Schlocktoberfest VIII – Day 23: The Corpse Grinders

The Corpse Grinders (1971)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s It About: Struggling cat food company comes up with the brilliant plan to dig up dead bodies to make into cat food and it’s making all the cats in town man-eaters!

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

This film opens up with a couple watching TV in their home. They are disturbed by a wailing kitty cat outside their front door. The lady opens up the door and the cat attacks her. That’s it.
Was that the Professor from Gilligan’s Island dead in the cemetery?
I can tell already that this isn’t going to be a good movie.
That “soup” just looks like cold beef broth to me.
The owner/manager of this cat food factory actually communicates with a deaf employee with ASL. I’m just surprised that this old 70s exploitation horror schlock actually has two actors that know ASL. If a person being a deaf/mute was integral to the plot, you’d think they would just fake it. But they must’ve hired that one deaf actress, than had to hire the main antagonist who also knew ASL or had to teach him ASL. But I don’t know ASL so they could be totally faking it. Point is, it’s odd and yeah, it’s later reveled that her being deaf/mute has nothing to do with anything.
Is this a hospital? The nurse is feeding a cat outside a patients room and the doctor comes out and pours himself a scotch. Man, I wish I lived through the 70s.
This movie was written by Bryan Cranston’s dad!
This grave robber fella, Caleb, looks like Stanley Kubrick. If Kubrick was the director of the Rush Hour movies.

Now the hospital cat attacked the horny doctor. Something’s wrong with all the cats!
So this couple is again robbing graves at the local cemetery. You would think after the first time, the cemetery would up their security right?
So the couple digs up the graves and sells the corpses to the owners of the cat food factory. So the cat food factory has no qualms about grinding up corpses to feed cats but they just don’t want to get their hands “dirty” so to speak by digging up bodies. Kinda weird right? So they are paying (supposedly) Caleb to supply the bodies when they could just buy actual meat. This makes zero sense. Unless they are paying Caleb in cat food.
I love how the grave robbers and the cat food factory owners make their exchange and deal right outside the cemetery out in the open.
“No money. No meat!” Perfect life motto.
Is this their only grinder? It’s about the size of pool table. How do they expect to grind huge amounts of meat for their business? It just seems small for a company that specializes in cat food. Maybe this machine is just for the human meat?
“Lotus Cat Food. For cats who love people” Hahahaha.
A quirky mortician. What a breath of fresh air.
The shady owner of the cat food company, Landau, kinda reminds me of Tim Allen. But funnier.
Another random cat attacking their owner. This one actually killed the owner though.

So if I understand this movie’s plot correctly it’s that the local cats are eating the cat food made out of human meat so much that they have a craving for human meat so much that they start attacking and eating live humans. But in the scene where the old lady just died, we saw the cat had two open cans of Lotus Cat Food right next to it before it moved over to the owner to kill her. Why didn’t the cat eat the canned stuff? Not fresh enough?
The doctor and nurse from earlier are now performing an autopsy on the cat that killed the old lady. Did they kill the cat just to examine it?
Wait, so the deaf employee is not only deaf but is missing a leg too? Jeez.
Earlier in the film, we met Willie who is the custodian at the cat factory. As you can probably guess he’s a simpleton and not too bright. Well anyway, he’s now cat food because the owners ran out of corpses to grind.
It appears as though the Cat food company owners really don’t care about quality but just looking for quick and cheap meat. But why are they going through all this grave robbing and now killing a coworker to get human meat? Can’t they just kill other animals, like dogs or something? Or better yet, cats!
So now the doctor, Dr. Glass, and nurse Angie are investigating the old lady who was killed by her cat because the autopsy confirmed that the food the cat ate was human flesh. But why are they investigating this? Is there no police or detectives in this town?
The doctor interrupts the nurse who wanted to look into the phone book for the address for the cat food company because he got horny of course. The investigation shall wait!
The Food Adulteration Agency? What the hell is a food adulterer? Wait, I don’t want to know!
So let me get this straight. The doctor and nurse are asking this agency to look into what’s in the can of Lotus Cat Food. But a couple of scenes back the doctor analyzed the food inside the cat and basically confirmed it was human. So why doesn’t he analyze the canned cat food to determine if it’s human flesh or not as well? WHAT THE HELL!!??
The attractive secretary at the Food Adulteration Agency gets home after work and undresses to her bra and panties, pours herself a beer and watches TV on the couch. This is my kind of woman!

