Made in the 1990s but smelling like something from the 1970s, Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies is the product of a porn director and a few Playboy ladies getting together and making something in their downtime. The results are as impressive as the stars’ superstructures, though there’s scant pickings if you’re only here for a leer.
The plot is a lift from Sweeney Todd – humans repurposed as baked goods – with Karen Black as Auntie Lee, a faded Southern belle and enterprising baker who uses the wayward men her nieces entice in from the street, or wherever, as the savoury filling in her celebrated pastries.
Black isn’t the only actor whose name you might recognise. There’s Pat Morita, of Karate Kid fame, as the smalltown sheriff. And Michael Berryman, whose face you will know even if the name isn’t familiar. He’s the odd-looking guy from The Hills Have Eyes, 1977 version.
They’re good, one and all, though the bulk of the action falls on Auntie Lee’s four nieces – Magnolia (Ava Fabian), Fawn (Kristine Rose), Coral (Teri Weigel) and Sky (Pía Reyes), with Petra Verkaik (another Playboy alumna) joining them later on for what might be called the Gimp Bit.
Scantily clad women who pivot forwards from the hips quite a lot, often right into the camera lens, dick-driven men who just can’t help themselves, the use of the word “rape” rather loosely, it doesn’t sound like required viewing at the weekly meeting of fourth-wave feminists, and yet there is a slightly progressive spin to be put on this – the women have agency, they are entrepreneurial and they’re smart.
Given that Fabian is the star of the Erotic Confessions TV series, Reyes was the lead in a movie called Call Girl, Rose got lots of exposure in Total Exposure and Weigel had a standout role in Giant Jugs, you might not expect much in the way of acting. But actually it’s pretty good, Rose and Fabian in particular, and since their characters carry most of the plot – find man, butcher man, make pies – that’s a real advantage.
For all its schlocky set-up, and given the cast, director Joseph F Robertson could have just gone for titillation and had his ensemble undress a bit more and he would have found an audience. But he has ambition and delivers more than you might expect from the director of The Long Ranger, Dangerous When Wet and Erotic Aerobics (all shot under his unusual nom de porn, Adele Robbins).
This can be seen most obviously in the longish, late-ish section where Auntie Lee and her nieces are playing host to a passing rock band, who don’t realise what fate awaits them. Robertson crafts the tension expertly, with lurid colours, ghoulish camera movements and a strange sound design pushing speech into the background, as if reality had suddenly been swapped out for nightmare. Which, for the guys – yet more doltishness, this time of an amusing Spinal Tap sort – it has been.
Things get a bit freakish for a while, before Robertson… but never mind that, you want to know if the ladies disrobe. They do. They look as good as you’d expect, especially in a swimming pool scene also featuring David Parry, who plays a private eye looking for a man who is now a tasty pie filling. Parry looks genuinely delighted to be in this scene – I don’t think he’s acting.
Erotic rather than pornographic and becoming increasingly gothic, this is obviously a lark but it’s a good one. As if The Dukes of Hazzard had been remade with Daisy Duke taking all the main roles, with added cannibalism. It’s well made, good looking, for the most part well acted and energetically directed.
There’s also no trace of any “we’re really much better than this”. Which is understandable from Robertson and his Playboy leads – this is a legit movie, godammit – but refreshing from the names you do recognise. The big names are all in. As is everybody else. It’s this movie’s secret sauce, gravy, whatever.
Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
