Red-Barracuda This 60's horror comedy is very much in the mould of the pioneering gore flicks made by Herschell Gordon Lewis. It shares the specific combination of schlocky, excessive bloodletting with wacky humour. It's this strange and often totally inappropriate combination that gives this flick some enduring cult film appeal. It opens pretty strikingly with three psychopaths in motorcycle clobber conducting a home invasion where they violently kill a young woman and then proceed to take her severed leg away with them. This opening scene gives you a pretty good indication of the tone of the film as a whole though, as while the basic idea is pretty mean spirited it is offset by the picture of the girl's boyfriend changing continually as he registers his shock at events being carried out in front of him in a series of increasingly zany expressions. In other words, like the films of Lewis, the excessive violence can't really be taken very seriously when the tone is so wilfully ridiculous.The three biker maniacs do make for quite interesting villains though. And the decidedly sick subject matter of serial murder and cannibalism is pleasingly tasteless. There are limb decapitations, an impaling, a victim being dipped into a vat of acid, body parts being fed into a meat grinder, a chain whipping, a meat cleaver to the head and a woman having her innards…fondled; the latter scene is the grimmest moment on offer as it splices in actual open heart surgery! Throughout all this mayhem there is a fairly high quotient of pure nonsense. You just know that a slapstick scene or silly jape can never be very far away, often involving skateboards, pies to the face and comedy sound effects. The combined result is a film of considerable camp value. It also has the good manners to only clock in at just over an hour, so it hardly outstays its welcome. For anyone interested in the early genesis of the gore film, I would say that this crazy flick is a must.

morrison-dylan-fan Talking to a family about Horror movies that I've recently viewed,I was happily caught by surprise,when he passed me a Grindhouse double bill.Checking the running times,I found out that one of the titles was only 63 minutes long,which led to me deciding that it would be the perfect time to meet the undertaker.The plot:Breaking into her apartment,a biker gang kill Sally Lamb.At the funeral the undertaker reveals to the Lamb family that he had to give Sally plastic legs,due to the gang having chopped her legs off.As the funeral is taking place, detective Harry Glass visits a local café,where the special of the day is "Leg of Lamb."Finding the meat to taste odd,Glass starts to investigate the café,which opened shortly after the funeral parlour started to have a sudden rush in booming business.View on the film:Cut down from its original running time,writer/director T.L.P. Swicegood cooks up a bonkers mix of grisly splatter and Silent-Movie style skits.Made on a very low budget, Swicegood gives the screenplay a deep[ Black Comedy cut,as modern day Sweeney Todd's slaughter any dame that catches their sight.Whilst he stacks the bodies high, Swicegood gives the splashes of blood a washed-up,dry appearance.which gives the movie a rather strange Kitsch atmosphere,which is joined by very funny, wooden performances,as Glass meets the undertakers pals.

Tromafreak The Undertaker And His Pal's is a short & sweet, light-hearted, dark-humored, 60's gore film that actually turns out to be more entertaining than most from this era, although, it ain't no 2000 Maniacs, and it can be a bit overly silly at times, so we're not talking about a "10" here or anything, but it is uniquely cartoonish, and there is more than enough entertainment to go around, as a smug, overcharging Undertaker and two restaurant owners cut corners by going out on the town at night and killing people. The greasy-spoon boys have plenty of free meat to serve the (not so) unsuspecting customers and Mr. Taker charges the grieving families an arm and a leg for a half-ass burial. Certainly not the all-time greatest gore film out there, but like I said, it gets much worse than the taker. The "gore" is mostly stock footage, nothing impressive on that side of the fence , but the bottom line is, The Undertaker And His Pals is just plain fun, which, ultimately, is what matters most in Exploitation Country. Besides not being at all boring, The Undertaker And His Pals doesn't wear out its welcome at a running time at just over an hour. Even that little bird-man from The Corpse Grinders makes a cameo, so you know you're in for a treat this time. For something else that obviously belongs in the Something Weird Video catalog but isn't, check out Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things, and for more in humorous restaurant exploitation, check out Poultrygeist: Night Of The Chicken Dead. As for the taker, I would recommend to anyone who even remotely digs the B-entertainment. 8/10

Michael_Elliott Undertaker and His Pals, The (1966) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Low budget black comedy from Britain about an undertaker and his two restaurant owner friends who decide to help each other's business by killing women. The undertaker gets to bury them and the restaurant guys get to serve them for dinner. This film runs 63-minutes and for the most part is a wannabe Herschell Gordon Lewis film but it does feature some rather funny scenes and silly gore, which makes it worth sitting through. The film is certainly very tongue in cheek so if you've got a sense of humor then you should get a kick out of the comedy, which ranges from the bloody murders to the undertaker trying to take advantage of everyone. The special effects are pretty poorly done, which is to be expected but they still come off as fun as they too are over the top and feature plenty of fake looking blood. If you go into this film with a serious attitude or expecting some sort of masterpiece then you're going to hate the film. If you go into it expecting something fun in a low-budget sort of way then you should enjoy it.