Stand up comedian and sometime actor Jackie Vernon had his last movie role in this laugh riot camp horror film. Jackie plays Donald, a construction worker whose wife May (Claire Ginsberg) is trying to get him to eat her experimental dinners. She does this supposedly for his own good, and does it with the assistance of her microwave oven (a real gargantuan artifact). Finally, he can take no more of her nagging and, in a drunken rage, bludgeons her to death with a salt grinder. He comes to realize that he likes the taste of human flesh, so goes out and kills more people to feed his newfound appetites.Written and produced by Craig Muckler and Thomas Singer, and directed by Wayne Berwick, "Microwave Massacre" is a pretty tasty morsel when it comes to horror comedy. It's full of utter ridiculousness, and absurd dialogue, not to mention some deliciously tacky gore effects and one utterly priceless severed head. The amusingly deadpan Vernon alternates between being sincere, and letting the audience in on the joke by breaking the fourth wall. His interactions with victims and other characters are a joy to behold. We have a hooker named Dee Dee Dee (Lou Ann Webber), a psychiatrist (John Harmon, who'd acted for director Berwicks' father Irvin in things like "The Monster of Piedras Blancas" and "Malibu High"), a doctor with the childish moniker of Von Der Fool (Ed Thomas), a hottie foreigner (Anna Marlowe) who makes a living dancing in a chicken costume, Donalds' fellow construction workers Roosevelt (Loren Schein) and Philip (Al Troupe), and Sam (Phil De Carlo), a grumpy bartender who doesn't want to hear his patrons' sob stories. Ginsberg is perfect as the kind of nagging wife that would drive any husband mad.This movie keeps coming up with enough wacky and irreverent shtick to sustain it through a very reasonable one hour 17 minutes run time. Just don't expect to see the title appliance come into play all THAT often while it plays out.Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm so hungry I could eat a whore.Seven out of 10.

Far from being the worst horror film of all time, and really not much of a horror movie at all but more of a black comedy for lack of a better description. Jackie Vernon plays Donald whose wife refuses to give him solid, working-man food but rather inundates his lunch box with crab sandwiches and other gourmet meals. Donald gets so upset after a night of drinking his woes that he slays his wife and then packs her in the freezer, later goes for a bite to eat, and unwittingly eats her hand wrapped in tin foil. From there he realizes he loves the taste and begins to eat women all the time(yes, that pun and every possible one under the sun was used in the film!). Thereis an endless parade of one-liners, many just wretched, but after a bit I was finding some of them amusing as this film is trying to be nothing more than a sophomoric horror spoof. It has a seventies feel to it though it was made in 1983. The scary moments are non-existent. What do we get: roly-poly Jackie Vernon quipping wisecracks as he searches for dinner and a date all in one. Vernon is just, well, there. He quite honestly doesn't have much of a movie presence, but he can deliver his lines - if you can be more unlike me and get past the voice of Frosty the Snowman swearing and having his way with a prostitute and even stuffing a turkey. The gal that plays his wife is amusing if nothing else, and the rest of the cast could be extras on Lost for all we know/care. There are a few exceptions because the film has liberal doses of gratuitous nudity - no more eye-popping then the opening with the knothole girl. A real looker and possibly the high point of this film. More is the pity. that being said; however, Microwave Massacre is watchable - even again in the next decade possibly. seeing Vernon act is intriguing as we have little of him in film(I wonder why?). You could definitely do a lot worse than this. I have seen horror films that made my eyes glaze over from boredom and wished/willed my fingers to pass the fast forward. This strangely enough for me was not one of those times.

