The Man Who Collected Food (2010)

Director: Matthew Roth

Writer: Matthew Roth

Composer: Daniel Alcheh

Starring: Mike N. Kelly, Gary Wagner, Lila Miller, Russell Fox, Joey Urreta, Connie Cowper, Tiren Jhames, Rob Chrenko, Antonio L. Miller

More info: IMDb

Tagline: What do YOU collect?

Plot: An obsessive food collector, determined not to desecrate his precious vittles, resorts to the alarming act of cannibalism.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?  Maybe.

Well call me surprised.  I picked this up for a dollar (and it was still sealed) at the flea market and I really only picked it up because I'm familiar with some of the great releases put out by Shriek Show.  Despite the goofy title and crude DVD cover, it's a pretty well made film...and it's funny.  The actors do a fine job and there are some great laugh out loud moments.  A kid gets killed.  You've got to get behind a movie that's not afraid to kill a kid, right?  It feels like a movie that was thought up from someone who is probably a collector of something like Star Wars toys and transplanted that fanaticism to collecting something that's as ridiculous as you can get - food.  So on one level you've got that going on throughout the picture and then you've got Miguel's (the collector/cannibal) goofy neighbors.  It's a horror/comedy but it's more comedy than anything else.  The horror comes from the cannibalism and Miguel's keeping sever humans alive in reserve locked into his walk-in freezer. There's A LOT of funny and grisly deaths which will have you laughing out loud.  And it's not just that there's a big string of deaths in the end, there's something even funnier that's tying it all together as most of the kills are accidental.  That had me laughing more than anything else.  And how about Daniel Alcheh's score?  WOW!  Much of it is about as Mozart as you can get and I wasn't even sure that it was written specifically for the film.  Partially because it could be legit Classical era music from a music library.  But the more it was used AND that it's the DVD menu music (my logic is screwy but it serves me well) the more I'm convinced that Alcheh wrote it for this film.  It's fantastic and it really does elevate the picture.  It's rare that I hear a score for a low budget horror flick that's even good enough to notice but this one serves the film well.  What's more, it sounds like it was recorded by a small orchestra and not some synth impersonation.  OK, sure, the title and DVD cover might not scream "watch me" but this is one of the better made low budget horror movies I've seen in recent memory.  The Shriek Show DVD presents the film in anamorphic widescreen and the extras include about 50 minutes of interviews, a behind the scenes featurette (18 minutes) and the original trailer (anamorphic widescreen).