CORPSE GRINDERS 2 (2000) *

A dying race of cat people leave their home planet of Ceta to live life anew on Earth.  Meanwhile, a pair of knuckleheads try to get their uncles’ old cat food plant up and running again.  To turn their sagging business around, they take to using the old family recipe, which if you saw the first Corpse Grinders, involves stealing dead bodies, grinding them up, and putting them in the cat food. 

Corpse Grinders 2 is the film that gave exploitation director Ted V. Mikels a second wind.  At the ripe age of 71, he set out sequelizing his back catalogue of films, which allowed him to work till his dying day.  As far as his twenty-first century movies go, it’s probably the worst one I’ve seen.  

That doesn’t mean I don’t admire the spirit Mikels put into these pictures.  I like the fact that Planet Ceta is nothing more than Mikels’ house (which will be familiar to you if you’ve seen his other films).  And if you’ve seen Mikels’ house, you know it looks like it’s on another planet to begin with, which makes it perfect. 

The original was a minor classic that at least had an off-kilter plot and a touch of WTF charm about it. This twenty-nine years later sequel has little of that old time Mikels magic to go around, I’m afraid.  Like his latter-day Astro-Zombies sequels, it’s too long (102 minutes) and has way too many characters and subplots.  The whole alien subplot is particularly useless, and the opening CGI alien dogfight looks like something out of a PlayStation game. 

It also takes a long time before the cats start going crazy and turning on their owners.  The scenes of bodies being sent through the grinder still work (love the close-ups of the meat coming out of the machine), but these highlights are few and far between.  Mostly, it’s just a long, dull slog.

Another debit is the amateurish cast.  Some are clearly reading right off their script (and not even going through the trouble to hide it), and none of them can keep your attention during their long, painful dialogue scenes.  Cult legends Dolores (Glen or Glenda?) Fuller and Liz (Desperate Living) Renay show up briefly, but they’re not given a whole lot to do.  Mikels himself plays a professor and easily gives the best performance of the movie.

The thing that really sends Corpse Grinders 2 into the shitter is the ending.  All the plotlines threaten to come together, as if the film is leading up to a big reveal… and then it… doesn’t.  Oh well.  Maybe the answers I seek will come to pass in Corpse Grinders 3.