3 out of 5

I don’t think teenagers are cool.  I didn’t think they were cool when I was one, and I really don’t think they’re cool now.  Teenagers in horror films are meant to be recognizable proxies we don’t mind having killed, but who can give us some rootable-for attributes until their inevitable offing or survival.  …And I’ve never rooted for any of them, or laughed at their one-liners.  I’ve never cared.  I’ve had to rely on the other aspects of horror to get me by, which is fine, since characterization is just meant to be that weak hook that makes us drool over boobies or abs until X, Y or Z happens.  But I add this to make my bias clear: it’s extra annoying when it’s apparent we’re supposed to think someone is cool.

I don’t think Alex de Campi necessarily thinks teenagers are cool.  She seems to get the inadvertent dumbness that they’re supposed to exhibit.  But at some point, in ‘Flesh Feast of the Devil Doll,’ she loses the balance, and we’re reveling in heroic one-liners with hashtags and text abbreviations.  Sure, kids talk like that (maybe…), but it also reeks of an adult forgetting their stance and suddenly wanting to speak Teen Cool through their characters.  And it ruined the majority of ‘Flesh Feast’ for me.  But, to be fair (to me), as has happened with several Grindhouse efforts, the second half of the tale steps on itself anyway, delivering the gore but feeling more like a comic book than a horror movie come to life.  The initial ‘Bee Vixens’ two-parter introduced its characters and concept and then let the insanity fly; this general structure has remained consistent, except that from there on out, de Campi has been trying to write in little character bits (actually treating the characters like characters instead of pieces in a Grindhouse puzzle), which diminishes the effect of the insanity.  When the concept isn’t clearly defined – like ‘Prison Ship’ – this makes it rather dull to read.  With ‘Flesh Feast,’ where an ancient demon returns to make zombie truckers and assist with capturing nubile young virgins – thankfully supplied by  a local girl’s field hockey camp – we’re thankfully back in the same kinda ridiculous territory that made Bee Vixens fun, but then there’s that heavy-handed character aspect to weigh it down.  Gary Erskine’s art is surprisingly simplified, for the artist, but he has a good design for the Devil Doll and gives us some nicely over-the-top guts flying here and there.

‘Flesh Feast’ closes out Grindhouse batting average – on par with ‘Bride,’ better than ‘Antares,’ not as zany as ‘Bee Vixens.’  I have no doubt de Campi can kick my ass in Grindhouse film references, and its possible my historical reverence just isn’t deep enough to appreciate what she’s doing, but there’s almost too much of an attempt to legitimize the ridiculousness she plays with to make it sit comfortably in the Z-Grade territory I feel like its supposed to.  ‘Flesh’ has a fun setup, but then de Campi starts having more fun with the characters than the setup to make it fully pay off.