By Richard Winters
My Rating: 3 out of 10
4-Word Review: Humans fed to pigs.
Lynn (Toni Lawrence) arrives at a remote roadside diner that is run by Zambrini (Marc Lawrence). No one knows her past and she’s highly evasive about it when asked. She gets a job there and sleeps in a back room unaware that the pigs that Zambrini keeps out back are into human meat and anyone that crosses him gets fed to them. Will Lynn be their next meal, or does she harbor a few dark plans of her own?
The film was a family project of noted character actor Marc Lawrence who had been acting in films in supporting roles since the early 1030’s. He wrote the script along with his wife, Fanya Foss, and it was meant to help their daughter Toni break into the acting business by showcasing her talents. When no studio was willing to produce it, he took out a second mortgage on his home in order to get it financed and then directed it himself.
I remember first watching this way back when I was in college and it was shown on cable TV as a late Saturday night entry of a bad movie night where panned films would get broadcast that would otherwise have little or no interest. At the time it came off as having no plot just a lot of meandering scenes that went nowhere. Watching it now uncut via streaming it works a bit better, but only slightly. There’s still a lot of moments that have no connection to the main story. One in particular has Marc entering a home lived in by two old ladies (Catherine Ross, Iris Korn) and talking to them in a creepy manner while wearing clown make-up, but nothing ever comes of it. They go on living there and he goes on caring of his pigs, so why was this moment even put in. Was it supposed to be a dream sequence and if so, what was the point of it?
I did like the remote location, which was filmed in Ventura County, California near the Los Padres National Forest. There’s just something about being in the middle of nowhere that helps accentuate the fear. These people have only themselves and their wits to count on, but then it also begs the question; if they are truly cut off where do these customers that frequent the diner come from?
The main problem is more with the script that gives too much away. I don’t know if the tension is really helped by us seeing an unnamed victim being fed to the pigs during the opening scene. Constantly alluding to Lynn’s mysterious past hurts it too. It becomes obvious that she’s not stable and thus no surprise later on when her dark side fully comes out where if this had been better disguised it could’ve been mor of a jolt.
The special effects are subpar. The blood looks like paste and whenever someone gets stabbed there’s never any rip in their clothing. A person can’t bleed unless there’s an actual cut in the skin for it to ooze out. The loud noise that the pigs make, which sounds more like a train horn, is annoying and overplayed.
I also found Jesse Vint, who plays the sheriff, to be too inept. With dumb cops like him where all the clues have to be spoon fed into him before he can figure it out, just makes the story weaker because there’s no true adversary for the bad guys who can freely get away with their crimes without much worry of being caught.
Spoiler Alert!
The ‘twist’ ending has an extra pig getting ‘created’ every time a victim is eaten, but how does this happen? Are these pigs’ demons from hell and does evil magic doing the ‘creating’? This needed to be better explained and leaving it wide-open is not much of a payoff.
End of Spoiler Alert!
I will give credit to Marc Lawrence as his acting is engaging. His character doesn’t have that much to do other than standing around looking old and paranoid. The fun though comes with his over-the-top reactions to anyone who gets near his precious pigs and his extreme nervousness which he makes no attempt to cover up. On the flip side his character also becomes sexually attracted to Lynn and there are shots of him gazing at her longingly, which when you factor in that he was her real-life father is kind of creepy and in fact the creepiness thing about the whole movie.
Alternate Title: Daddy’s Deadly Darling
My Rating: 3 out of 10
Released: May 23, 1973
Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Marc Lawrence
Studio: Ursus Productions
Available: DVD (Out-of-Print), Amazon Video, Screambox, Fawesome, Philo, YouTube
