John Gulager’s rise from wannabe filmmaker to creator of the fright-astic Feast series was only partially documented on the cinema-based reality series Project Greenlight. As part of the DVD release of his latest effort, Feast III: The Happy Finish (from Genius Products, The Weinstein Company, and their Dimension Extreme label) we are treated to a short PR piece which explains Gulager’s twenty year rise to ‘overnight sensation’ status. As the son of Hollywood staple Clu, the 50-something has seen his fortunes go from pretender to player, all thanks to the Matt Damon-Ben Affleck series. Oddly enough, for feeling so beneath the process, Gulager is probably one of the most success of the all the Greenlight alumni. Now, some four years after his initial achievement, he’s back with another installment of his monster movie series. While not bad, the third time here is definitely not the charm.
After watching Honey Pie buy it in the middle of the street, and seeing both undersized heroes Thunder and Lightning fail in their quest to get the junkie out of the police station, the rest of the first Feast‘s survivors decide to take matters into their own grue-slicked hands. So what if the Bartender is still sporting a horrible neck wound or that car salesman Greg has a pipe sticking through his skull. Biker Queen, Tat Girl, Slasher, and Secrets are still going to try to get the guns, load up on ammunition, and blast their way out of town. Sadly, a couple of cockeyed action men – Shitkicker and Jean Claude Seagal – make such a simple idea quite complicated. Eventually, a handicapped prophet named Short Bus Gus comes along to show them the path to righteousness…and escape. He seems skilled at controlling the monsters. Unfortunately, his power doesn’t extend to the mutants living beneath the city.
To call Feast III a sequel to the whacked out wonders of the gore-drenched Feast II would be an intellectual exercise of limited results. In essence, if Gulager and crew had been able to make a two and a half hour epic out of the first revisit to the monsters on the rampage material, there would be no need for this clever continuation. The story picks up right as the last one ended, with some of the characters we saw die off then back to accent their blood soaked demise. As the players move from location to location, Gulager introduces us to some of the most unlucky heroes in the history of the genre. One minute they’re making some massive stand against the beasties. The next, an accident has their brains splashed all over the walls.
A lot of Feast III tries to be so unconventional. Gulager gets a lot of mileage out of dialogue that reeks with Scream style self-referentialism, and there’s irony in abundance during many of the shock showdowns. However, there’s little this time to match the merry mayhem of seeing a baby splattered by a group of horny Hellspawn. There’s no denying that, after a while, the story starts to waver as well. We grow tired of conversations that sound like band religious epiphanies – or on the other hand, sloppy pre-barroom brawling. The start/stop approach to the action is irritating and the long passages of crawling around lose their allure. By the time the remaining survivors head underground and start battling with some mutants, Gulager is resorting to strobe-light, stop motion cinematography to capture the clash.
It’s as if the entire Feast III series symbolically runs out of steam. We still enjoy the wrap-up (including the WTF ending involving an unseen “force”) and the Mexican troubadour singing over the credits is a hoot. But the first two Feasts were so fun, so anarchic and overloaded with arterial spray that too see it come to a somewhat sputtering halt feels unfulfilling. Of course, the splatter is still present, heads and torsos ripped apart and leaking their vital goodness, and no one can top Gulager in his Sam Raimi/Peter Jackson-inspired desire to push the limits of such sluice. There’s a memorable moment with a decapitated heroine, a hungry fiend, and a bout of bad gas that has to be scene to be believed. In many ways, this series is a geeky gorehound’s dream come true. This time around, it’s the story that suffers.
As part of the direct-to-DVD release, Gulager steps up to offer yet another clever commentary. He is joined by Producer Michael Leahy and writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan. Together, this group gives the film a good going over, laughing at lapses in plot logic, goofball characterization, and their overall bizarre approach to the material. They lament the lack of sex this time around (only one individual gets buggered by the beasts) and the ending appears to be a combination of purposeful rebellion and a “what do we do now” dilemma. Along with the Gulager EPK and a series of trailers, the bonus features here are as much fun – and as much of a letdown – as this part of the Feast franchise.
Still, one has to admire Gulager for never giving up on his dreams. As the child of a Tinsel Town icon, he could have easily traded on his father’s fame to become one of many untalented leeches lunching on their family crest. Instead, Gulager held on to his passion for motion pictures and finally found the opportunity to achieve his dreams. The resulting horror spoof scored big with fans desperate for something thrilling, chilling, and filled with blood spilling. With Part III, we don’t really get the promised happy “finish” implied in the title – unless you’re talking about for Gulager and his career. Few filmmakers can create a successful film, let alone a series. While he may never be a Craven or Romero, this sunny survivor can make as much schlock as he likes, and as long as he keeps the same tone and temperament he showed with the Feast films, he’ll remain someone worth paying attention to.
