Wednesday, August 19, 2015

The Undertaker and His Pals, Delicious Women on Special

This 63 minute film originally was a lot longer.  The 1960s lack of tolerance for blood on the silver screen demanded several minutes showing actual surgery footage be removed.  Don't fret, we do get to see some in 1966's "The Undertaker and His Pals."  A very black comedy with a cool mixture of lame-brain humor and gory kills of very shapely women entertain you for more than an hour.
As the film begins a motorcycle gang busts into the beautiful Sally Lamb's (Karen Ciral) apartment, knife her to death, and cut off her legs.  The next day at the local greasy spoon, Spike and Doc (Marty Friedman and Rick Cooper) serve up leg of lamb as their special.  Yep...you guessed it!  Playboy, Harry Glass (James Westmoreland) and his glamorous secretary, Ann (Sally Frei) come in for dinner, but insult the chef, hurting the feelings of Spike and Doc. Needing more food to serve, the gang tracks down the scantily clad Ann at her apartment and kill her in gory fashion.  For what?  Let's just say that the special the next day will be breast of chicken.  Enter the undertaker (Ray Dannis).  He does Ann's funeral home services.  Unfortunately for Ann..because Harry won't pay much, the undertaker does not use foam rubber where Ann's.....well...never mind.
The undertaker and the greasy spoon cronies have an arrangement. They butcher babes and split the corpses.  The undertaker has funeral fees and the others get free meat to serve to hungry patrons.  Harry gets personally involved when a sultry replacement for Ann arrives.  Friday (Warrene Ott). She doesn't last long as Spike and Doc abduct her, operate on her when she is alive (we see most of her organs) and put her in the meat grinder for tomorrow's special...hamburg.  As the cops gather more clues, they close in.  Our gang starts making mistakes and Friday's radiant sister, Thursday (also played by Ott) starts snooping as well.  Thursday proves more of a challenge to the gang, and her spunk completely throws the undertaker and his pals.  Will Thursday's spunk be neutralized by the three fiends on motorcycles?  Will adversity test the cohesiveness of this monstrous trio?
This is a fun movie, but not for the squeamish.  Hatchets in foreheads, severed limbs, meat-grinder carnage, abdominal organs being fondled, and lots more gore await your viewing.  Perhaps in 1966 this film was far fetched, but as crazy as our country has gotten, we may see a news story soon mirroring the plot of "The Undertakers and His Pals."  Available on YouTube.

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