Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Paul and Mary play The Blands, a wine dealer and nurse who dream of a better life. They're prudes who only believe in hugging and kissing, saving their passion for food and drink. They're also given to quick anger, which leads to Paul being fired from his job and those dreams fading. Throw in the fact that they live in a building full of swingers and things start to look bleak for the Blanks.After one of those swingers breaks in, Paul kills him with a frying pan and they throw him into the trash compactor. One day later, they do the very same thing and realize that just by killing people and getting their wallets, all their dreams may come true. After all, the bank only tried to get into Mary's pants (as everyone but Paul tries to do).After meeting with suburban dominatrix Doris, the Blanks make an ad. Believe it or not, the film's budget was so small, they couldn't afford to make a fake ad. So they ran a real ad in L.A. Weekly, but it only got one answer.Soon, they meet Raoul (Robert Beltran, Night of the Comet and TV's Star Trek Voyager), a locksmith con artist who breaks into their house the night after installing new locks. While in their apartment, he falls over a dead Nazi that Paul had just killed and cleaned up. He agrees to keep their secret and sell the bodies for more cash. Sure, he's selling those bodies to a dog food company, but he's also stealing their cars and selling them.The very next day, while Paul is buying groceries and a new frying pan (as Mary doesn't want to kill and cook with the same pan), a hippie client (Ed Begely Jr.) arrives late and tries to rape Mary. Luckily, Raoul arrives and kills the man with his belt. Soon, he and Mary are smoking the man's weed and making love. Raoul soon falls for Mary, despite her continually saying that it's all wrong and needing marijuana to relax. The lusty locksmith tries to kill Paul with his car (after a sequence where John Paragon plays a sex shop salesman. Paragon is better known as Jambi the Genie and the voice of Pterri the Pterodactyl on Pee Wee's Playhouse, as well as collaborating with Cassandra Peterson on her many Elvira projects), which leads to our hero working with Doris the Dominatrix to start a gaslighting campaign against Raoul, climaxing with prescribing him saltpeter pills that keep him from getting hard.After a giant swinger party, Paul ends up killing tons of rich swingers, taking their cars and money, finally able to achieve the dreams he shares with his wife. This leads to a drunken Raoul breaking back into the Bland house, disclosing the affair and telling Paul that he is taking Mary away. Of course, he has to kill Paul first, so he asks Mary to bring him the frying pan.Instead, Mary shows her true colors and love for Paul, killing Raoul. But wait! The real estate agent is on his way and there's no time to make him dinner! Of course, there's always...Raoul.The film ends with our cute little couple standing in front of their new restaurant, Paul and Mary's Country Kitchen, with the caption, "Bon Appétit."Bartel shot this film on odds and ends of stock in between projects. Some of the longer runs of stock given to the production had been rejected by others because their cases had mold grown on the cans that house the film. Often, the crew would have no idea if the film they were shooting was even usable. That said, this movie has a quick, bouncy, punk rock energy that seems improvised throughout.

This is a wonderfully inventive and clever movie made while the Reagan administration was trying to suppress anything that didn't meet the approval the so-called "Moral Majority" - and in retrospect, I LIKE Reagan! But it was also definitely a time when powerful white people were trying to recreate both the best and worst features of the 1950s. The worst features weren't very pretty.I can't say for sure that there was political satire intended in the film, but just at the right time, here comes a movie that pretty much destroys anything "Happy Days." I mean, where else can you hear a character implore another to "Whip me! Beat me! Make me write bad checks!" It's marvelous. Really, I'm tempted to give it a higher rating to offset the humorless 50s lovers who don't appreciate this work of genius, but it is a low budget "indie" film with all the flaws inherent in the genre. It's not polished, and that is a flaw in any work of art, but really, that's also part of the beauty of the genre as well: what can a filmmaker do within the constraints of a limited budget? So, it's not El Mariachi ... but what else is?It's definitely worth a look, if for nothing else than as a work of superlative satire and subversion, while Ron & Nancy tried to bring back McCarthyism with a friendlier face.

Paul and Mary Bland (Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov) do everything right. They're neat freaks, they collect good wines and serve the best food to their guests, and they sleep in individual beds just like the Nelsons on TV. Basically they're an "ideal" 1950s couple, transplanted into a cruddy apartment building full of swingers and drug addicts. Their only dream is to own a bed and breakfast in the country, and they invent a devious scheme to rob the swingers en masse. After all, why should they continue to suffer for playing by the rules, when everyone else is just so disgusting. Paul and Mary were meant for each other, and they are determined to live their dream.It's a very funny movie, and it has the consistency of style that marks Bartel as one of the most interesting directors working in "shlock." He doesn't condescend towards his own characters, and that makes the film hold up despite the weird situations that develop. And he's not afraid to make something tacky look tacky. But there's nothing "fake" about Paul and Mary Bland -- Paul truly is an expert on wine, and Mary's not a bad cook. They aren't delusional like a lot of characters in satire are.The actual scam seems to involve no risk. Nobody is able to withstand Paul and his deadly frying pan (shades of "Bucket of Blood" here -- this is almost a 1980s remake of that Corman classic). But Raoul (Robert Beltran) ignites the fire of sexual passion in Mary's bosom, and threatens the marriage albeit briefly. What I find interesting about the whole situation is that Raoul is totally convinced that Paul is a complete cuckold and that he's very naive. Meanwhile Paul institutes his own reign of terror on Raoul, convincing him that he has a VD, and Mary ultimately shows loyalty to her "perfect mate." So it's actually the ridiculously and almost stereotypically passionate "latin lover" Raoul who is the naive one. Paul and Mary Bland have a relationship that seems ridiculous and screams out to be made fun of, but it's the one thing that this film refuses to ridicule. And that's what holds the entire film together.

I'm a major movie watcher and go through about 30-50 movies a month. Upon watching so many movies I'm lucky to get 2 or 3 I really like. So when I came across this gem it was truly a diamond in the rough. This is a very low budget film made with money Paul Bartel borrowed from his parents since Hollywood wouldn't touch it. And thank god they didn't! It's perfect. The plot of the movie is basically a couple needs money to close on a house quickly and they decide to attract customers of the sexually devious nature through the newspaper and take advantage of their perverse behavior. But this is just the surface. Beneath this story is a great message about society and the way sex can and does corrupt us all. Eating Raoul is a B-movie comedy masterpiece and I love seeing low budget movies pull off timeless quality films. It ranks as a must see to any B-movie enthusiast and movie lover for that matter.