Rabid Grannies (1988)

Movie Info

Why so serious?

It’s the birthday of Elizabeth Remington (Danielle Daven) and Victoria Remington (Ann Marie Fox), and their family is there to celebrate. Unfortunately, their family wants Elizabeth and Victoria dead to receive their large inheritance. When a disowned devil worshipping nephew sends a mystic box as a gift, evil is unleashed upon Elizabeth and Victoria. Now the greedy family is getting what is coming to them, and no one will survive the night because the grannies are hungry.

Directed by Emmanuel Kervyn, Rabid Grannies (Les Mémés Cannibales) was a low-budget Belgian horror-comedy film.  The movie was cut down and released by Troma in the United States and received a cult following over the years.

There is no way around it, Rabid Grannies is bad. The movie is probably “so-bad-it-is-good” but it teeters on that proclamation because it is kind of boring. It was obviously a case of an idea driving a movie with no idea of what to do with a plot. It simply becomes demonic cannibals trapped in a big house.

You always eat your favorite first…

The movie spends a lot of time establishing that everyone in the family hates the grannies and doesn’t paint the grannies in a particularly likable image either. Virtually everyone in the film is unlikable, and it makes it hard to distinguish between any of the characters…there’s a fat one, a priest, the parents, the help, and the lesbians among others…that all the character development you really get (and it is pretty much that blunt). They also have really funky dubbed over accents.

The gore is ok. I guess they have a “rabid” hunger to eat their family, but allegedly the Troma version did cut down some of the gore (begging the question of what’s the point?) The grannies eat, dismember, and throw body parts around. It is bloody, but more goofy than gory.

I love my niece…she tastes delicious!

The problem with the movie is as mentioned there is no plot past possessed grannies. Sometimes the grannies are right on top of the cast eating and attacking, but most of the time the characters can just wander around the house shouting and yelling without being eaten. The movie decides to save a few cast members by having the grannies stopped in the house chapel, but it almost feels like a tacked on ending.

Rabid Grannies is completely the type of movie you watch in a group where you can mock it.  Don’t read into it because it isn’t very good or worth it. Sitting around and making fun of the movie the film is much more fun, and I really hope the filmmaker is what they intended the film to be because it really doesn’t play as anything but that.