Recent examples of newfound alternative classics included The American Astronaut and the oddball Australian artifact from the mid-90s, Bad Boy Bubby. And to many, the Canadian camp-fest Big Meat Eater should be relegated to certified cult status immediately. But this also brings up an interesting dilemma when dealing with this category of film, a sentiment that can best be described by the old adage 'one man's cult is another man's crap'. Indeed, it seems that no example of hip and trendy entertainment can be graded on excessive enthusiasm alone. There is also a magic ingredient to a cult classic, something that like the Supreme Court definition of pornography is only evident once you see it. The films mentioned previously all have an elusive, enigmatic spark, a special ingredient that turns them from failures to real finds in the eyes of the converted. The problem with Big Meat Eater is that, while it may conform to all the cult definitions, that extraordinary spark that pushes it over the top may still be missing.

The DVD:
In the small town of Burquitlam, life is fairly normal. The local butcher, Bob Sanderson, sells his cuts of meat with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. The mayor is a mild mannered mafioso who doesn't mind letting his hired goons handle most of his 'governmental' duties. The town teen is a science geek who is trying to discover a new kind of rocket fuel. And the local janitor, Abdullah, is an unhinged serial killer who has the unfortunate habit of breaking out into song. Yep, Burquitlam is just like every other town in British Columbia, Canada – that is, until an alien race decides to invade the minor burg. Seems that Bob's butcher shop sits directly on top of a septic tank filled with Bolonium, a source of energy the extraterrestrials need to power their ship. And they will stop at nothing to get it.

When Abdullah gets fired for cranking up the city hall boiler, the black behemoth goes postal and kills the mayor. The aliens resurrect the body and send it on a mission – to destroy Bob's butcher shop and build an intergalactic refueling station. In the meanwhile, young Jan Wczinski has just about perfected his own interstellar fuel. But he needs money to gather together the proper chemicals. His immigrant father, a crooked contractor, won't give it to him. And his mother and grandmother are too busy worrying about their old country superstitions to help out. With an attack from outer space imminent, and no savior in site, the town merely goes about its song and dance style business, blissfully unaware of the danger they face.

In the vernacular, Big Meat Eater is what we cult film fans call a 50/50 feature. This means that half of the movie speaks to us as aficionados of the weird and wacky. We get what it's trying to do and say, and let those elements work on us in magical, mysterious ways. But we also realize that part of the exercise is just plain pathetic. It reeks of the retardation derived from underdeveloped ideas and poorly executed plot points. Trying to decipher whether or not the movie was successful then becomes a kind of balancing act, placing the pros and the cons on the scales of cinematic justice to see which side gets the benefit of the dramatic doubt.

When Canadian filmmakers Chris Windsor, Phil Savath and Laurence Keane got together to hash out this amalgamation of John Waters, Little Shop of Horrors, 50s educational films and merrily misguided musicals, it's impossible to believe that they really knew what they were doing. Big Meat Eater has a kitchen sink feel to its formulation, a creaky cobbling together of ideas, genres and styles that don't always play nice with each other. Instead, they seem like pushy adolescents waiting to get in line at a water park, nudging and tripping over each other to monopolize your attention.

Some of the brats in the queue include the casting and performances. Though he is a well-regarded jazz musician in the Great White North, Clarence "Big" Miller is definitely not an actor. Tor Johnson had more emoting skills, and Coleman Francis made a more menacing mongoloid presence. The oversized performer is just a waste as Abdullah, a character with some rather questionable motives to begin with. Why this bulky black man (who is supposed to be from the Middle East – after all, he wears a fez) solves all his problems with slaughter just doesn't make much sense. Indeed, it appears to be a last minute addition to the Big Meat Eater's repertoire of the bizarre merely to add a little gallows humor gore.

Actually, the casting in general is pretty hit or miss. When required to play archetypes like freaked out foreigners and straight-laced dorks, the actors really get into their roles. Almost everyone in the Wczinski family is just great, playing on and against stereotype to prove that immigrants can be both shiftless and smart, trading on tradition to cut through contemporary society's shortsightedness. As embodied by Stephen Dimopoulos, clan patriarch Josef is a collection of contradictions with a thick European accent. Mother Rosa – Georgina Hedegos – is too busy making Moldavian pierogies to acknowledge the nonsense going on around her, while miserable little matriarch Babushka, as played by Ida Carnevali, is one oddball elderly entity.

But the perfect performance comes from George Dawson, who makes bland butcher Bob Sanderson into the perennial 50s fool we've come to associate with the decade's straight-laced lameness. With just a hint of a lisp and a demeanor so starched he can't see the carnage going on around him, he nearly single-handedly saves this film.

Of course, there are other individuals who wouldn't find their Method muse if it was laying in a box in front of them marked "talent". Though he's gone on to have quite the legitimate career, Andrew Gillies is too old, too suave and – oddly – too British to be playing the teenage Jan. Whenever he shows up, hair slicked in a ridiculous DA and flood pants shouting out their obviousness, you simply sigh, not burst out into laughter. Howard Taylor, as the supposed mafioso mayor, acts about as Italian as a block of Velveeta and slips in and out of his tough guy accent so often that you just wish he'd drop the device and stick with his Canadian twang. The perimeter of the production has some nice turns by extras and minor bit players, but when your wind-up toy aliens out emote some of your supposedly professional players, you know you're in trouble.

