(1982)
4
Michael Costello
Paul Bartel's black comedy about a middle-class couple who want to open a restaurant has become a cult classic. Bartel and Mary Woronov play a staid couple who formulate a plan to murder and rob "swingers" to finance their dream of opening a gourmet restaurant. Bartel, who dealt in black comedy long before it became fashionable, has created an oddly affectionate satire of this Moral Majority couple, whose righteousness is concealed behind anonymous polyester surfaces, and are literally dubbed the Blands. Although they believe that the "swingers", i.e. anyone single who is having sex, deserve to die for their terrible transgressions, they're so humane toward their victims that they evoke especially unctuous undertakers. Mary Woronov, a fixture of Warhol's Factory in the '60s, and someone whose mien always suggested the unspeakable, is a witty choice as the homicidal wife, and Bartel adopts the role of tract-house suburbanite with eerie aplomb.
Eating Raoul on AllMovie
Eating Raoul (1982)
