#horror – #horrormovies – #RabidGrannies – #VinegarSyndrome – @VinegarSyndrome –
Elizabeth and Victoria Remington are two sweet, elderly ladies who are looking forward to celebrating their shared birthday with their family at their enormous country mansion. Little do they realize that their obnoxious relatives – which include a freeloading playboy, an unscrupulous arms dealer, a brash condom manufacturer and a terse lesbian magazine editor – are only interested in keeping in their aunts’ good graces in the hopes of inheriting their vast wealth. The festivities are not long underway when a strange and sinister woman appears at the gates to deliver an unexpected gift from an estranged member of the family – a mysterious, engraved wooden box, which, when opened, instantly transforms the two old dears into ravenous, flesh-hungry hags! The terrified partygoers scatter throughout the mansion as, one by one, they meet a fittingly gruesome end at the clawed hands of the ghoulish geriatrics.
One of the few feature-length horror movies to emerge from Belgium in the 1980s, Emmanuel Kervyn’s Rabid Grannies was a passion project for producer Johan Vandewoestijne (who had previously helmed the corpse-loving serial killer shocker Lucker the Necrophagus), and serves as the Flemish answer to the early splatter films of Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, Dead Alive). Packed with histrionic performances, gloriously atrocious dubbing and wall-to-wall gore gags – including head chomping, bodies slammed into railings, copious limbs being lopped off and even a spot of child mutilation, all served up via ultra stylized photography and with a deliciously black comedic streak. Most often seen in a heinously edited version which removed much of its over-the-top gore, the black sheep of boutique film distribution, Vinegar Syndrome, have seen fit to resurrect RABID GRANNIES for its uncut Blu-ray premiere, now newly restored in 4K from original 35mm film elements – and appearing in its longest version ever released in the US – complete with a wealth of both new and archival extras, including a feature-length documentary about the history of Flemish horror.
STARRING: Catherine Aymerie, Caroline Braeckman, Richard Cotica, Danielle Daven, Patricia Davia, Robert Du Bois