Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I don’t believe John Gulager’s third ‘Feast’ film had one of those epileptic seizure warnings before the movie started, but it certainly did need it. There was this strobe light scene in this movie that went on like forever and quite honestly it got on my mutha fuckin nerves. Oh well, sucks to be an epileptic and have to watch this movie. I enjoyed the first ‘Feast’ movie, and I’d even go so far as to call it a semi-classic of the genre. ‘Feast II: Slopply Seconds’ on the other hand was a gross out fest that seemed to exist only demonstrate how many different ways effects artists can show how bodies can excrete fluids. Now we have ‘Feast III: The Happy Finish’ which is junk. Inspired junk at points to be sure, but junk none the less.

Apparently John Gulager shot too much stuff for his ‘Feast’ sequel and like any film director who loves his film he just couldn’t make those critical cuts and leave all those carefully filmed excretions on the cutting room floor so Dimension Extreme allowed him to split one movie into two. So while he might’ve shot too much stuff he didn’t shoot enough stuff for two movies, that’s for damn sure. Evidence by an opening scene, in a movie that’s already really, really short, which takes a bit of time to recap what we just saw in that last movie, complete with those clever little freeze frame titles describing each and every character. Chances are anybody that is watching ‘Feast III’ has already seen ‘Feast II’ especially since they were released a couple months apart, but whaddayagonna do? Anyway the movie picks up on the roof and it’s just a matter of time before the monsters find a way up there which leads to some more violent body fluid excretions, including watching a beast shit out somebody’s shit stained decapitated head. Outstanding. This leads our heroes down a darkened stairwell, and leads me directly to one of the problems I had with this particular episode as this is first of many scenes which take place in absolute darkness. I’m sorry but I like to see stuff. Even excretions.

Now the Feast stuff kicks in, but not necessarily into high gear as the generally distasteful folks we got know so well from the last movie do pretty much the same thing in this movie such as avoiding these nutty monsters to the best of their ability while stabbing each other in the back along the way. We get to meet a few new characters such as tough guy Shit Kicker (John Allen Nelson), the mentally challenged Prophet (Josh Blue) and the athletic monster slayer Jean Claude Segal (Craig Henningsen). So watch as our characters run, hide, slash and die to what I’m guessing is to no ultimate end because it looks to me like the world is pretty much over. Roll credits, more or less, because now we have to watch a Mariachi sing a five minute song recapping everything we have just seen up to this point

‘Feast III: The Happy Finish’ is not a completely worthless movie, but it is close. For now let’s remove the fact that the filmmakers added all kinds of padding to keep this from being a really long short and take it at face value. All of the cool and clever stuff that makes a Feast movie, such as the quirky descriptions of the characters, the sudden scenes of shock and death, and cool monster designs were already in the first movie. Nothing is necessarily improved on here, just more body fluid excretions. For instance when we met Shit Kicker and got his cute little character description, since I saw the first movie I was pretty certain what was going to happen to Shit Kicker, and lo and behold it did. Yeah, it was still kinda cool but it was no longer surprising, shocking or fresh. It is still very well crafted ‘more of the same’ and ‘more of the same’ of a ‘Feast’ movie is better than ‘more of the same’ of a lot of movies but the fact remains.

Now let’s add in the issue of padding this movie. There’s a scene where our characters are in a sewer hole, and this is one long ass scene in which almost nothing is happening. Under no circumstances would any director or editor allow this scene to drag on this long unless they had absolutely nothing else to put in its place. Watch our characters walk up a ladder… one by one. Watch our characters go down a manhole… one by one. Watch the director’s dad slowly walk from what looks like a half mile away until his face is up close in the camera to deliver a worthless line. And then there was the terminable strobe light slash and hack scene. Right then I realized they ain’t got nothing else to put in this movie because it was nuts how long that nausea inducing scene lasted. Crazy.

Gulager probably could’ve discarded what we got Feast II and Feast III and with a good cutting knife made Feast 2 XXXL and though it still wouldn’t have matched the clever freshness of the original I am thinking it still would’ve been really something to see. I do know it would’ve better than this. Then that robot might’ve not have seemed so stupid either.