I like to use this picture to demonstrate the fallacy of imitative form: mere awareness of a picture's kitschy origins or its own camp qualities are not themselves a virtue. If you set out to ape bad alien sci fy, and don't add anything into the mix that is on its own clever or funny or in some way entertaining, you just wind up with bad alien sci fy. Repo Man managed to be a true original, while casting a wink at its drive in antecedents. Big Meat Eater is just on par with its earlier influences, and in no way transcends them.On its merits, BME is a terribly cheap and shoddy looking picture. The plotting is so random and haphazard that nothing that happens in the film seems in any way organically related to anything else that happens. One scene just stops and another starts up somewhere else. To call the effect incomprehensible is to suggest that BME merits comprehending. It doesn't. It's not a clever send-up, just cheap silly nonsense that somebody put together on a zero budget. It generates little conventional b-movie sizzle, in that there is little suspense, surprise or originality. It isn't even all that amusing as Bad Movie Note entertainment, in that its crazy grab bag of a plot fails to actually pull the viewer along. Random silly stuff just happens, and then more random silly stuff happens.Get a grip guys. This is not a 10 of a movie despite some of the ratings above. It's just a cheap, backyard production put together in some sleepy Canadian burg by amateurs who watched a lot of bad creature features and wanted to make their own.

It looks like this movie was aiming to become a cult classic like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or any John Waters title. Now, that's not a bad thing, but everyone involved in this tried too hard to make it a cult classic, resulting in its failure to become one. Instead of being fun and enjoyable, it becomes tiresome and rather lame (probably lame on purpose, but whatever.) And those so called "aliens" were too lame even for me. That said, this is not a bad movie. It has some very memorable songs like "Big Meat Eater" and "Mondo Chemico". (I think that's what they're called, at least.) I guess this movie had the potential to become a cult classic, but it never happened, as far as I know.

This movie is SO odd that it's hard to compare it to anything else, but it's in the same general quadrant as efforts by Roger Corman and John Waters. Production values are mostly awful, as is the acting, but the musical numbers are actually quite good and the movie has a certain goofy charm. I laughed out loud several times. If you don't have unduly high expectations, it's enjoyable enough. The consensus rating of 4-5 points (on a scale of 10) is about right.

Utterly, utterly indescribable...but I'll try anyway.Okay...a friendly butcher in a small town discovers that the meat he is discarding in his basement has turned into the super-energetic element Baloney-ium.The mayor of the small town fires Abdullah, the stoker for the city hall furnace. Abdullah gets angry and kills the mayor. He hides the body in the butcher's shop.A youthful inventor builds a spaceship out of his car, but needs an energy source.Aliens descend from the skies and turn the mayor into their undead slave. He breaks free from the butcher shop and acquires a prosthetic limb - an egg beater hand.The town is celebrating their centennial. The undead mayor hires the butcher to design a "Town of the Future" pavillion (actually an alien landing site) and gets the father of the youthful inventor to build it.Abdullah is hired as the butcher's assistant and starts serving up the town's residents and dogs.The youthful inventor is changed into mutant and later poses as his fortune-teller grandmother to...I give up.And so on. Big Meat Eater is actually quite funny...lots of singing and dancing numbers, horrible production values, the cheapest aliens of all time, and a climatic space battle at the end.Hardcore jazz fans may recognize Abdullah as "Big" Miller, the Alberta jazz-man. Seeing him on film, it's very easy to see where he got his nickname. He's one of the largest men I've ever seen who could still walk around.The only real criticisms I have of it is that it tries too hard in spots...sometimes it becomes a little too much of a self-conscious spoof. Also, the sound quality is poor at times. Abdullah is often inaudible, as is the inventor's sister.This movie...well, it's a hidden gem to say the least. I know of only two other people who have seen it. Once in a very rare while it will be shown on late-night Canadian TV. I have it on tape, if anyone's interested in getting a copy.