With Thanksgiving arriving this week, it seems safe to assume that food, menus, and recipes are on everyone’s mind right now. We’re also giving thanks to horror’s ability to leave no corner unexplored when it comes to frights, and the genre has no shortage of films heavily themed around culinary delights and, especially, frights. When horror meets haute cuisine, stomach-churning terror typically ensues.
Inspired by the gluttonous holidays and Thanksgiving feasts, these ten killer food-based horror movies serve up the perfect recipe for horror this Thanksgiving, whether you’re craving junk food or fine dining. Beware, though, as many of them may spoil your appetite.
Attack of the Mushroom People
Released initially as Matango, this condensed American dub sees a group of passengers and crew aboard a yacht on a day trip, capsized by unpredictable weather. They wind up on a deserted island that’s scarce in food resources, save for mysterious mushrooms and a shipwreck onshore containing remnants of radioactive testing. The castaways grow paranoid and hostile as rations are depleted, and more of them develop uncontrollable cravings for the mushrooms. They don’t realize until it’s too late that the mushrooms transform them into fungal humanoid creatures. Directed by Ishirō Honda, the mind behind prominent kaiju films Godzilla, Rodan, Destroy All Monsters, and more, Attack of the Mushroom People offers something far more atmospheric and eerie.
Blood Diner
Before becoming a standalone film, Blood Diner was initially intended to act as a sequel to Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast. That change resulted in a zany ’80s horror-comedy that remakes the splatter classic; the premise is essentially the same at its core. Directed by Jackie Kong, Blood Diner follows two brothers tasked by their dead serial killer uncle to continue his attempts to resurrect the goddess Sheetar. They do this by using their diner to host ritualistic feasts and lure women from whom they harvest body parts. A pair of detectives struggles to keep up with the carnage. The original played it straight, while Kong dials up the ’80s excess for maximum gonzo laughs.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
Revenge isn’t a dish best served cold in this luscious crime thriller; it’s a gloriously gruesome feast. After acquiring an upscale restaurant, crass mob boss Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) dines every night, repulsing his wife, Georgina (Helen Mirren). She soon begins a secret affair with another restaurant patron, and when Spica discovers the affair, he plots gruesome revenge. The provocative tale of greed and vengeance is lavish in production and style. It also ruffled the MPAA’s feathers, earning the film an NC-17 rating for its liberal use of nudity and grisly violence. The latter of which makes for one satisfying finale.
Dead Sushi
Dead Sushi is a ridiculous, gory horror-comedy that could only be helmed by Noboru Iguchi, the mastermind behind splatstick movies The Machine Girl and Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead. That means you should know before you even hit play whether this type of wackiness will be for you. It’s zombie insanity set around a sushi restaurant. Expect flying sushi, rice vomiting, rice zombies, a fish-man, and more chaos to wreak havoc as sushi comes to life. It’s as silly and as wild as it sounds, promising a raucously divisive time.
Dumplings
Beware of any food item promising to restore youth, especially if it’s not typically associated with health. Former actress Mrs. Li discovers her husband is having an affair with a much younger woman and seeks aid from Aunt Mei, a woman known for her rejuvenating dumplings. Of course, Mei’s dumplings give wondrous results thanks to a gruesome secret ingredient. It’s the feature-length adaptation from Fruit Chan’s Three Extremes anthology segment, which means a double helping of icky miracle food preparation with variations.
The Menu
An ensemble of affluent patrons gathers at the exclusive Hawthorne Island for a dining experience run by prestigious Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). The guests soon realize what devious, deadly dishes the Chef intends to serve. Director Mark Mylodand writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy carefully construct a multi-course fine dining tasting menu of satirical delights and frights that’ll leave you salivating for a solid burger. The Menu may have gathered a fine cast for this delectable culinary nightmare, but the film belongs to Ralph “Taco Tuesday” Fiennes.
The Platform
This Netflix original centers around a strange, vertical prison facility with one cell per floor and two inmates per cell. Every day, food is lowered through the levels via a platform, with the inmates only allowed to eat whatever is left on the platform for a fixed period. Every month, the inmates are randomly reassigned to a new floor. Those at the top level feast in luxury while those many floors down starve or worse. There’s no subtlety to this film’s overt metaphor, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. Things get brutal and repulsive.
The Stuff
Are you eating it, or is it eating you? The eponymous Stuff is a marshmallow/yogurt-like substance that bubbles up from the soil and gets marketed as a no-calorie treat. It’s the latest craze. The only problem is that The Stuff happens to be a parasite that turns its consumer into zombie-like creatures. Though the commentary and consumerism of junk food are thinly veiled, it’s endearingly goofy and funny. Leave it to director Larry Cohen and lead Michael Moriarty to bring the quirkiness in this horror movie that may make you question your Thanksgiving dessert.
Thinner
What’s Thanksgiving without a pie? This Stephen King adaptation serves up a gnarly slice of revenge. Billy Halleck is an upper-class lawyer with a talent for defending criminals. It doesn’t take long before his misdeeds piss off the wrong gypsy, who curses him to lose weight at an unhealthily rapid rate. A mean-spirited and macabre story adapted faithfully, it’s enhanced by practical effects and one doozy of an ending for the Halleck household.
Troll 2
A sequel in name only, Troll 2 makes for one of the most ridiculous horror movies you’ll ever see. Lovingly dubbed one of the best worst movies you’ll ever see by fans, the events that transpire in this film often defy logic and explanation. The story follows the Waits family as they arrive in the town of Nilbog for an extended vacation. But Nilbog is goblin spelled backward, and young Josh Waits (Michael Stephenson) learns through his ghostly grandpa that the locals are vegetarian goblins in disguise aiming to transform all humans into plants for easy consumption. There’s death by drowning via popcorn, ruined feasts via urination, and a whole lot more in a movie that will leave you uttering “WTF?!”
