THE CORPSE GRINDERS
US, 1972, 70 minutes, Colour.
Sean Kenney, Monika Kelly, Sanford Mitchell, J. Byron Foster, Warren Ball, Ann Noble.
Directed by Ted V. Mikels.
The B Feature was a popular aspect of the double bills, especially in English-speaking countries. They were churned out by the American industry as well as by the British from the 1930s to the 1960s. The coming of television did not immediately halt their production or popularity but, at the beinning of the 1960s, with the big-budget widescreen films that were becoming more and more popular, there was little place for these films.
When the Americans began making telemovies in the late 1960s, these became the alternative to the B films.
However, there were still a number of film-makers who made genre pictures during the 1970s, often Z budget in production and imagination. Later, the successors of these films were the straight-to-video and straight-to-DVD films of the 1990s and into the 21st century.
In the United States, especially with the popular serials that took on themes of science and even space exploration, the 1950s saw a proliferation of short science fiction films, some of them now considered excellent examples of their type, others were just schlock.
One of the features of these films was the atomic age and many of the films were warnings about radiation dangers and the possibilities of mutations and monsters. Godzilla emerged from this period. Space also fascinated film-makers and audiences at this time. The first Sputnik was launched in 1957 and soon after the first astronauts went into space. The moon landing was in 1969. Many of the films (even Kubrick’s 1968 2001: a Space Odyssey) tried to imagine what space travel would be like. There was a huge spate of space films.
Unfortunately, special effects were quite limited at the time and many audiences would find these quite risible. However, taken in their time, they had their impact.
This was the period of Ed Wood and his Planet 9 from Outer Space but also the beginning of the career of Roger Corman and his many protégés who became top-class directors.
There had been a Hollywood tradition of horror since the 1930s which led to many spoofs. However, all kinds of horror made a comeback in the 1950s, not only in the shockers from the US but also from Hammer Studios in England. These films also continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s and influenced some of the poorer directors like Ted. V. Mikels with films like The Corpse Grinders. These films, along with the popularity of the blaxploitation films now show their age with their characteristic costumes and hair styles, the touch sometimes of the psychedelic and the grainy film stock.
The Corpse Grinders is a Z-level film, with a minute budget. It takes its place with a lot of the other exploitation films of the 60s and 70s, capitalising on the horror genres. Ted V. Mikels directed a number of these films – and even made a sequel to this film twenty-eight years later.
The film focuses on a couple digging up corpses to supply the meat to be ground for cat pet food. The couple are certainly odd, with the wife playing with and talking to a doll. The two villains who run the company are conmen. However, a surgeon and his nurse assistant become suspicious, investigate and finally confront the criminals.
The special effects are nil, a cardboard box for the grinding of the flesh. The film was limited to a few rooms and an outside set for the cemetery.
The acting is very weak, the dialogue stilted – and some of the main characters look as if they appear in sexploitation films of the period (as some of them did).
The film is interesting as an example of the kind of film that was made with grainy stock in the early 1970s...