Indeed another of the major pluses here is the half-assed, cardboard cut-out and toy box surplus FX that are used throughout Big Meat Eater. The aliens are indeed a hoot, their vocoder voices perfectly matching their mechanical man visage. From the model train miniatures to the child's plastic space ship, the film functions as both parody and homage to other notorious sci-fi knockoffs like Plan 9 from Outer Space and much the Roger Corman oeuvre. Add in the amazing music, which runs the gamut from swamp boogie inspired blues (Miller's manhandling butcher ballad "Big Meat Eater") to ersatz-DEVO, and the kitschy retro revival feel to the sets and the surroundings, and this movie looks like it leapt from an Eisenhower era passion pit directly onto your Late, Late Show TV screen. The only thing missing is the syncopated clock.

But just like another failed experiment in forced whimsy, 2004's static and stupid Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, faux farce is hard to get a handle on. Windsor, Savath and Keane throw too many narrative strands and unnecessary subplots into their merry mix, so it's no surprise that a few are left blatantly unaddressed by the end of the feature. While it may seem foolish to demand complete closure from a film that is more lark than logical, even Ed Wood found a way – albeit an overly expositional one – of cementing up all his story cracks.

Also, there is a weird dichotomy at play between Windsor's direction and the script he crafted with Savath and Keane. When the tale is sensationally silly, the camerawork is kind of crappy. But when saddled with some incredibly inane sequence, Windsor's way with a lens really shines. Indeed, watching Big Meat Eater often feels like sitting with a schizophrenic as he or she chronicles their life to you. No matter what he or she tells you, the way in which it's told becomes the focus of the story.

Actually, Big Meat Eater is a movie that wants to draw attention to itself. It begs to be beloved and tries to tip the balance in its favor by never letting one idea sit around and fester for too long. But eventually, the free-for-all formula catches up with the film, grinding it to a halt when it should be swirling it into a frenzy of fun. There is no denying that much of this movie is a certified cornball carnival, just dopey enough and daffy enough to keep you interested for the entire running time. But it's hard to imagine this film going on to Rocky Horror kind of heights. This is more like Shock Treatment, the beloved but misguided sequel to the story of Brad and Janet. Everything is in place to recreate the look, the feel and the sensation of a cult classic. But somewhere on the way to fan obsession, Big Meat Eater goes wrong, proving that there was probably a sound reason why it hasn't been heard from since its initial release 23 years ago.

The Video:
Koch Vision delivers what can best be described as a cleaned up VHS version of Big Meat Eater for the 'deserves to be digital' domain. Actually, this is not fair to the transfer. There are none of videotape's tell-tale trademarks, like murky visuals or modulation lines to be found on the clear, detailed 1.33:1 full screen image. The low budget look is obviously the result of the film's financial facets, as well as its advanced age. As a result, the color palette is muted, the darks overwhelm the image and the whole enterprise feels cheap and chintzy. Again, this is the fault of the original elements, not Koch's presentation.

The Audio:
Polishing the soundtrack to a nice, nuanced sheen, the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound presentation of Big Meat Eater is just superb. There is minimal hiss, a lack of distortion and the usual flat ambience of a low budget movie is more or less filled out by the creation of a multi-channel mix. The back speakers aren't used that often (unless there is music playing, of course) but the dialogue is pristine and presented in front channel clarity. It's the songs that benefit most from the digital revamp. They come alive with all the stylistic conceits the performers placed into each number.

The Extras:
Sadly, a film like Big Meat Eater just screams for contextual materials. What anyone unfamiliar with this farce wants to know immediately is who made this movie, and how did the production proceed. Koch gives us none of that here. All we are treated to is a dozen or so photo gallery slides and that's it. No interviews with cast and crew. No making-of featurette. No filmography or basic biographical information. The lack of substantive bonus elements really undermines this film's merchandising chances. Few fans will dish out the dollars for a literal unknown. It is up to the extras to tell the story the movie cannot. Too bad Koch doesn't feel that way.

Final Thoughts:
Make no mistake about it – cult is a crapshoot. One moment you're the bell of the generational ball (Phantom of the Paradise, Pink Flamingos) the next you are overrun by young upstarts who outdo you in the sound (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and vile vision (Nekromantik, et. al.) department. It's a fairly safe bet that no one will be going to out sci-fi spoof Big Meat Eater. Indeed, it would be hard to top much of its terrific, tacky sublimity. Yet this is a far from perfect presentation, losing some of its luster thanks to elements both outside, as well as within, its creative control. Now no one claims that a cult film must be faultless, but it does need to keep its defenders well armed for the eventual onslaught of critical and commercial rejection. Unfortunately, Big Meat Eater's arsenal is lean, and getting smaller by the year. Chances are you'll enjoy this movie immensely while watching it. But you probably won't worship it the way other champions of the outsider genre are venerated.

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