 |
| Images courtesy of Troma Entertainment |
Indie horror film writer-director-actor Ricky Glore started
out in 2020 with the short horror films Caw and Racyst before
mounting his first feature in 2022 with the low-budget horror film All Your
Friends Are Dead. Co-authored and
co-directed by Nicholas Hiance who also served as the film’s cinematographer,
with his production company NKY Films the Kentucky based microbudget thriller
was picked up by boutique label SRS Cinema and was made for around $6,000. Following this, his next project Sweet
Meats which reunited Glore with his cinematographer Hiance and his costar
Eileen Earnest caught the attention of Troma Entertainment legends Lloyd
Kaufman and Michael Herz who decided to buy and distribute the film only from
having read the script. An unlikely
musical/horror/comedy hybrid which plays like a Troma version of The Untold
Story if it were directed by Ray McKinnon, it’s a welcome if not
occasionally sluggish return to form for Lloyd Kaufman’s brand after wallowing
in unwatchable shock value with their previous release Rise of the Super
Tromettes. Its the kind of film you
would’ve absolutely found yourself renting at the beloved Thomas Video store
with dashes of Cannibal! The Musical sprinkled throughout.
Bobby Sweet (Ricky Glore) is a budding country music star
waiting for his big break while stuck working in a dumpy restaurant with a
boozing manager Nick Gruoch (Andrew Gordon), a beleaguered underpaid waitress/daughter
Laddie (Eileen Earnest) and her idiot cook brother Jerry (Timmy H.
Barron). Sales are near dead until
Laddie picks up an industrial meat grinder intent on pushing traditional
burgers and fries on the menu. But when
their enraged intoxicated ‘Old Habits Die Hard’ boss stumbles in and
inadvertently falls into the meat grinder, killing himself, Laddie gets the
bright idea to sell the human remains as the rebranded Sweet Meats. With Laddie taking control of the restaurant
and promotion of the revised establishment, she posits Bobby Sweet at the
center stage of becoming a country music legend and the face of the Sweet
Meats restaurant. In between cheeky
country songs, some of which drift in and out of our ear space as we truck on
with a beer in hand, the demand for the Sweet Meats only increases with
Laddie and Bobby having to turn towards kidnapping and murdering people to
replenish their stock.
Lensed digitally in 1.33:1 with a faux digital grain
structure by Nicholas Hiance who also co-edited the film with Ricky Glore and
aided by a soft synthesized and sometimes acoustic score by David Kornfield,
despite the brief cameo appearances of Lloyd Kaufman and being the final film
shot at Bobby Mackey’s haunted honky-tonk this is through and through a Ricky
Glore film. What could’ve been another
dose of edge lord tongue-in-cheek wankery from the Troma empire instead winds
up being a mostly enjoyable and watchable low-budget hick-tastic country music
driven horror-comedy yarn. Sure it tends
to drag its feet with some of the songs that at times come in succession one
track after another and some of the gore effects range between cheap prosthesis
and a combination of physical and digital blood but it was refreshing to see an
old fashioned Troma flick that wasn’t Hellbent on offending the viewer into
hitting the stop button. Ricky Glore as
a lead actor/singer/writer/editor/director despite being microbudget displays a
lot of talent across numerous behind-the-scenes roles and shows immense promise
as a horror comedy filmmaker.
Sinking her teeth into the camp comedy factor is Eileen
Earnest who featured in Glore’s previous film and is a founding member of
ComedySportz Cincinnati. Playing up the
role as the sole woman on a male-dominated staff who very quickly introduces a
hostile takeover of the company, her demeanor from put upon and disgruntled
waitress to chipper cheeky mischievously grinning entrepreneur is played to
camp but works well in this film’s universe.
Her brother Jerry (Timmy H. Barron) also has fun playing up his dim-witted
thinking skills who also buddies up to the film’s antihero Bobby Sweet (Ricky Glore). Glore’s own acting as the oversized buffoon
who dreams of country music but has to kill a few people to achieve that dream
is an enjoyable new addition to the Troma verse and promises a newer fresher
direction for Lloyd Kaufman’s company.
Sure Kaufman makes his usual ‘look its me Lloyd Kaufman’ grandfather
appearance but from our observation point he mostly keeps out of the way of
Ricky Glore’s gory country-musical horror-comedy hybrid.
Troma Entertainment’s Blu-ray disc of the film comes
surprisingly stacked with original extras including an exclusive audio
commentary, a behind-the-scenes making-of video, an exploration of the
songwriting process for the film, a feature-length cast-and-crew set of
interviews and more than can be listed on the back cover. The disc is rendered in 2.0 stereo and for a
change it doesn’t sound like it was filmed in a bathroom. The video is intentionally grainy and worn
despite clearly being a digital overlay but I’ll accept it over the squeaky-clean
patina most of the Troma productions have now.
Sure it runs maybe fifteen minutes too long and won’t necessarily
satisfy the beer-and-pizza urge but for what its worth it was again nice to see
a new Troma production that doesn’t do their usual schtick. Unlike their usual nihilistic nastiness and
politically incorrect subversion which undoubtedly represents a core of their
fanbase, Sweet Meats offers something a little different from their common
output. A bit long and sometimes amateurish
but the heart is in the right place which still makes it worth recommending.
--Andrew Kotwicki
