The Undertaker And His Pals (1966) Let's forget about posts on 'major motion pictures' for today.......
Today we're hangin' out in the grindhouse.......where you don't even dare ask why the floors are so sticky......and why that guy two rows over has his hand stuck deep in his pants.......
And movies don't come any grindhouse-ier than this one.......filled with mis-matched camera shots, amateur night actors, gallons of gore, bubbling acid baths and a full delicatessen of sawed off human limbs.
As the wild man cannibal from the 'Little Rascals' comedies would put it so succinctly............
"Yum Yum, eat 'em up!"
True to its title, a murderous mortician and his two buddies who run a greasy spoon (called...The Greasy Spoon, yuk, yuk) zoom around on motorcycles searching for random people to kill.
First up on the death parade is a buxom blonde named Miss Lamb, who ends up stabbed and dismembered by our dauntless trio. As the poor girl's being sliced and diced, the photograph of her boyfriend changes multiple horrified expressions, as if he's watching the evisceration on Skype....(now that's a sight gag worthy of Richard Lester.....
And none of the late Miss Lamb goes to waste. The undertaker later gets to overcharge her grieving parents for the funeral while the Greasy Spoon boys serve up her chopped off legs as the special of the day.......wait for it.......Leg Of Lamb, Yuk yuk.
By now you get the idea........that this raggedly little scrap of a movie doesn't want to be taken seriously, even as it goes full outlaw in splashing around blood in the manner of Herschel Gordon Lewis's legendary Gore-sploitation grinders like "Blood Feast" and "2000 Maniacs".
We wish we could tell you that it's....uh.....stabs at humor are funny. But not really. No one involved this movie should have ever been let either behind or in front of a camera, especially its writer-director with the incredible name of T.L.P. Swicegood.
Whoever could come up with name like that? Oh wait a sec.....we bet T.L.P. did to protect his identity. Smart man. And the name's by far the funniest thing he created.
As the plot progresses, it falls to ace private eye Harry Glass to hunt down the mad, mad, mad triumvirate. Harry's a spiffy article, outfitted like TV's ultra-cool P.I, Peter Gunn and his gorgeous assistants are named Poultry, Thursday and Friday. (No, we kid you not about any of this......)]
Miss Poultry, as you astute readers may have already guessed, ends on the Greasy Spoon's menu as breast of chicken, yuk, yuk........and Thursday, Friday and Harry don't fare all that well either.
Need we go on?
If you dare enough to delve into the abyss of of bottom-of-the-barrel, crazy cult cinema (and you're among the only folks we'd recommend this to), then you do need to see this to make your viewing experiences complete .......
You may even find yourself snickering at some of the gags.....(we won't spoil the best one, the sight of one of the undertaker's low cost budget funerals.....)
Everyone else who normally swims in the comfort of mainstream movies.......stay far, far, far away from this one......1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)
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