Awesomely Bad: Microwave Massacre

You know a horror movie is going to be pure quality when the star is the guy who voiced Frosty the Snowman in all those classic kid's cartoons. That's right, legendary "King of Deadpan" Jackie Vernon plays lead role in what the director self-appointed as the "Worst Horror Movie Ever Made." With bonifides like that, Microwave Massacre had a lot to live up to. Could this tale of an Average Joe turned cannibalistic serial killer really be that bad?

The quick answer is; No. The sordid tale of Don, a milquetoast construction worker with a nagging wife with culinary retardation, who snaps and begins killing and eating his savory victims - starting with his wife - is not the worst horror movie ever made. It is a very poorly made movie with deplorable acting, oddly paced scenes, and frighteningly bad effects but it also happens to be a pretty funny movie that also earns some points for it's gratuitous boob shots.

For a movie that's supposed to be about a guy who kills and eats his wife, I did find it rather surprising that it took nearly half an hour (of a movie only 76 minutes long) of his wife's ridiculous nagging before he killed her, and slightly over 30 minutes before he ate her. The only reason he ate her then was because he had nothing better to eat - makes sense to me. Except for an odd boob shot that I couldn't tell if it was a low-impact workout/rape scene or just a really casual sex scene, absolutely nothing happens for that 30 minutes. The nagging is pretty uninspired, and if the man married and stayed with someone that stupid and useless, he kind of deserves a life of slow, passive torture.

Once his wife is dead, and his rather subdued lust for lady-meat is activated, our boring, bumbling, and slightly pudgy hero blindly stumbles his way into a rather active sex life with whores, sluts, and immigrants who obviously don't have pickup lines in their country. At first his attempts at getting it on don't work, but once his sex life and food cravings merge to be one in the same, Don becomes a junkie for both. Considering the now atrocious fashion of the early 80's, the women are still pretty attractive, especially since the movie looks like it was made on a 12 year old's allowance. Where his wife failed in the art of culinary delights, Don masters the ancient skill of slow broiling broads in his nice, new Massive Electric microwave (an enormous, oven-sized beast that actually gets it's own credit at the end of the movie). Don even begins sharing his food creations with his construction co-workers, who find that they love this strangely unique meat and also find that they seem to like Don a lot more now that he has "separated" with his wife.

All good things must come to an end though, and in the last 2 or 3 minutes of the movie, when it seems there's no logical ending in sight, Don suffers a fatal heart attack. At some point in the muddled story of sex and babe-BBQ, Don had a minor heart attack and ends up with a pace maker. At the very end, after his friends randomly find Don dead and a selection of body parts in the microwave, a group of movers clearing out the house discover some faulty wiring in the microwave that was a "ticking time bomb for someone with a pace maker."

There are some truly funny moments in the movie that come from the lines delivered or the gimmicks displayed. While hatcheting up his latest victim in his kitchen (with a hatchet that he checked it's sharpness by splitting a hair) Don suddenly realizes how famished he is and blurts out, directly to the camera, "I'm so hungry I could eat a whore." He also has several short run-in's with his sultry and promiscuous neighbor, who's name is Dee-Dee-Dee because her mom stuttered and couldn't get her real name right, where she's doing such odd things as gardening with a small vibrator (which also gets a "provided by" line in the credits).

Final Verdict: Had Microwave Madness had someone other than Jackie Vernon who was capable of delivering a good line, especially his wife, the movie would have been a lot funnier as there seemed to be humorous potential in the script that never got realized. A little more and higher quality gore, especially blood that didn't look like strawberry syrup, would have been appreciated, but the completely unrealistic severed head of his wife was perfect. Especially considering it fooled his wife's sister during a unannounced visit, at least until it fell out of the bed and Don was forced to keep his in-law tied up in his closet for the remainder of the movie, gagged by a increasingly molding piece of baguette. With just a little more effort, the movie could've shined, but as is I give it a 3.5/5.