american consumers
by Douglas
Messerli
Richard
Blackburn and Paul Bartel (screenplay), Paul Bartel (director) Eating Raoul / 1982
Mr. and Mrs. Bland (Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel) are a
perfectly happy couple living in a TV-version world of 1950s in an
appropriately bland apartment, decked-out with Paul’s mother’s 1950s plates,
lamps and other accessories, double-beds with matching bedspread, and matching
pajamas. The couple has equally bland dreams of opening a restaurant to be
called Chez Bland or Paul & Mary’s Country Kitchen.
The only trouble is that they are living in the hubristic, self-centered
culture of Los Angeles of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when booze, swinging
sex, and cocaine were served up at nearly every celebratory event. The
long-legged, statuesque Mary is sexually accosted not only by the patients she
is nursing, but by the bank manager, Mr. Leech (Buck Henry), from whom she
attempts to get a loan. Paul is ogled by a buxom woman customer in the liquor
store where he works. Even taking down the garbage is an ordeal, as Paul is
pulled into a party where Doris the Dominatrix (Susan Saiger) immediately
attempts to whip him into submission. Swingers pour into their apartment
building, seeking out parties, while the clean-living Blands have, as the film
begins, recently had their credit cards cancelled; Paul has just lost his job
for ordering a case of Château Lafite Rothschild and refusing to sell his
customers the rotgot featured by his boss. Although Mary, in particular,
attempts to maintain her natural good spirits, both realize that life doesn’t
seem to be fair. All the swingers seem to have wads of cash.
A space just perfect their restaurant
has been discovered by their real estate agent James, who’s about to join them
for dinner, but how are they going to pay for it in the two weeks they’ve been
given to raise the cash? As if this weren’t enough, a drunken swinger forces
open their apartment door and attempts to rape Mary. When Paul slugs him in the
stomach, he retches all over their bland shag rug, in response to which Mary
joyfully sprays the entire room with a fragrant carpet deodorant.
After pulling
him off to the bathroom, the drunken delinquent appears to drown himself in the
bathroom toilet, only, soon after, to revive and, once again, try to rape poor
Mary. What is the accosted couple supposed to do? The quick-thinking Paul picks
up their ready frying pan and hits the man over the head, this time truly doing
him in. In his billfold they discover several hundred dollars, money which will
certainly go well toward that down payment for the restaurant location. With
their guest at the door, the couple throws the body into a garbage bag and,
after the agent leaves, tosses the intruder into the apartment garbage
compactor. Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? And Los Angeles now has one less
“pervert.”
Bartel’s dark comedy is so very funny
because, even though the Blands are imaginatively living in another era, they
are as blinded by selfish motives and are just as violent as the world in which
they actually live; in short, they are Americans. Like the batty sisters who
kindly poison the lonely men they encounter in the comedy Arsenic and Old Lace, the Blands quickly decide to become serial
killers with all the good intentions of societal redeemers.
Putting an ad in a local newspaper read by all the swingers, they
promise to play any fetish or sexual scenario imaginable, and part of the fun
in this world of upside-down morality is the fantasies they are forced to play
out: a Nazi camp matron (after that “fantasist’s” death, Mary quips “Why don’t
you go to bed, honey. I’ll bag the Nazi and straighten things up around
here.”), a hippie chick, and a maniacal nurse. As David Ehrenstein, writing in
the DVD accompanying flyer, describes one of Woronov’s best scenes, “…in a
Minnie Mouse-like outfit and having served up the latest sex maniac to Paul’s
trusty frying pan, she sits down, exhausted, in a chair and complains about the
heat—as if she were a typical wife finding it hard to unwind after a long, hard
day.” But now, little by little, the money comes in, as they work, like any
ordinary couple, to obtain their American Dream.
The only trouble they encounter comes in
the form of a handsome Chicano locksmith, the Raoul of the film’s title (played
by Zoot Suit star Robert Beltran).
Raoul, while attempting to rob the couple, discovers their secrets, and offers
to help them by disposing their victims’ bodies, selling the dead men’s
clothes, rings, hats and other accessories, and rendering up their “meat” as
dog food. He shares some of the profits with the couple; but what he doesn’t
tell them is that he also tracks down the victims’ cars, selling them at a huge
profit.
Such a symbiotic relationship might have
worked, nonetheless, had Raoul not determined to also collect further payment
in the form of sex with Mary. Plying her with drugs, he awakens her not so very
deeply buried libido, resulting in her secret entry into the very world she and
her husband are trying to cleanse. After Raoul blackmails her into a deeper
relationship, Paul begins to suspect, following their collaborator, only to
discover what he’s been doing with the bodies, etc.
Desperate to
raise enough for their final down-payment, the couple determine to attend a
swingers’ party themselves, where Mary, once again, encounters the sex-obsessed
banker; when he tries to force himself upon her, she is forced to kill him and
toss out a bathroom window. And when they attempt to retrieve the body, the
entire naked group, having jumped en
masse into a hot
tub, demand
they join them. A nearby space heater, which Paul lobs into the tub, results in
a mass murder of the gyrating orgy-participants. This time, they themselves
sell the wealthy partygoers cars!
Hearing of their
new-found success, Raoul goes in for the kill, determining to take Paul out of
the triangle. The film’s title says everything; the trusty flying pan is swung
once again, as the Blands sit down to dinner, for a final meal with their real
estate agent, who comments how tasty Mary’s new dish is. This time they can pay
him for the restaurant. And we are left wondering whether the new dish, à la Sweeney Todd, has actually made it onto
their menu.
Los Angeles,
January 20, 2016
Reprinted from World
Cinema Review (January 2016).
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