Of course she will most likely die since she owns a cat.
Nothing shady about an investigating doctor and his nurse going around asking questions. Nope nothing unusual about that.
“Don’t you worry about Willie, Tessie, I’m sure he’s alright. You know how those winos are.”
I’m really unsure who they just killed who was threatening to go to the police just now. I didn’t recognize these fellas at all. AT ALL!
Nothing much is happening. The Lotus fellas are just killing random people to make into cat food. Effectively cutting out the creeps who have been grave robbing for them.
Man, the nurse has a very fine rack.
I can’t quite place the doctor’s voice and who he sounds like. A hint of Tom Skerritt perhaps but that could be because of the mustache.
Now I got it! Christopher Reeve. He sounds like Reeve. Weird. Now this puts a damper on my love for Superman.
I wonder if this movie is retitled The Corpse Hoagies in the Pennsylvania area.
So the Lotus fellas are annoyed and suspect something about the doctor and the nurse coming around again posing as potential buyers and they just let them go. They’ve been killing random people for product so why didn’t they kill these two when they seem to be shady to them? GAH!
Caleb is back at the cemetery again, which in itself is ridiculous that the cemetery hasn’t tried to stop the series of grave robbing, but in the last scene with Caleb he was on the phone with the Lotus guy complaining that he hasn’t bought any bodies in a while and he has too many corpses in his home. So why is he getting more corpses?!
Oh, so he is buying more corpses from Caleb. I really thought the movie was going to have a sub-plot about how Caleb got so enraged at not getting paid anymore and enacts harm on Landau.
But Landau pays Caleb only to distract him long enough to shoot Caleb anyway.

Why is Caleb’s wife(?) holding a wreath while running away from Landau?
No more beef broth soup for anyone.
So why did Landau bury Caleb’s lady after he shot her when he can easily make her cat food too. Was she not top grade meat?
The doctor just asked another doctor if he’d seen the nurse. The other doctor says, “No not since this afternoon.” And Doctor Glass replies, “You mean you haven’t seen her tonight?” He said since the afternoon dude!
Hahaha. The one owner has the nurse hostage and tied up in front of the grinder. He pleaded with her to be quiet and if she keeps quiet and calm he’ll let her go. She agrees and he takes off her gag only to then rip open her blouse and he feels her up.
Landau comes in and shoots and grinds his partner. I’m not sure if Landau was disgusted by the raping or just always wanted to kill his partner.
There has been this other shady character popping up from time to time in this feature, usually around the time Glass and the nurse were snooping around. I haven’t mentioned him yet because it’s been literally like 1 minute of screen time with no dialogue for him. Well anyway he just saved the day by coming in at the right time and shooting Landau before he could kill Glass and Angie. He then introduces himself as a special investigator. Great screenplay Walter White’s dad.

Is It Actually Palatable: This one was probably the worst written one. It felt sleazy too.

Scariest Entree: Caleb’s ol’ lady’s soup.

Is It Raw and Bloody: This could’ve benefited from more blood and guts. This should’ve been directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, which it clearly was trying to emulate.

Any Mouth-Watering Nudity: That one secretary in her bra and panties was the closest you’ll get.

Most Delectable Line: “Don’t you worry about Willie, Tessie, I’m sure he’s alright. You know how those winos are.”

Most Delicious Scene: Hands-down, the scene I keep mentioning, the photo session slaughter scene. Hate to say it but the beginning cat attack was the only thing worth mentioning. It, at least, came as a shock since I didn’t care to read the synopsis for this movie before watching it and not knowing it was about killer cats.

Most Flavorless Scene: I don’t know. All of them.