Running Time:  Approximately 95 minutes
Writer/Director: John Gulager
Starring: Krista Allen, Balthazar Getty, Duane Whitaker
Available From: Amazon.com

Feast is a cheese movie made for cheese movie enthusiasts. It's a slap-dash concoction of unexpected - occasionally truly shocking – events, copious gore, kinetic camerawork, humorous cameos and one seriously sharp-toothed, ugly and vicious family of killer mutants. Horny killer mutants, actually.

With all this and more, including some excellent casting of genre vets like Clu Gulager (Return of the Living Dead) and Krista Allen (Emmanuel in Space), this thing reads like a home run on paper – literally. Selected as the winning screenplay and produced as part of Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Chris Moore's Project Greenlight series (essentially an HBO American Idol for filmmakers if you didn't already know), Feast got a $1 million budget and appeared to have a lot going for it. Yet it was a controversial pick to say the least, and didn't entirely have the backing of its fourth producer, Wes Craven, who claimed the screenplay by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton didn't have a strong enough central concept. Additionally, Feast would also have another hurdle to leap: first-time director John Gulager (Clu's son) who at one point during Project Greenlight freely admitted he had no love for the movie and was doing it "for the paycheck." That home run now looks like it's fading foul.

Whatever hardship was faced behind the scenes was drama left for viewers of Project Greenlight as Feast is a rip-roaring assemblage of subverted genre clichés stitched together with lightning-fast editing and zero remorse. Set at a ramshackle tavern in the middle of the American desert, the movie wastes no time introducing its dozen or so rough-hewn characters before it immediately begins killing them off in surprising fashion by an unnamed, seemingly bovine menace. It's almost as if the characters were numbers on a roulette wheel and the screenwriters decided who got offed next by dropping the ball and giving it a spin. Yeah, Craven was correct about the story: there really isn't one, but that oddly doesn't get it the way.

This is because Feast isn't about story, it's about shocking the audience and making viewers laugh along with the carnage on display. And oh is there ever carnage! Though it certainly bears more than a little resemblance to the madcap grue of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2, Feast is essentially an amped-up retread of the second (and better) half of From Dusk 'Til Dawn. Swimming in the delights of total mayhem, it's a movie that truly doesn't need anything so cumbersome as "plot" weighing it down. Blood, bile and maggots are dumped by the bucket on the unfortunate denizens of Feast's cast that also includes a likable Henry Rollins as a motivational speaker, reptilian Duane Whitaker as the sandy tavern's lard/hard-ass cowboy owner and Balthazar Getty as Bozo, who's name pretty much sums up his character.

Indeed, almost all of the characters in Feast aren't given proper names. During the opening ten minutes, we're provided a quick perusal of the barroom crowd along with a quick, gimmicky freeze frame on each character that gives you pertinent biographical information and an estimate of how long the unfortunate soul might live during the movie's duration. This is exposition in the 21st Century, Kids. Why, through typical screenwriting shortcuts, squander precious running time introducing the likes of Boss Man (Whitaker), Coach (Rollins) and Beer Guy (the much put upon Judah Friedlander), when you can introduce them this way and also get the skinny on who'll live and who'll die before anything happens? It's like reading the back of a GI Joe action figure's box, which is entirely appropriate since - the cast's efforts notwithstanding – these characters are just as plastic and expendable.

Given the smooth pacing of the picture's start, the effect of these "bio cards" is jarring, making it seem they were a last minute addition during the editing process. This is especially evident when we happen across Jason Mewes of Clerks fame and the card names him "Jason Mewes." His bio write-up is even funnier, but as there's so little to this movie other than the surprises it has in store, it's best left for actual viewing.

And that's what makes writing a review of Feast so difficult. It's tough to relay the finer points of something that has so little regard for the standard language of cinema that you can't really sum up key moments and character backstories without kind of blowing the fun of it all. What can be said is this: there's no explanation given as to what the "beasts" are. They savagely mangle the cast like human mulch without reason, occasionally taking a break from violent ingestion to get off sexually whether it's with one another, a mounted deer head or, in one particularly tasteless sequence, the skull of a soon-to-be piece of human shrapnel. No, it'd be wrong to get more specific than that. This is all the movie has to offer, although it also makes good on the tantalizing appearance of an enormous bear trap. But again, to speak of it would be to ruin the effect. Just know that what the screenwriters didn't supply in the areas of plot or characterization they more than make up for with satisfying chaos.

What can be commended without giving away too much are the previously alluded to game efforts of the entire cast, with particular kudos going to Krista Allen who has come a long, long way from her beginnings as the stunningly gorgeous title character in Alain Siritzky's Emmanuel in Space series. Still eye-poppingly gorgeous, Allen's "Tuffy" is hardened by life even before the beasts come-a-knockin' and damn does she ever have to put up with a lot in this picture. Her final melt down is one for the ages: a ferocious, literally heart-ripping eruption of primal violence that Allen really gets into. Indeed, when taking it from behind by the likes of Duane Whitaker is the LEAST of your problems, exacting bloody revenge isn't just expected – it's inevitable.

Given that a million bucks is now considered chump change when it comes to producing a motion picture, Feast looks terrific, and - minus some really horrible metal songs on its soundtrack – it sounds great too. There don't appear to be many mistakes made by freshman helmer Gulager, which could either be testament to his skill navigating this gory fracas or credit due to the impressive editing by Kirk M. Morri whose resume almost exclusively consists of Weinstein Brothers' releases like this. The pacing is tight, action coming at the viewer in concussive waves that make it nigh impossible to notice the foolishness of the proceedings. One doesn't watch a bullet – one reacts. And Feast is a cinematic bullet designed to be reacted to, not considered.