Actual Size May Vary.
"Earth was only an appetizer."
Feeders is a low budget direct-to-video sci-fi horror film made by Mark and John Polonia in 1996.
Reportedly produced on a budget of five hundred dollars and shot with a consumer camcorder, Feeders follows buddies Derek and Bennett as their road trip gets sidelined by an invasion of people-eating aliens. It was followed by a Christmas-themed horror-comedy sequel.
Tropes used by Feeders include:
- Aerosol Flamethrower: Employed by Michelle.
- Alien Abduction: Bennett; others sometime prior to the film.
- Alien Invasion: The feeders are coming.
- Ambiguous Clone Ending: After Bennett is abducted and cloned, a clone fight ensues. Derek attempts to resolve the thing by picking one and killing it with an axe. It's not clear until the credits that he picked incorrectly.
- Badass Santa: In Slay Bells, Santa defeats almost all the Feeders with a ray gun.
- Bad Boss: Mr. Hatton in the sequel. Good gravy, if you have a boss like that, quit. He flat out calls one of his employees an asshole!
- Chaste Hero: Derek.
- Covers Always Lie: Perhaps a minor point, but the tagline on the box states that "Earth was only an appetizer" when the film is indeed set entirely on Earth.
- Don't Go in the Woods: The bulk of the movie takes place in the woods, since the Feeders are small and fast enough to hide in the foliage.
- '80s Hair: Derek again.
- Flying Saucer: The feeders get around in classic style.
- Gainax Ending: It's very unclear what actually happens at the end, but apparently the aliens go from running around the woods eating people to tearing down buildings and calling in backup to colonize the planet.
- Hollywood Acid: Feeders spit a bubbly acidic substance to subdue their delicious prey.
- Horrible Camping Trip: The whole film is sort of a horrible road trip for Derek and Bennett, but when they decide to camp out, the trouble really starts.
- Negative Continuity: Unless Derek had a twin brother he never knew of, his death is completely ignored in the sequel.
- Nerds Are Virgins: Derek, our nerd protagonist.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: Thanks to the films having No Budget. A prominent example is a mauled cat is depicted by a picture of the cat's head with a bloody eye socket.
- Plot-Driven Breakdown: Derek's Mustang.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: On a $500 budget, this was a given.
- Spot the Imposter: When Bennett is cloned, Derek must pick the correct Bennett to kill. He doesn't. And this sentence is here just to keep the length of the spoiler from making it easy to guess. Move along.
- Stock Footage: A lot, including some out of place footage of buildings in different citis being demolished. There's even some footage from Night of the Living Dead (1968).
- The End of the World as We Know It: Implied by the ending.
- To Serve Man: The whole point.
- Voodoo Shark: Why the hell did a race of aliens smart enough to master space travel come to Earth just to prowl the woods and eat a few people? Then why did that same race start destroying buildings if all they wanted was to eat humans?
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Michelle shows up, fights her way out of a tough spot, and then runs away from the entire film, never to be mentioned again.
