 The Graveyard Feeder focuses on Burke Sawyer, who is a groundskeeper at the Juniper Falls Cemetery. Burke is completely unlikeable, incompetent, and honestly an all-around trash person. He doesn't care if he's doing a good job. As a thoroughly amoral anti-hero, he's looking out for number one and doing the absolute bare minimum to get by. When a corpse is found zip-tied to the south gate early one morning with a note pinned to it saying CREMATE, Burke's boss tasks Sawyer with disposing of the body. Of course, the incinerator hasn't functioned for years so what is Sawyer to do? If you guessed screw it all up, congratulations! Burke is the epitome of "You Had One Job" and this is no different. From the prologue, we know that a man simply called the Old Man has learned that his wife is not who he thought she was. After discovering her in the midst of evil one night, he offs her and determines that it's a fantastic idea to zip-tie her body to the cemetery gate to be disposed of in the crematorium. However, Burke--being the screw-up that he is--unceremoniously tosses it into an open grave, which sets the whole plot of weird into motion. Unsurprisingly, Burke goes home afterward to get piss-drunk, because of course, that's what Burke does. What is unexpected is that the ghost of his poor dear pappy shows up warning him that the woman Burke tossed in plot 29 is a witch who is now chomping her way through the dead in the graveyard like a demonic Ms. Pac-man. When he wakes up from his alcoholic stupor, he realizes the ghost of his daddy wasn't a Jim Beam-induced hallucination and is now demanding that he stop the witch from continuing her cadaverous smorgasbord. Keaton successfully creates mocking caricatures for each of his small cast. Burke is pretty distasteful on his own, but the addition of Burke's boss, Purvis PooKutty, tops even Burke. The cemetery owner is even more unscrupulous and unethical than Burke. Neither of these gents is someone that you expect to like or to ever have a redemption arc. Keaton throws in some of the local police who are just as awful and corrupt. Burke's dear departed daddy is a fun character though. Even though he's incorporeal, he trash-talks Burke and doesn't stop ribbing him throughout. Their banter is where a lot of the snark and humor come into play. The only character that seems to have a conscience is Shelly Tate, the investigator exploring all the complaints against the nefarious PooKutty and his cemetery. She isn't falling for the crap Burke or PooKutty are desperate to have her believe. It's not surprising to discover that Jack Keaton is the pen name of Rich Robinson, who according to his website is "a professional writer/producer/director of narrative film, television and commercial productions". The Graveyard Feeder is told with wall-to-wall special effects. It reads like a script of the Evil Dead II variety with graves exploding and the witch popping up like a twisted graveyard game of Whac-A-Mole. Gore certainly has its place here intertwined with gallows humor. Black hearts beating in jars. Rotten corpses. Lots and lots of bodily fluids spewing and oozing. It's an extremely visual panorama of over-the-top gags as it dashes along with a sort of manic flair. The only possible negative I see is the prologue with the Old Man and his wife, who becomes the titular graveyard feeder. It's written much darker and disturbing than the rest of the novella. There was potential for the novella to go an entirely different way based on the prologue. I wasn't disappointed that it didn't, as I loved the slapstick comedy and gags, but it did make for a brief pause getting into the flow of the rest of the story. Horror-comedy is a niche genre that few attempt and even fewer excel. It's a fine line between too much and not enough. Too much and you risk it being cheesy. Too little and the jokes are left feeling lame and out of the blue. With its unending parodies and silliness, The Graveyard Feeder melds slapstick gore with plenty of campy goodness. THE GRAVEYARD FEEDER BY JACK KEATON For foul-mouthed groundskeeper Burke Sawyer, discovering a body zip-tied to the south gate of Juniper Falls Cemetery becomes more than an inconvenience. The crumbling graveyard is under investigation due to multiple complaints and dreads a surprise visit from a state official with the intent of shutting it down. When the incinerator won’t light, Burke is forced to bury the mysterious body into a previously occupied plot. Later that night, the caretaker is haunted by his father’s ghost, who warns him the newly buried is a local witch feeding on the remains of the town’s dearly departed. He demands his son right his wrong to avoid the boneyard turning into the witch's personal buffet. With his trusty shovel along with his father’s corpse, Burke Sawyer embarks on an outrageously gory adventure that's sure to amuse and entertain. With no moral compass in sight, Burke must rise up and become the anti-hero the graveyard desperately needs. TODAY ON THE GINGER NUTS OF HORROR WEBSITE BOOK REVIEW: THE HAUNTING OF LAS LÁGRIMAS BY W.M. CLEESE THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR REVIEWSComments are closed.
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