‘A Halloween Feast’ Review
Stars: Guile Branco, Julia Coulter, Lynn Lowry, James Griggs, Lou D’Amato, Asia Lynn Pitts, Pancho Moler, Mary O. Bremier | Written by Guile Branco, Arthur McClen | Directed by Guile Branco
A Halloween Feast opens with a strange and bloody scene before a voiceover from Karen Long (Julia Coulter; The Night Is Young, L.A. Juice Cleanse) informs us that she’s worried about her mother Angela (Lynn Lowry; I Drink Your Blood, Those Who Deserve to Die). Since she retired from teaching, she’s picked up some odd habits, such as sitting in the yard burning ants with a magnifying glass and killing the family pets.
Six months later it hasn’t gotten any better, and she goes as far as cutting off her husband Richard’s (James Griggs; Saints vs. Scoundrels, Lonesome Thoughts) finger and feeding it to him after he mentions it’s the twelfth night in a row she’s served meatloaf for dinner. That gets her committed to a mental hospital.
Richard however wants to try and keep the family together, so he agrees to her release under the supervision of Dr. Park (Lou D’Amato; The Killing Floor, The Killing Machines). That turns out to be a big mistake, as she soon gets involved in an S&M relationship with the doctor, and she’s willing to kill to protect her newfound happiness. For her part, Karen falls for a stranger named Mark (Guile Branco; Headshots, A Futile and Stupid Gesture) after he nearly runs her over.
Apart from playing Mark, Branco makes his feature film debut as a director and, along with Arthur McClen (The Meltdown Pot, A Little Feast), as a writer on A Halloween Feast, and nobody can accuse him of playing it safe. It’s an outrageous horror comedy of the darkest kind that begins with pet killing and gets progressively darker and more over the top as it goes.
By the time it’s over A Halloween Feast incorporates, among other things, adultery, murder, cannibalism, dinosaur costumes and even a goth girl named Susan (Asia Lynn Pitts; From the Inside Looking Out, Altered Perceptions). But what else would you expect from a film that counts Eating Raul, Harold and Maude, and the Paul Naschy film Return of the Zombies as influences?
I don’t want to say too much more about the plot, because seeing where things go next is a large part of A Halloween Feast’s fun. It can be a liability at times as well because it does occasionally get a bit too weird and delivers a twist that’s just too hard to accept. But it just moves on to the next bit of weirdness and keeps going as it heads towards the titular feast that forms the film’s emotionally and physically bloody finale.
The cast is all good, but Lynn Lowry steals the show as the psychotic Angela, though she gets some serious competition from Mary O. Bremier as the silent Grandmother who gives off vibes of both Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Grandfather with Cousin It from The Addams Family. Pancho Moler (Til Death Do Us Part, 31) who has a supporting role as a little cocaine dealer with a big gun also deserves a mention.
Definitely not a film for the easily offended, A Halloween Feast is an exercise in nihilism, complete with a quote from Nietzsche, that is equal parts disturbing and funny. Maybe it’s a Brazilian thing, Guile Branco is from there, as was the last film I can remember that managed to hit most of these notes, The Cannibal Club. If your taste in humour is as dark as mine, you should get a good laugh out of A Halloween Feast, just don’t be surprised if you question your sanity for doing so afterwards.
**** 4/5
Breaking Glass Pictures released A Halloween Feast in the Lumiere Music Hall in Los Angeles on August 9th, and to Digital and VOD Platforms on September 10th.
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