Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2019
Cindy
(Crystal Aura, aka Crystalann Jones) is a Catholic High School girl in trouble.
She lives in a town named Satan’s Place (filmed in Romero’s back yard,
Pittsburgh, PA), she saw her mom, Janet (Tiffany Apan), killed in front of her
the year before, her boyfriend dumped her for blonde bimbo Amber (Angie Azur), and
she’s in a drunken relationship with her professor dad (Tony Clemente) that
rivals Mackenzie Phillips. The only person who will give her the time of day is
new classmate Christian (Dennis M. Kusluch II, who looks a bit like Tab Hunter);
it is ironically noted in the film of the irony between his name and where he lives.
Cindy is also the focus of a lusty older nun (Kathy Bothem) and a tribe of forest
cannibals reminiscent of The Hills Have
Eyes (1977).
There is
no nudity (though hints of it), implied sex, and lots and lots of gore. The
squishy moments are also what happens to the gore, among other bodily fluids,
which just feeds (there goes that pun again) into the release’s sub-genre.
Images from the Internet
Meat for Satan’s Icebox
Directed by David Silvio
Kiss of Death Productions / Troma Team Videos
103
minutes, 2004
George
Romero famously said that his …of the
Living Dead franchise was not about zombies, but rather about the culture
into which the zombies were thrust. For example, the focus of his Night of… (1968) was about racism, and Dawn of… (1978) concerned consumerism.
On some scale, Meat… could be looked at
in this perspective.
The locus
of this film is on cannibalism, but the main clique who perpetrates these heinous
acts is also corporate cannibals, eating away at the telecom industry to ingest
it into their own system. Director Silvio delves into Hershell Gordon Lewis (d.
2016) territory to achieve that point.
 |
| Crystal Aura |
Christian
has to be one of the worst male heroes in cinematic history: he gets physically
beaten by just about everyone in the film, but of course the question is will
he rise to the occasion by the end? I’m not going to give you a head start with
the answer, but it may not be what you expect.
As this
was originally connected to Troma Films, it is hardly surprising that Uncle
Lloyd Kaufman does his specialty, and has a creepy cameo, stealing his scene.
And speaking of screen absorption, the lead villain of the piece (and there are
many bad guys) is head cannibal
honcho, Cassandra (Diana Silvio, who is the co-writer whose name is credited
first, Assistant Director, and married to the Director). She’s a sexy MILF with
cleavage to spare, and has no qualms diving right into her story.
This tale,
as with David and Diana’s films to come such as Fetish Girls Die Laughing (2012) and Babes in Psycholand (2019; both reviewed on this blog site), rely
heavily on the fetish subgenre. Here, we are presented with the likes of tickling,
feet, girl-on-girl fighting, peeing, older men/younger woman, sexual asphyxiation,
cattle prods, and chloroform.
There is a
delicious (pun intended) sense of humour that runs throughout the film, such as
puns and snarky dialogue, but my favorite by far is Sherriff Hogg and his
sister being played by the same actor (Al Torcaso), who seems to relish it.
Perhaps I should add cross-dressing to the list of fetishes above?
One
complaint I can see coming across about this film is that nearly all the
victims are female, with few exceptions. However, being the brainchild of Diana
Silvio, might this be excused? Would she be called a gender traitor by Second
Wave feminists? My answer to that is… whatever.
I get annoyed at releases that are exceedingly misogynistic, but this film is
open to what it actually is, as are the rest of Silvio’s work: it’s a
fetish-fest from beginning to end, and makes no bones about it (this time, pun
unintended), and I respect that.
 |
| Diana Silvio on the left |
The tone reminds
me quite a bit of the female gang films of the late 1950s, such as The Violent Years (1954). It’s
definitely a negative feel as the characters are all shady in one way or
another, even the heroine (though Christian is the least so, but he’s “new to
town”).
The thing
about fetish films, even if one is covering a wide swath of obsessions, is that
there tends to be a particular audience that is attracted to the form. None of
my own fetishes are covered here (I’m a proud wuss), but I still enjoyed the
oddness of the film because, well, I like odd films, especially those on minuscule
budgets. I guess one could imply that
was my fetish.
The film reminded me of what is said in the
play Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of
Fleet Street, “The history of the world, my sweet… / is who gets eaten and
who gets to eat.”
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