musical score also suffer from rough recording. The sound mix is the best VS could offer under the conditions of the film unless there is an issue the disc I have.
This Blu-ray and DVD combo are filled with a handsome variety of extras. First up is an audio commentary with Director James Martin and Film Historian Michael Gingold. The conversation is a little dry but still fun. The two men cover a lot of the film’s production and are worth a listen. Next up is “Blood and Laughs” a interview with Director Martin. He spends most of the interview discussing his start in the film business and taking film courses before working on Splatter University. Martin comes off as a nice guy with a passion for the filmmaking process, so it’s a shame his sense of humor didn’t work with me. Rounding out the extras is “Hungry to Make Movies” an interview with Producer Peter Llich. Like Martin, Llich comes off as a nice businessman but the conversation doesn’t really focus on Flesh-Eating Mothers.
If Horror comedies are your kind of movie, then you may find more enjoyment with Flesh-Eating Mothers. But as for me, I say skip it.
