Ah, FEAST III…the most fun you’ll ever have being rapped on the chin by a franchise’s third installment. Chin-checks are no fun—a terrible bruise occurs, and turns purple, blue, then fades into an embarrassing green-yellow during the healing process.

Enough of that, though; have you ever seen a monster shit out a human head? I have now, and I can tell you that a close-up is the way to go when filming the act. Nobody wants to see a creature swallow a beautiful woman’s noggin whole, then grunt, strain and push it out of its greasy ass from a distance. That would be pretentious. Instead, jam the camera up against the monster’s oozing cheeks while it struggles to release the head, then give the audience what they really want: a static shot of the head thumping on the street like a chocolate-raspberry bowling ball.

If you’ve seen FEAST, you know how much fun it can be to play for drunk friends and family. If you’ve seen FEAST II: SLOPPY SECONDS, you know how challenging it can be to judge whether or not drunk friends and family are drunk enough to tolerate it. FEAST III: THE HAPPY FINISH, now out on Dimension Extreme DVD, wants you to stop caring about everyone else, and decide when you are drunk enough to show it to anyone—including yourself.

This franchise has decided to stop having honest fun with the audience. It’s true that in FEAST-Land, nobody is safe, but at least the first film’s audiences were safely in on the joke—we had fun. In this one, we catch up with the second film’s pack of jerks, see more of the awful greenscreened backgrounds they like to stand in front of, watch a few get giddily mashed, then are introduced to more give-a-damn characters, like “Jean-Claude Seagal”—a martial arts expert who appears to fight and blood rubber wiseass wisecracks blood kill blood funny rubber rubber shaky-cam…sorry. A group of survivors realize they’ve come across a nest of the vicious things, and that when a creature rapes a human, a mutant hybrid will be quickly birthed and run amuck. The advance pictures of this monster had me at “hello”—yet here I sit…

The old-timers will tell you that during the Depression, many cinematic creatures slithered and stomped onscreen, offering a weird kind of miserable company. Now that it’s once again rational to go out and search for pennies in the streets, regardless of whether they’re heads-up, what kind of escapism will you seek? Spend your hard-earned dollars on a flick that understands your frustration, and cathartically tears its cast apart like chickens? It sure sounds good. But what to do upon realizing the film’s real intention: mocking you for ever noticing it? What then? Are you the kind of person who punches a Red Box, or just leaves a note?

Perhaps we’re making too much of this. Then again, is it ever a compliment to a film to say, “Hey, it’s [insert flick] part three—what did you expect?” To hell with that. Gulager and co. created dangerous, fascinating and (Lord ‘ave mercy!) original creatures with FEAST. The filmmakers were given the opportunity to pay the piper with sequels, and they turned a legion of complex, funny and frightening monsters into goofy dickheads who, at least, read their scripts. Why?

There’s a commentary on the disc by Gulager, franchise writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan and producer Michael Leahy. We learn much, including that Gulager initially wanted to make this installment “scary” again, rather than slapsticky like the second FEAST. There’s also an unsettling discussion betwixt the quartet about how shocking they thought it would be to do away with a presumably leading character with “something to prove” during the film’s early moments, which is just PSYCHO talk. Gulager often snickers the insult “Suckazzz…” when a presumably unexpected moment arrives, which is also fun. Lastly, it’s acknowledged—when a masked ninja (that would be Jean-Claude) appears to slash his way through a scene—that no one really knows what this movie is supposed to be. “Splatstick?” someone offers. “Splatstick, yeah…” comes the reply from someone else.

The only other extra (not counting FEAST trailers) is A Look Back at John Gulager, which briefly revisits the fellow’s life up to FEAST, then offers a few thoughts on how happy he is to have landed a career in the industry. The flick sounds great, and when those funky greenscreen shots aren’t around, the widescreen transfer looks damn near amazing.

FEAST will never leave my shelf. It’s one of Those—those wonderful, never-fail flicks that charm the pants off of anyone who isn’t ready to go home yet. If FEAST III happened because FEAST was made, then I can’t be angry—can I? Never mind…those are far too heavy thoughts to handle here. If THE HAPPY FINISH is the end of the series, so be it. But if FEAST IV arrives someday in NEW BEGINNING fashion, here’s hoping it’ll be what a FEAST sequel could and should be: a blast.

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