RABID GRANNIES (1988) – This review of Rabid Grannies applies ONLY to the original uncut edition, NOT the edited version distributed by the Troma Team. The uncut version is well worth watching but the cut version is awful.
The Troma label on display on recent DVD versions of this movie has made some people dismiss this as the usual Troma goofiness – fun and violent but not much of an actual horror film. Wrong!
This Belgian production is, in certain scenes, up there with Italian cannibal movies for gruesomeness and for unflinching violence and gore. The (very) dark humor adds to the overall feel of the flick but it’s not laid on by the ton like in other indie films picked up for distribution by Troma.
Two sisters in their nineties are celebrating their birthday with a night-time dinner party at their spacious but creepy mansion, surrounded by their greedy, covetous relatives. These grasping relations only make the annual pilgrimage to try to stay in the ladies’ good graces for the sake of a potential inheritance.
The black sheep of the family – a devil-worshipping nephew – sends the elderly sisters a gift that, when opened, transforms the sisters into extremely hideous demonoids who go on a bloody rampage, killing the mansion’s staff, the visiting relatives and their significant others … and their children.
Yes, not even children are safe in this magnificently dark horror film as the transformed women stalk their intended victims throughout the remote mansion. There are plenty of horrific and bloody horror set pieces throughout this unforgettable and ghoulishly enjoyable movie.
What the two “Rabid Grannies” of the title do to the priest in the family is nearly unspeakable. If you like fringe horror films you owe it to yourself to see this movie at least once.
