Somewhere between ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’, ‘The Corpse Grinders’, ‘Sweeny Todd’ and ‘Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers’ lies ‘Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies’, a film that sounds good on paper, but ultimately is a little underwhelming.

The plot itself follows a manson family-esq group of young women led by the titular Auntie Lee, who’s meat pie business has gone from strength to strength in recent months with her barely being able to keep up with demand…and thats NOT just because of beef shortages.

Y’see Auntie Lee’s girls are on a mission to lure unsuspecting horny guys back to their family home, where they’re mutilated, dropped down a chute into the basement where they’re ground up and seasoned. The only male who’s in on things is Auntie Lee’s son (played by Michael Berryman) who seems to be having some psychological problems that cause him to snap into violent self harming rages.

Now…you’d think thered be enough scope there to really put together some kind of crazy, colourful over the top plotline about the ONE group of people who managed to ‘Best’ Auntie Lee…and, you’d be part right. But not in any of the ways that really count.

Unfortunatley; the script for this one seemingly didnt *quite* have the budget to really truely invest in the narrative. and what should/could have been something a bit more adventurous, unfortunately ends up being really quite basic.

The script splits the film into an A plot and a B plot. The B-plot actually lead proceedings here, as we follow Berrymans character as he’s ‘Deputized’ by the local sheriff and given the VERY important job of taking a flat tyre into to town to get it replaced. NOT realising that he has a trunk full of bones and mutilated limbs.

The A plot takes almost half the films length to ACTUALLY get going, with over 40 minutes of the film dedicated to just setting up the girls, Auntie Lees business, murdering a couple of randomers and back and forth idle chatter about life in this small backwater town. with maybe a couple of monologues from Auntie Lee about how the girls need to be VERY careful when getting up to their ‘Activities’.

The ACTUAL A-plot of the film sees a touring band breakdown near Auntie Lees house, so two of her girls usher the band in and…as you can imagine they slowly one by one find out that this isnt just some kind of sex cult.

I think the biggest problem I have with the script here is just that it idle’s for SO long on one level of tone. When it comes to films like these I really want to see the ante being ‘upped’ incrementally. It can be slow burn, but it has to build up to SOMETHING. This movie starts off by building a pace. But right around the time the main A-plot ACTUALLY kicks in, it locks itself into a steady but fairly stiff tone and then it just never really gets any better.

When I come to a movie like this, I want the 3rd act to be ‘Braindead’ levels of blood, guts and gore, I want limbs flying, heads exploding, myterious oozing fluids. I want over the top hammy weirdness. For a film like this, thats trying to do what its trying to do, I want to get to the end of it in the mindspace that I couldnt get a fix like that from any other picture.

This film doesnt deliver that. It really almost feels like two films stuck together with the opening half being the girls just picking off random drifters and criminals while their brother goes to get a tyre changed. and then the second half is the Rock band pretty much meeting the same fate while Berrymens character, a local sheriff and a new in town agent investigating dissapearences slowly start to piece things together.

Its also a film that just kind of…stops, rather than ending with anything satisfying. Which undercuts the 3rd act entirely leaving it feeling like we have a WAY overstuffed first and second act, and nothing to show for the finale.

As mentioned the tone of the thing starts of on a slow but steady burn. It builds up right up until around the hour/hour and ten mark, at which point what we have is pretty much ‘locked in’ and thats it. Its billed as a ‘horror comedy’ and…that it is. But it feels almost like someones told you a joke, but left off the punchline. the ‘Bite’ this film so DESPERATELY needs to seal the deal and make the thing memorable is painfully absent. our crazy cult girls dont ever rise above ‘getting turned on by murder’ Which…is just SO DONE by this point in film history. it’s effect is even lesser by 2024.

The characters are all kind of drab and one note Auntie Lee is the only one who gets any real depth and complexity…and even thats underplayed…That’s not to MENTION the dialogue…which is peaks and troughs pretty much throughout. Theres some decent gags and one liners sprinkled in…but not enough to really out and out win me over and some of the back and forthing between characters really is just dire.

Not to go TOO hard into spoilers, but it finishes on an open ending, and the way it ends really kind of just left me thinking ‘well…thats 100 minutes I didnt hate…but wont watch again’.

On the other hand, the set designs and direction are all wonderful, theres some really solid colour use here with block blues, reds and greens all REALLY getting used to the fullest of effect, theres clearly a strong creative vision in mind for this production and I think they totally nail the vibe of that distinct era of ’90s horror comedy thats campy but still strong on horror without just being silly’ Mixing the colour with gross out shot setups is a real nice touch. Honestly; the script may not have been my cup of tea, but I cant really flaw the visuals.

Direction of the cast however, might as well be skinimax for as intricate as it gets, some gyrations and basic ‘Enter here’, ‘say line here’, ‘exit here’ is about as involved as it gets. Its really quite dissapointing and the lack of a strong cast direction on this, causes a lot of floundering which, in a stronger directors hands, could have been used to turn things rather acidic on the comedy front.

The cine is absolutely helped by the direction, theres plenty of B-roll the colour choices really help pull this thing up, the edit is relatively nicely handled. but despite interesting set designs and colour use, there wasnt really anything that hit me and made me well and truely sit up and pay attention. sequences are all kind of just…fairly by the numbers, the kills in the film arnt really shot to dramaticize the deaths. they’re largely set up almost as ‘test shots’ that somehow made their way into the final film (a decapitation scene in which the cameras placed in a low wide angle stood out to me as being particularly poorly executed because you dont really feel like your in the action as it happens).

Its not bad cine by any stretch, its just a tad generic. Again, I feel had there been a bit more of an ambitious hand on set to push the crew. The end results may have been a bit more…adventurous.

As for the cast?…They wernt for me personally. were they hammy? yes. absolutely. Did they push that mania to the limit? no. and thats what lets this thing down for me. It feels like a Troma movie, but a troma movie where the cast have all been told to tone it back a bit. they’re stiff and unblinking, and I get they want to really sell the culty vibes. But for me? that backfires when theres no real ‘breaking point’ no moment when you realise these people are truely unhinged, theres no blood bath. they’re calm, relatively quiet and ‘straight laced’ from beginning to end. and that seems like a missed opportunity to me.

And the score was SO good that I couldnt whistle you a bar of it if you asked me to 🙂 it was THAT memorable and worked THAT well. as a backhanded compliment, It wasnt BAD enough that I noticed it either…so…win win?

Auntie Lee’s meat pies was, overall ‘Fine’. I feel you may love this one if you have a strong ‘rented from blockbuster’ style nostalgia for this particular era and genre of movie. But as someone who didnt really get involved with that side of the horror-sphere growing up, I dont really have the same feelings for it.

While the visuals are strong, and its clearly had a decent creative steerage behind it, The script ultimatley feels a bit flat to me, as do the cast and the lack of a memorable score combined with an underwhelming ending means that…while this isnt a film thats so bad i’ll never watch it again, it may well be a VERY long time before I go back to it. And…I probably couldnt recommend it either.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/auntie-lees-meat-pies/