Ray Charles Video:

		List Price: $9.99		Label: Vci Video Salesrank: 111978 Released: January 24, 2003
		Our Price: $27.88
		Used Price: $9.20
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

The Undertaker and His Pals Reviews:
Special Today: Leg Of Lamb
2008-12-12 - "The Undertaker and His Pals" is a moldy piece of stinky cheese from 1966 starring Ray Dannis (not to be confused with the vastly more talented Ray Dennis Steckler) as The Undertaker. The film revolves around three cannibal bikers led by Dannis on a culinary crime spree. The film opens with a girl whose last name is Lamb (bet you can't see this one coming...) who is killed and has her leg removed for use in the chef's special at "The Greasy Spoon" a diner run by the other two bikers. It was inevitable that the special the following day would be "leg of lamb", which Private Investigator Harry Glass and his secretary Miss Poultry (really) find not to their liking. Unfortunately for Miss Poultry, she's next on the hit list and the next day's special is equally predictable, although no more appetizing.

During their last killing, a woman shoots off the license plate of one of the bikes in the most unlikely piece of marksmanship in history, leading Glass and police ultimately to the solution to the puzzle with the assistance of twin vixens Thursday and Friday. The conclusion couples the least plausible accidental death scene in history with the worst closing theme song ("Cut In, Cut Up, Cut Out") in ready recollection.

The film has atrocious production values. The color is so bad that parts of it appear almost to be black and white, while other parts are so skewed in blue and yellow color balance as to almost require sunglasses. The sound effects are not remotely well synched with the film, and the special effects are utterly laughable. The soundtrack relentlessly juxtaposes drum solos, jazz trumpet and saxophone licks, and ragtime piano snippets at completely random and meaningless locations, which were sometimes so jarringly inappropriate that their very presence made me laugh. The acting is horrible, and the script is riddled with stilted dialogue and continuity problems as well as inane logical problems. How did Dannis survive his fall from the top of a building to come back in the next scene? Why did the chef change from killing Dannis to killing his own wait staff in mid scene? I don't know, and I doubt that T.L.P. Swicegood, director of this mess, did either. Mercifully this film killed his career, so we don't have to endure more daily cannibalistic specials in a sequel.

The film is ostensibly a comedy, but really isn't funny. I generously gave it two stars for a modicum of camp value, and for the fact that it's only 66 minutes long. Sometimes less is more.

Stupdi but charming
2006-11-27 - I once read a review that said given the choice between a stupid movie that knows it's stupid and a smart movie that knows its smart, always go with the stupide one. And this movie is definitely stupid. The killers have pretty shoddy motivations. The undertaker jokes are strained and the women show up only to get murdered.

But despite that, it has its charms. The music is pure Franky and Annette at the beach and the long shots of bikes riding through the hills of California are just beautiful. And how can you really ruin a cannibalism story. The fake blood is decidedly fake and the jokes are corny. Still if you have enough booze or pot, this movie is a perfect capper to an evening.

Cheesy never tasted so good
2006-10-04 - I love this movie, it is one of those movies where everything is amataur,
Obviously everyone involved with this movie had a great time making it and the low production value and high spirits make it a fun filed ride for me.
I love it so much I am buying the DVD version despite have it on vhs for years. I love the casting in it and the idea of a "motorcycle gang" on Honda 50s or 90s barely more than a moped a hoot.
Great movie with a cheeseberger and beer.

So very, very bad.
2005-02-16 - The Undertaker and His Pals (T. L. P. Swicegood, 1967)

Swicegood, a writer for the TV series The Untouchables, took the directorial helm for the first time with The Undertaker and His Pals. It was the last anyone in Hollywood heard from him; not only his directorial career, but his writing career, vanished. It is not that hard to see why.

The Undertaker and His Pals is a beach comedy away from the beach, a softcore film without the sex. It certainly starts out with a shock; a woman is stalked by three masked motorcycle riders, then is attacked and killed, after which her legs are severed. The gore effects, for 1967, are stunning, and must have been shocking in the extreme to a pre-Night of the Living Dead audience. Unfortunately, Swicegood must have figured he couldn't get away with a whole film of such effects, and the explicit, deliciously shocking nature of the first scene is never to be found again. The movie descends into sixty-three minutes of slapstick, a Cro-Magnon version of Airplane! with cannibalism, but no one who can act nearly as well as Robert Hays. (And that's really saying something.)

Yes, the film is only sixty-three minutes long. And the crowning touch on this monkey is that even though the film is so short, it still has to resort to the old puff-out-the-time trick of repeating scenery. If you cut out the filler, the movie would probably have been forty-five minutes long. Which would not have been a bad thing. Much of the forty-five minutes are filled with actresses from sex comedies wearing as little as possible and silly special effects (there is one, about halfway through the film, that looks out-of-place, but is the only time during its length the movie comes even close to the power of the first sequence).

Probably good for a laugh, if you're under the influence, but otherwise, avoid it. * ½

BORING MOVIE AND POOR SCRIPT
2004-03-29 - Eating human flesh makes for easy jokes. This movie has almost none. They seem to be more concerned about gore, which is boring as hell. Also, a movie like this needs at least one good horror or comedy actor. This film has none! Since many of the acters have appeared in major productions, the acting is acceptable. So, it's not funny in a SO BAD IT'S GOOD ED WOOD vain. There are better films to spend your money on!