Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies


^{Please note that I am more than slightly annoyed that none of the movie posters seem to feature Karen Black, despite her playing the bloody character the damn movie is named after.}

Auntie Lee is a soft spoken, mild-mannered southern gal who, with the help of her four nieces, makes some of the best meat pies in the small town of Penance, California. All the local shops are loyal customers and the pies are so delicious that it’s hard to keep them in stock. But despite what Auntie Lee tells everybody, the secret to her delicious meat pies is not her secret mix of herbs and spices. The secret ingredient is the various hitchhikers, drifters, and passersby who happen to travel through the little one-cop town and have the misfortune of coming across one of her nieces. Because anyone who has the misfortune of being lured back to their home almost assuredly ends up the main ingredient in Auntie Lee’s next hearty, crusty baked dish.


^{Yum. Tender vittles.}

I figured I’d keep with my current theme of “people being eaten” and came upon this odd little comedy/horror film I hadn’t heard of before. Considering the title and the summary, I was almost certain that ole Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies was going to begin with a Troma jingle. But shockingly they had nothing to do with this, so I’m happy I didn’t wager any money on that bet. It’s still a Direct-to-Video release, but in this case this film was actually at least partially financed by Columbia Pictures, meaning there was at least a small bit of money behind it. It also happens to star Karen Black, Pat Morita and Michael Berryman, so my interest was definitely piqued…. Only for it to plummet again once the movie actually got going.



The movie’s greatest weakness is undoubtedly the plot. Specifically that it’s surprisingly dull. One would think it would be hard to make a movie about a group of hot ladies butchering and devouring wayward men and finding a way to turn that into a business model “boring”, but this movie somehow managed to pull it off. I know, I know. I’m as shocked about that as you are. But it is what it is. While the movie does undoubtedly have some good scenes, it’s sadly hampered by even longer stretches where nothing of real interest is going on. There may be a nice, good, dark quip here, or a clever sight gag there, but nothing too impressive.

It’s also further bogged down by several (yes, several!) subplots that ultimately end up going absolutely nowhere. One of the longer ones involves a private eye who spends quite a bit of time trying to track down one of the ladies unfortunate victims, which he does successfully manage to link back to Auntie Lee’s house. Now, in any other movie all of this might have been the crux of some climatic ending that warrants getting the police involved and the operation being discovered and yadda, yadda, yadda. But the police end up being involved thanks to another, completely separate subplot. So all the private eye subplot accomplishes is a means to give the ladies yet another dumb victim for them to add to the pile. Because his story accomplishes NOTHING. If they had cut it out the rest of the story would have remained exactly the same. And I bring this up because all any of these scenes manage to do is add useless runtime to a film that I feel would have ended up being far more enjoyable had it been more compact. Because at 1 hour and 40 minutes the movie just feels too damn long. I think cutting out 10-20 minutes and having a shorter runtime would have resulted in less downtime and allowed all the gruesome deaths and black humor to come at you at almost rapid-fire pace, and would have made for a more enjoyable experience. Which isn’t to say that what is here is necessarily bad, just that sometimes less really is more.


^{Honestly, the only good part about this guy is that I got to watch Morita threaten him with a sword.}

Other than that though, the movie is pretty decent. The acting in particular is probably better than this silly little movie deserves. Black, Morita and Berryman really take center stage, and while it’s a shame they weren’t given better material to work with they do help elevate the film into something better than you’d expect. But even all of the “nieces” (Kristine Rose, Ava Fabian, Teri Weigel, Pía Reyes and Petra Verkaik) and some of the various side characters manage to hold their own quite well. Really, the only acting chink in the film includes the rabble of moronic victims who end up getting turned into gruesome pot pies. But hey, this movie is supposed to be a comedy, so I’m sure that was mostly intentional, because this film does not portray most of the gentlemen in a good light at all. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they were asked to be purposefully stilted and cheesy to make them look EXTRA dumb. Which they would all have to be to keep blindly following these ladies around without a second thought despite all the red flags they were throwing. Then again, most if not all of those nieces were Playboy Playmates and/or porn stars, so maybe their blind infatuation is explainable. Still, let this be a lesson for all the fellas: no matter how horny you are, never agree to be tied up by a stranger in a room covered in countless naked dolls trapped in chain link fence. Trust me, I’ve watched enough of these things to know that nothing good can ever come of that.


^{Unless of course it’s how you choose to decorate your own house. In which case you can be as kinky as you damn well please.}

Even the effects on display are pretty good. Not great of course, as this is still clearly a budget movie and not the splatter film the synopsis might suggest, but it still has more than its fair share. There’s blood and guts (naturally), dismemberment, and even a nifty decapitation scene involving a hidden ax in a pantry. So there’s a nice variety on display. But there’s also a lot of stuff that ends up being implied or happens just off screen, so it also might be a tad disappointing for the hardcore gore-hounds. Still, the movie does try to make up for it by giving a couple of the ladies some of the strangest looking bedrooms the set designers could think of. I don’t know if it worked, but I must admit that I was amused by the gaudiness and excessive black-light effects, so there’s that.


^{Somebody on set was VERY happy to finally have an excuse to use their stockpile of UV paint, I just know it.}

Overall though, Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies is just okay. The acting is fine and the production values are actually super high for a budget B-flick like this. But the story really rambles about, and the humor…. Well, let’s just say that it’s predominantly sight gags (I particularly liked the lace accents all the ladies added to their rifles) and “dark” humor, and while I certainly liked most of it, I know that’s not necessarily the kind of stuff that’s going to appeal to everyone. So ultimately your enjoyment is really going to boil down to your comedic tastes here, I think. But for the most part, I liked it, even if I think it needed a bit more polish and would have highly benefited from more snip-snips from the editor’s chair. So if you enjoy dark, kinda gory horror comedies, then feel free to give this one a whirl. But if not then, well…. I can’t imagine this one will sway you on the genre.

Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies is available on a variety of streaming services.

Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies is also available on Bluray.

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