Eating Raoul (1982)

I really wish more people were familiar with Paul Bartel.  Most are familiar with one of his most well-known films - Death Race 2000 - but he directed and appeared in numerous movies throughout his career, often with friend Mary Woronov.  If one wasn't aware that Bartel was openly gay at a time when that was rare one would assume that he and Woronov were truly husband and wife, as they played the role often in his and other's films.  This is probably the most famous of these.

Made on a shoestring budget, this dark comedy send-up of conservative America, Los Angeles swinger culture and slasher films was almost constantly in rotation on HBO in the early 1980s.  It's not exactly what one would call a mainstream film, but it developed an audience outside of the cult following it was destined to receive and managed to straddle the line between the mainstream and the controversial films John Waters had been making up to this point.  Strangely enough it was at a time when Waters himself was edging toward the mainstream.

Paul (Bartel) and Mary Bland (Woronov) are an uptight middle class couple in Los Angeles.  They sleep in separate in beds in an apartment decorated with furniture from the 1950s.  Their dream is to open up a restaurant, where he can put his wine expertise to good use and she can cook rather than be a nurse.  What bothers them most is they live in an apartment complex full of swingers, a lifestyle that they despise.  When one of the participants in a party enters their apartment by mistake, things escalate and Paul has to kill the man to protect Mary.  Once they realize how much cash he had on him they come up with an idea of how to make money to buy the restaurant. 

That is where Raoul (Robert Beltran) comes in.  A professional thief, he sells new lock systems so that he can break in and steal valuables.  While attempting to steal Paul's wine collection he discovers the body of one of their clients.  Rather than turn them in, he makes an agreement: they keep the cash and valuables, he takes the bodies and the cars.  It works out until Raoul and Mary start to have their own fling and the former decides it's time to get rid of Paul. 

Most of the comedy comes from the Blands and their willingness after not too much pushing to become worse than most of the people they dislike.  Paul himself is particularly snobbish and a bit on the racist side.  Despite seemingly detached from how they are making money, Mary becomes quite accustomed to her role, as does Paul, dispatching "perverts" with a frying pan without a second thought.  The strangest thing is seeing Robert Beltran, who most people would know as Commander Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager in the role of Raoul.  

Bartel wrote the movie with Richard Blackburn, and it did well enough that Bartel had planned to do a sequel, and was about to begin production right before he died.  Still, Paul and Mary Bland showed up briefly in Chopping Mall, so everything seems to have turned out all right for them in the end.  As for Bartel himself, he followed this up with the western comedy Lust in the Dust, with John Waters's frequent collaborator Divine.  It had a bit more money, but I still find Eating Raoul to be Bartel's best comedy, even if I'll always be a bigger fan of Death Race 2000.  Paul and Mary worked so well together that just about anything they were in was made better for it. 

Eating Raoul (1982)

Time: 90 minutes

Starring: Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov, Robert Beltran

Director: Paul Bartel