swimming pools during the California droughts of the 1970s. Told using a combination of narration, stills, great vintage 1970s skateboarding footage, classic rock (Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, and David Bowie, among others), and new interviews with all the key players, the film details a small, interesting slice of Southern Californian life.
Sean Penn provides the narration, adding a flair all of his own. The opposite of stodgy, Penn speaks
to
the audience, not
at
them, sounding like someone sitting at a bar telling the tale. At one point, in mid-sentence, he coughs, pauses for a moment, and then continues. It's this kind of approach that gives this movie its edge.
EATING RAOUL (1982)
âMeet the Blands! They're square . . . They're in LOVE . . .
AND they kill people.â
â Advertising tagline for Eating Raoul
âI'm very interested in doing eccentric individual low-budget films,â said director Paul Bartel early in his career. And so he did. After making several cutie nudies in the late '60s, he hit his stride in 1975 with
Death Race 2000
, a campy sci-fi exploitation flick starring a then-unknown Sylvester Stallone. A series of drive-in movies followed, but it was a small no-budget film that made him a cult star. He wrote, directed, and starred in
Eating Raoul
, a dark look at suburban life.
Bartel conceived the idea for
Eating Raoul
while serving on the jury at the 1979 Berlin Film Festival. Working independently, he cobbled together a modest budget from friends, family, and credit cards, and shot the film bit by bit in Los Angeles when he could afford it. âI wanted to make a film about two greedy uptight people who are not so unlike you and me and Nancy and Ronnie [Reagan],â he said, âand to keep it funny and yet communicate something about the perversity of these values.â
In the film, the aptly named Paul and Mary (Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov) Bland dream of owning a house and restaurant in the country, but can't come up with the $20,000 down payment. Paul has just lost his job as a wine merchant for refusing to sell crappy wine to a customer. Money is tight, and the couple are desperately looking for a solution to their problem. Late one night a swinger from a party next door enters the Bland apartment and attacks Mary. Wielding a frying pan, Paul kills the intruder. When they discover $600 on the man, the couple forms a deadly plan.
Paul and Mary take out an ad in the personals section of the local newspaper to entice sex-seekers to their home. Mary, posing as a prostitute, indulges their erotic demands before Paul kills them and takes their money. To dispose of the bodies they sell the corpses for dog food. Their plan is double pronged: because of their disgust for the âjohnsâ and their sexual perversions, the couple feels that they are cleaning up society, while at the same time the money they make finances their dream home. According to Paul their clients are âhorrible, sex-crazed perverts that nobody will miss anyway.â
All is going well until a locksmith named Raoul (Robert Beltran) uncovers their scheme and demands a cut of the action. Raoul transports the bodies, but is ultimately expendable . . . and edible.
To write off
Eating Raoul
as a cannibal movie is not accurate. There are elements of cannibalism in the script, but they are a means to an end. Bartel needed something taboo to show the lengths that ânormalâ people can go to to achieve their slice of the American dream. The unsavory situations in the film are used to amplify the farcical elements of the story, and maybe tickle your funny bone by shocking you a little.
Eating Raoul
is Bartel's finest achievement as a director and writer, and represents the point at which underground and mainstream cinema meet.
Bartel and Mary Woronov (see
Chelsea Girls
), who were previously paired in 1979's
Rock and Roll High School
, play the Blands with deadpan perfection. Their
Sean Penn provides the narration, adding a flair all of his own. The opposite of stodgy, Penn speaks
to
the audience, not
at
them, sounding like someone sitting at a bar telling the tale. At one point, in mid-sentence, he coughs, pauses for a moment, and then continues. It's this kind of approach that gives this movie its edge.
EATING RAOUL (1982)
âMeet the Blands! They're square . . . They're in LOVE . . .
AND they kill people.â
â Advertising tagline for Eating Raoul
âI'm very interested in doing eccentric individual low-budget films,â said director Paul Bartel early in his career. And so he did. After making several cutie nudies in the late '60s, he hit his stride in 1975 with
Death Race 2000
, a campy sci-fi exploitation flick starring a then-unknown Sylvester Stallone. A series of drive-in movies followed, but it was a small no-budget film that made him a cult star. He wrote, directed, and starred in
Eating Raoul
, a dark look at suburban life.
Bartel conceived the idea for
Eating Raoul
while serving on the jury at the 1979 Berlin Film Festival. Working independently, he cobbled together a modest budget from friends, family, and credit cards, and shot the film bit by bit in Los Angeles when he could afford it. âI wanted to make a film about two greedy uptight people who are not so unlike you and me and Nancy and Ronnie [Reagan],â he said, âand to keep it funny and yet communicate something about the perversity of these values.â
In the film, the aptly named Paul and Mary (Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov) Bland dream of owning a house and restaurant in the country, but can't come up with the $20,000 down payment. Paul has just lost his job as a wine merchant for refusing to sell crappy wine to a customer. Money is tight, and the couple are desperately looking for a solution to their problem. Late one night a swinger from a party next door enters the Bland apartment and attacks Mary. Wielding a frying pan, Paul kills the intruder. When they discover $600 on the man, the couple forms a deadly plan.
Paul and Mary take out an ad in the personals section of the local newspaper to entice sex-seekers to their home. Mary, posing as a prostitute, indulges their erotic demands before Paul kills them and takes their money. To dispose of the bodies they sell the corpses for dog food. Their plan is double pronged: because of their disgust for the âjohnsâ and their sexual perversions, the couple feels that they are cleaning up society, while at the same time the money they make finances their dream home. According to Paul their clients are âhorrible, sex-crazed perverts that nobody will miss anyway.â
All is going well until a locksmith named Raoul (Robert Beltran) uncovers their scheme and demands a cut of the action. Raoul transports the bodies, but is ultimately expendable . . . and edible.
To write off
Eating Raoul
as a cannibal movie is not accurate. There are elements of cannibalism in the script, but they are a means to an end. Bartel needed something taboo to show the lengths that ânormalâ people can go to to achieve their slice of the American dream. The unsavory situations in the film are used to amplify the farcical elements of the story, and maybe tickle your funny bone by shocking you a little.
Eating Raoul
is Bartel's finest achievement as a director and writer, and represents the point at which underground and mainstream cinema meet.
Bartel and Mary Woronov (see
Chelsea Girls
), who were previously paired in 1979's
Rock and Roll High School
, play the Blands with deadpan perfection. Their
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