The first-ever Canadian made gore-fest (and a fitting companion-piece to CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS), CORPSE EATERS is a zombie-fest hailing from 1974. It was made by the late drive-in theater owner Lawrence Zazelenchuk for a reported $36,000 in Sudbury, Ontario, with Donald R. Passmore hired to direct, fired after four days and replaced by Klaus Vetter. Zazelenchuk sold the distribution rights to Howard Mahler, who used the film as a tax write off and never bothered releasing it. Zazelenchuk later abandoned his drive-in, bought a hotel in Florida and drank himself to death at age 36.
Presently the only source for CORPSE EATERS is a 56 minute abbreviation. The full version, which is said to run around 90 minutes, was heavily pared to avoid an X rating; whether that version still exists or not remains an enduring topic of debate among horror fans.
It begins with an offscreen voice warning “The motion picture you are about to see contains certain very stomach upsetting scenes,” and that “The producers feel that they have a moral obligation to warn each and every ticket buyer of this fact.” Hence a William Castle-esque gimmick involving a offscreen buzzing and a shot of a guy getting sick, which are played before the offending scenes.
First, though, we have the Happy Halo Funeral home, where the freshly killed corpse of a young man has been brought in. An extended flashback shows how the corpse assumed its current state.
It’s Friday the 13th, and four horny morons are on a nocturnal troublemaking expedition in a graveyard. Settling into a crypt, they hang a crucifix upside down and conduct a satanic ritual. This causes the dead to rise from their graves and chase the “heroes” out of the cemetery; one of them gets chomped, however, and is taken to a local hospital, where he dies and the chronology comes full circle.
Back at the funeral home the corpse rises from its coffin and, together with several fellow zombies, menaces the staff of the Happy Halo Funeral Home—including an elderly doctor who gets his eyes gouged. In the next scene, however, that very doctor is seen being dragged off to a nuthouse with his eyeballs somehow intact.
That Lawrence Zazelenchuk had his eye on the drive-in movie circuit (a business that, as the owner of just such an establishment, he knew quite well) is evident in the gratuitous nudity that packs the film, as well as a close-up of blood being drawn with a hypodermic syringe and much miscellaneous flesh ripping. Unfortunately, the lighting is so poor (in a film that was lensed largely at night) that it’s difficult to discern precisely what is happening—although the no-budget gore effects did look fairly impressive from what I was able to make out.
Beyond that the film is choppy, so much so that the guy-getting-sick intercuts and buzzing sounds (of which there are only two instances) don’t feel out of place. The film is packed with montages that prize crummy 1970s muzak, and sound mixing that frequently drowns out the dialogue with music. Among the latter is the 1972 Jean Michele Jarre composition “Windswept Canyon,” which, in what may be the film’s single most impressive element, Zezelenchuk was able to include legally (I think).
Vital Statistics
CORPSE EATERS
Maniac Productions
Directors: Donald R. Passmore, Klaus Vetter
Producer/Screenplay: Lawrence Zezelenchuk
Cinematography: Klaus Vetter
Editing: Michelle Jones
Cast: Michael Hopkins, Ed LeBreton, Helina Carson, Michael Krizanc, Terry London, Douglas Deering, Gary Stevens, Bill Sharen, Louise Parr, Bill Costello, Cathy Hickey, Ted Majkot, Peter Travaglini, Doris Costello, Chris Kemp, Alan Epps, Paula Giroux