Blood Diner is a 1987 Black Comedy Splatter Horror film directed by Jackie Kong, written by Michael Sonye, and starring Rick Burks, Carl Crew, Roger Dauer, LaNette La France, Lisa Guggenheim, and Drew Godderis.
In 1967, brothers George and Michael Tutman are visited by their uncle Anwar Namtut, a man who has just massacred a glee club and hacked off his own tallywhacker with a cleaver. Presenting them with Lumerian amulets, he urges them to not forget him or all that he’s taught them about the Lumerian goddess Sheetar before going out to be killed by the police.
Twenty years later, the brothers have gone into business, opening up the health food-oriented Tutman Cafe. Aided by the freshly exhumed, vocal and sarcastic Brain in a Jar of Uncle Anwar, George and Michael set about gathering parts to construct a new body for Sheetar, as well as the ingredients for the ritual “blood buffet” that will resurrect her, using the leftovers as ingredients for their diner food. Complicating matters are a rival diner owner who will do anything to find out their secret recipes, and detectives Shepard and Jackson, who are closing in on the boys…
Starting life as a sequel to Blood Feast, the final product wound up becoming a separate tribute to Herschell Gordon Lewis’ films. After a limited theatrical release, the film became a Cult Classic thanks to its mix of gore and Surreal Humor, and amassed enough of a following to become one of the inaugural titles in the Vestron Video Collector’s Series in 2016.
The Tutman Cafe serves up these all-natural tropes:
- Affably Evil: Anwar is a psychotic cultist, but he genuinely loves his nephews, even if they frustrate him at times.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Michael and George are dead at the end of the movie, but Sheetar has been resurrected and is last seen being picked up by a prospective john.
- Badass Bystander: The victim George tries to kill at Bronson Cave turns out to know Kung Fu, and hands him his ass. Too bad about that fallling stalactite…
- Eye Scream: When a night watchman comes across Michael digging up Anwar’s corpse, George kills him by striking his head with a shovel hard enough to knock his eyes out of their sockets.
- Foreshadowing: Stan Saidin bitterly says that he’d give his right arm for the Tutmans’ secret recipes.
- I'm a Humanitarian: George and Michael serve up whatever they don’t need as food in the cafe, and George is seen snacking on some of the wares throughout the film.
- The Secret of Long Pork Pies: Whatever the brothers don’t need from the people they kill wind up going into the dishes of the day.
