MICROWAVE MASSACRE (1983)
Article 4615 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-28-2014
Directed by Wayne Berwick
Featuring Jackie Vernon, Loren Schein, Al Troupe
Country: USA
What it is: Exploitation horror comedy

A construction worker flips out due to his wife’s obsession with gourmet dishes and kills her. He dismembers the body and hides it in the freezer. He ends up eating one of her hands in a fit of hunger and decides he likes the taste…

If the main image for this movie on IMDB is of any indication, this is one of those movies that eventually tried to market itself to the camp audience, billing itself as “The Worst Horror Movie of All Time”. It’s not. It’s just a cheap, lame, tacky low-budget comedy with horror and sexploitation elements tossed into the mix, and I don’t think the real “Worst Horror Movie of All Time” would aspire that low. Oh, there’s the odd joke here and there that works (which is more than I can say for some other comedies), but most of the jokes are either ones that would have been funnier if they had been handled better, or ones that simply never had a chance to begin with. There’s lots of pointless and gratuitous nudity as well, and it is a little weird to hear Jackie Vernon (who is probably most famous for having given voice to Frosty the Snowman in a couple of Christmas specials) in these circumstances. Probably the campiest element of the film is one of the hugest microwave ovens I’ve ever seen, one which doesn’t even turn off when you open the door. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, but I will give it this much; it’s better than the soft-core remake of that movie known as PLEASE DON’T EAT MY MOTHER.