TUBI CONTINUED… FEEDERS 3: THE FINAL MEAL (2022) **

After a twenty-four year wait, director Mark Polonia finally returns with the third chapter in the Feeders franchise.  It starts with a spoof of Plan 9 from Outer Space with horror movie host Mr. Lobo doing a riff on the Criswell opening.  Basically, he’s just apologizing to the audience upfront and stating the movie’s “not bad, just misunderstood”. 

Yes, Polonia goes “meta” this time out.  

A director is making a low budget movie about the original alien invasion.  To adjust for the times, he makes the leads women (amusingly called “female Derek” and “female Bennett”).  That means we get to see recreations of scenes from the first movie while the actors and crew members make snide comments about the chintzy production design and dialogue.  This portion of the movie is the most fun.  Too bad there’s too many other subplots and unnecessary characters (everyone from an FBI agent to a German scientist) that get in the way.  In fact, I’m not sure it wouldn't have worked better as an anthology, seeing how the various plotlines never really intersect in a meaningful way. 

The last one took place on Christmas.  This one is set at Halloween.  It’s a shame that Polonia doesn’t take advantage of the holiday the same way he did with Part 2.  There’s a fun scene where the aliens are mistaken for trick-or-treaters, but it seems like Polonia could’ve gotten more mileage out of the situation.  

And like Part 2, it’s heavily padded.  There’s not one, but TWO prologues (the Mr. Lobo sketch and another intro about the vastness of space), long news report scenes, long flashbacks to the first movie (in addition to the recreations in the movie within a movie), flashbacks to the second movie, and an intermission featuring two other horror movie hosts (Count Gore and Marlena Midnite).  The CGI upgrade on the UFOs effects look as good as you could hope for from a Polonia flick.  The aliens themselves are still done in the old school manner, but somehow look even worse than they did in the ‘80s.  (Unless that’s supposed to be the joke.)