Feast III: The Happy Finish (2009)

	Director: John Gulager
	Starring: Jenny Wade, Martin Klebba, Carl Anthony Payne II, Juan Longoria Garcia
	Run Time: 80 mins
	Certificate: 18
	Rating:

Plot
In a town overcome by ravenous monsters, a small group of survivors manage to fight their way from their rooftop sanctuary and down into the sewers as they attempt to escape. Here they come across a mysterious stranger who claims to be able to control the monsters as well as other various survivors. They decide that is enough is enough and it is time to make a stand.

Review
Shot back-to-back with Feast II: Sloppy Seconds, the final part of this trilogy sees the series downward cycle continue. Just in case you missed it, the last five minutes of the sequel are replayed and things pick up right from where they left off. So you'll know why they catapult a midget wrestler from a rooftop, why some guy has a pipe stuck in his head and why a couple of biker chicks are topless. It's a bad sign of things to come because a five minute recap in an eighty minute movie - you just know they were struggling to fill the rest of the running time. Case in point comes when the end credits roll for five minutes with a Mariachi singer telling us the entire story from all three films. Feast III: The Happy Finish simply limps along to the finishing line and is a far cry from the original.

Clearly all of the good ideas were squashed into the second part and this one just strings out the usual gore, nudity and silliness in an attempt to keep things moving. It's just low grade rubbish for the most part with only brief glimpses of the awesome creativity of the original. Here the problem isn't that it's too over-the-top or controversial like the previous flick (baby scene anyone?), it's that it's clearly running on an empty tank of ideas. The plot is non-existent as the survivors simply drift from scene to scene, meeting some short-lived newcomers with names like Shitkicker and Short Bus Gus and then getting themselves into trouble again. There is an odd set piece which provides ample carnage and a sense of what could have been but it's clear that the money ran out quicker than they expected. There are nowhere near as many twists and turns as there were in the other films. Since you'll have already seen the other two films, you'll know what to expect from the series so any twists and turns and shocking developments are just as predictable as any other film. The new characters that are introduced serve little purpose to the overall story and are generally killed off pretty quickly so it's not a shocker to see the same familiar faces making it right through to the very end (let's just so it pays for one of the cast to be related to the director). As soon as the group make it to the sewers, the film just becomes too dark and it's hard to see what is going on. The scene in which the group battle it out with a horde of zombie-like humans (who knows what they were, it's not really explained) is lit with strobe lighting and almost gave me a seizure. It's not a nifty effect. It seems to go on forever and it's extremely annoying. The other scenes with the survivors crawling around in the sewers drag like crazy because you see every single one of them climb up and down the same ladders, go through the same tunnel and so on. We get the idea - we don't need to see everyone do the same thing. These scenes aren't engaging in the slightest and again seem to be here solely to keep the running time ticking over.

It's the same cast and characters as before so at least we're all familar with them now and the film doesn't need to waste time introducing them. Clu Gulager is great as the grumpy Bartender and one particular scene with him trying to seal a wound with gunpowder like he saw in Rambo III is hilarious. It's the type of absurd moment that the film needed a lot more of. Hanna Putnam provides the token glamour and looks pretty hot throughout proceedings. Unfortunately she remains clothed and it's left to to the biker chicks to continue to provide the nudity. One mention should go to Juan Longoria Garcia who plays one of the midget wrestlers. He doesn't speak English in the films and all of his lines are subtitled but he's got some classic exchanges. None of the newcomers make any sort of impression whatsoever. It's the monsters who continue to shine here. Constantly hungry and horny, the monsters look pretty cheap in the daylight but once the action goes underground, it gives them their menace back a bit. They're also full of goo, gore and nasty fluid so whenever one of them bites the dust, expect make-up effects overkill. Blood flies, limbs severed, heads decapitated, bodies ripped open - the monsters even manage to anally rape one of the male cast. One last point of note is the out-of-leftfield ending which will have you rewind and watch over and over again to see if you just saw what you saw. It's a unique ending to a series which began with a flurry and ended with a whimper.

Verdict
Feast III: The Happy Finish is anything but a happy finish for the series. It's painfully juvenile, relying on a crude collection of sex, blood and fart gags because it doesn't have the same energy, buzz and creativity as the previous two films. A few inspirational moments promise a rallying finale but it's all a big let down.