Picture in your mind how the actor who did the voice of Frosty the Snowman might have looked. Now imagine that guy having dry-hump sex with random hookers ('Frosty' grunts and groans included), killing and dismembering them, and then cooking them up in the world's most ridiculously huge microwave oven. Or, you can skip that mental exercise and rent this film.MICROWAVE is light on actual gore but the one-liners are so corny and wooden you'll have plenty of blood shooting from your ears in no time. Here's an example: "I call this dish 'Peking Chick'" WOW.60-year old Jackie Vernon as the lead delivers his lines with Teddy Ruxpin-like painful deliberateness and all the charisma and sexiness of creamed beef at the senior center buffet. Vernon was a comedian with a trademark deadpan style but he's matched to a script with the comedic depth of a DVD Player's instruction manual. Throw in some editing that appears to have been done with a lighter and a can of hairspray and Vernon doesn't have a chance of making this one funny.MICROWAVE features a few ridiculous gags and setups, like a naked girl who gets slathered with mayo, covered with a giant piece of wonder bread and then sawed in half. It tries to be fun and light yet is so completely inept it can't even manage self-deprecation without revealing it's low IQ. It's like when the fat kid intentionally trips in gym class to make everyone laugh but ends up hurting himself for real. You don't know whether to laugh, feel sorry for him, or heck, give him a good kick while he's already down. My money is on door number 3. Definitely in the "so bad it's good" universe of films and requires a number of intoxicants coupled with a complete absence of self-respect to wade through.

Stupid, crude, inept, childish... Mission accomplished, I guess!The late Jackie Vernon (a former Vegas lounge comedian probably best known as the voice of Frosty the Snowman in that kid's holiday special they run every single year) comes off like a poor man's Rodney Dangerfield in the lead role, in part because of the awful and seldom-amusing dialogue. He's Donald, a dullard construction worker who hasn't been laid in fifteen years by his overbearing wanna-be gourmet chef wife May (Claire Ginsberg). One evening Donald stumbles in drunk after a night at the bar, gets in a confrontation with May and ends up strangling her. He chops up her body, wraps her remains in aluminum foil, stores the parts in the freezer and accidentally mixes a piece of her in with the 'regular' meat. After chowing down on a raw hunk that turns out to be his former wife's hand, Donald decides he can't get enough of the taste of human flesh. Even his hardhat buddies Philip (Al Troupe) and Roosevelt (Loren Schein) love the taste. Well, when they aren't being distracted by random buxom women who stick their breasts through convenient breast-sized cutouts on the safety partition. The only problem is that May tasted "old and tough," so now he's in the mood for something a little more "young and tender" if you get my drift. Thus begins a long and seemingly never-ending succession of bosomy bar whores, streetwalkers and even a woman in chicken suit being lured back to his home for sex and slaughter. They are promptly killed, chopped up and cooked in a silly-looking refrigerator-sized microwave oven in effects scenes utilizing dime-store rubber limbs and mannequin parts that wouldn't even pass muster in an Andy Milligan or Herschell Gordon Lewis film. Quite a bit of bare breastage in this one, too, including a nude woman on a giant slice of foam bread being smeared with globs of mayonnaise.Any film that boasts right on the box that it's the "worst horror movie of all time" has a mighty big barrel to scrape. However, it needs to be said that there's a huge difference between accidentally making a film so awful that it's hilarious and intentionally going out of your way to try to make one. Movies like this, with their intentional bad acting, stupid dialogue, awful one-liners and pea brained visual gags, usually lack the charm and humor of films made by people who went in with good intentions but didn't quite have the talent to pull it off. And that's basically what I found to be this film's undoing. The cast obviously know this is moronic and proceed to overact, mug, look at or talk to the camera, do ridiculous double-takes and/or flub lines. As far as the director is concerned, what exactly are you supposed to say? "Wow! That truly was stupid and awful! Congratulations on making your movie so stupid and awful!"Don't get me wrong, there are many good examples of films that have been able to successfully incorporate some of that wink-wink, nudge-nudge style of self-parody. But this isn't one of them. The supposedly amusing one-liners aren't usually very clever, nor are they funny in a stupid way. The film is also badly paced, sorely lacking in the kind of energy needed for this type of film and grows extremely repetitive (and tiresome) about midway through. As far as being "the worst horror movie of all time" is concerned... I think this WISHES it were the worst. But it's not. It's simply below average wannabe camp. A few moments here and there did actually make me laugh, but films that don't actually try to be juvenile and stupid are more deserving of the title of "worst," not something that wears the fact its awful like a badge of honor from the first frame to the last.Quite a disappointment I must day, especially since I have fond memories of being just a wee tyke and spotting that cool over-sized VHS box with a decapitated-head-in-a-microwave on it that I was never able to rent.