Eating Raoul
Mr. and Mrs. Bland are a wine dealer and a nurse, respectively, who grieve over their low statuses in life and dream of someday opening a restaurant.
After Mr. Bland is fired from his job at a wine shop (shortly after an unrelated in-store shooting), the couple are left relatively penniless, and the chances that they will ever realize their dream quickly diminish. Their strife is exacerbated by the fact that they live in an apartment building that is a regular host to orgies and bondage parties.
After a "
swinger" (more or less along the lines of
Austin Powers) wanders drunk into their
apartment and tries to
rape Mrs. Bland, Mr. Bland accidentally kills him by hitting him with a frying pan. They take his money and put him in the
trash compactor. Later on, they kill another swinger along the same lines, and realize that they could actually make money by killing "rich perverts," and proceed to do so, getting advice from one of the apartment's orgy regulars, Doris the Dominatrix.
After finding a flyer attached to their car for cheap lock installation, they decide, for the safety of Mr. Bland's wine collection, to have it done.
The lock installer's name is Raoul, a swarthy
Latino man who moonlights as a cat burglar, robbing the homes and apartments of his clients. He breaks into the Blands' apartment the night after installing their locks, only to stumble across the corpse of the Blands' latest victim, a Nazi fetishist, who has also decorated the apartment in Nazi paraphernalia before he was killed.
Paul catches Raoul, and the two strike a deal: Not only will Raoul keep the Blands' secret, he tells them that he knows a place where he can "exchange" the corpses for cash. The Blands accept, and Raoul goes to work for them (he sells the corpses to a dog food company), also secretly stealing the victims' cars and selling them to an auto wrecking yard.
One night shortly afterwards, Mr. Bland leaves to buy groceries (and a new frying pan, "I'm a bit squeamish about cooking with the one we use to kill people") and Mrs. Bland is left alone in the house. Their next customer, a hippie Vietnam Veteran, arrives while Paul is gone, and when Mrs. Bland explains that he missed his appointment, he tries to rape her. Raoul wanders in, sees the hippie attacking Mrs. Bland, and strangles him to death with his belt. Raoul then offers Mary marijuana and they have sex.
This affair goes on for a while, with Raoul beginning to convince Mary to run away with him. After Raoul tries to run Paul down in his van, Paul hires Doris the Dominatrix to pose as a variety of people (including an immigration agent and a sexual health counselor) to try and get rid of Raoul (by making him believe he is being deported and feeding him
salt peter, respectively). None of these plans work, however, and Raoul arrives in the Blands' apartment with a gun and prepares to kill Mr. Bland. He informs Paul that he and Mary will be getting married, and then brings Paul into the kitchen so that he and Mary can both kill him together; instead, Mary kills Raoul with a frying pan.
Mary and Paul then realize that they are going to be having a man over for dinner who wants to invest in their restaurant venture, and that the man is expecting to be served a sampler of the Blands' proposed menu. With no food left in the house, and little time before the investor's arrival, Paul and Mary cook Raoul and serve him up for dinner. The investor is impressed; the last shot of the film is a smiling Paul and Mary in front of their brand new restaurant, with the caption, "Bon Appétit."
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Mary Woronov — Mary Bland
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Paul Bartel — Paul Bland
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Robert Beltran — Raoul
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Susan Saiger — Doris the Dominatrix
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Ed Begley, Jr. — HippieTrivia: Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel later appeared together as Mr. and Mrs. Bland in a cameo scene in the movie
Chopping Mall.
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