The Top Ten Most Memorable Movie Meals

Movies can be incredibly memorable experiences.  Even things as simple as meal times can often be memorable. Some are funny, some are terrifying, and others are simply visually appealing. When it comes to the most extraordinary meal scenes, often it is not even a matter of eating.

10. The Dark Crystal – Skeksis Dinner: The bizarre and evil looking Skeksis are in control of the Dark Crystal. As they gather, they eat a bizarre meal with utensils that would otherwise be alien to a human. Still, the fantastic creatures, developed by Henson studios, have their own mannerisms that are fascinating to watch. At times they move with deliberate ease and others with animalistic ferocity chasing little creatures across the table. 

9. Pulp Fiction – Five-dollar shake: Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace go to Jack Rabbit Slim’s for dinner. While ordering their 50s themed food from a Buddy Holly impersonator, Mia orders a five-dollar shake. This leads to a humorous back and forth about the shake and how good it must be to be worth five-dollars. It is a great sample of Tarantino dialogue.

8. Inglorious Basterds – Wait for cream: Yet another Tarantino film, this meal doesn’t build on humor but rather on tension. Jewish French cinema owner, Shosanna is seated next to Nazi Jew hunter, Col. Hans Landa. Shosanna knows that Col. Landa is the Nazi that killed her family the whole time we watch them eat their meal the audience must wonder if Col. Landa recognizes Shosanna.  The tension is high and it is seen on the actor’s face the entire scene.

7. Animal House – Food fight: John Belushi as Bluto comes into the dining hall of Faber college. He sits next to some rival fraternity members. After putting some mashed potatoes in his mouth he does his impression of a zit. This causes chaos to ensue ending with a massive food fight in the dining hall. It is spirited and fun in a way that only Belushi can bring to the table.

6. Oldboy – Live octopus: After being released from a cell, Dae-su Oh goes into a sushi restaurant. Looking for hints as to why he was imprisoned for 15 years. He orders a live octopus. As the sushi chef watches, he violently tears into the octopus and devours it.  It is a brutal scene that is memorable and disturbing.

5. Hannibal – Brains tartare: This movie is silly and this scene is no less funny. Hannibal Lecter has knocked out F.B.I. agents Paul Krendler and Clarice Starling. Hannibal numbs Paul with a mass of painkillers and then he cuts his skull off and proceeds to cook, eat, and feed Paul his own brains. It is made funnier by the acting of Ray Liotta as Paul, who acts like he is an obnoxious drunk.

4. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – Cultural differences: While investigating a Thuggee cult at a young Maharajah’s palace, Indiana Jones, Short Round and Willie Scott take part in a banquet. The food is filled with things like, snake surprise, giant beetles, and chilled monkey brains. It is a disgusting but memorable moment that probably set back Indian culture quite a bit.

3. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom – Coprophagia: Salo is not a movie for the faint of heart. A group of Italian Fascists kidnap several young men and women and subject them to rape, torture, and depraved sex acts that would not even be allowed in Nevada. What makes this memorable is when the Fascists serve their victims plates of human feces to eat. The whole movie is a depressing movie that is unsettling to a unique degree.

2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Sadistic family dinner: While traveling in rural Texas, Sally is captured by an insane, cannibalistic family. She is tied to a chair and forced to watch as the crazed family eats around her. Her screams are met with mocking laughter and her pleas are met with apathy.  It is a scene that has be imitated many times but still holds up for how distressing the dinner feels.

1. Alien – Breakfast surprise: After an alien creature attaches to crewmember Kane’s face it is a mystery what will happen. The alien seems to die and fall off him leaving Kane able to wake up and start taking to his fellow crewmates. They all partake of a meal when suddenly Kane begins to suffer seizures. Suddenly, a young alien bursts out of Kane’s chest. It screeches then runs away leaving a trail of gore. This scene has permanently become the scene that has tattooed itself as the most memorable meal moment.

Texas Chainsaw 3D-review

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a gritty and horrific movie from 1974.  It didn’t have a lot of gore but it still left audiences feeling dirty and foul.  This new movie clearly wants to capitalize on the name.  The film takes off where the last ended but its mood is nothing familiar to the last film in any regard. 

After Sally escapes the Sawyer house in the first film a group of redneck vigilantes kill the Sawyers and burn down the house.  The only remaining members of the family are a baby girl that gets kidnapped and raised by one of the redneck vigilantes and Leatherface who manages to escape the fire and hides and his Grandmother’s house.  Years later the baby has grown up and has inherited her Grandmother’s house.  She brings her friends to visit the amazing new mansion. Little does she know that Leatherface is staying inside the wine cellar and he begins his killing spree anew.

Texas Chainsaw 3D does a few things right.  It has some cameos from many of the original actors of the series.  However, that is not much help to save it.  The acting is very subpar and the story is very weak.   The family tone of the movie is so out of place that it felt like Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2.  The movie seemed to borrow so much of that tone that it tried to make Leatherface an antihero. 

The gore was over the top and the effects were laughable.  The other problem is that the movie seems to have an ambiguous time period. It wants to look like it takes place in the 70s. The characters dress in 70s clothing and they drive 70s cars and don’t have cellphones but they listen to modern rap, listen to CDs, and have to pay top-dollar for gasoline.  It just doesn’t make much sense what their aim was for the time period. 

This movie is just a cash-in on a franchise name.  It’s not that well thought out.  It’s not well acted and the characters are basically so poorly made you are not supposed to care that Leatherface is turning them into paper dolls.  It’s not a good movie and it’s certainly not worth seeing if you are a fan of any of the other films.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre- review with spoilers

​This movie is a classic in horror.  The version I’m talking about of course is the 1974 version directed by Tobe Hopper.  It would be remade a few times and have a few sequels but this one is always going to be the superior movie to me.   It tells the story of some friends who get murdered in rural Texas by a family of cannibals.  It’s presented as a real story, but it’s as real as “King Kong”.  The story is actually modeled after a serial killer Ed Gein in Wisconsin.

​Sally and her invalid brother Franklin are traveling rural Texas with three friends, Jerry, Sally’s boyfriend, Kirk and Pam.  They travel to a cemetery where they heard corpses are being dug up and vandalized.  They also plan on traveling to their old family homestead.  Franklin goes out of his way to be an annoying asshole the whole time.  The seventies must have been trusting times because they decide to pick up a hitchhiker.

​He is the sort of guy who looks like he was kicked out of the insane asylum this morning because they needed the extra bed.  He takes a picture of Franklin and wants money for it.  When he refuses to pay he sets the picture on fire in the van and cuts himself with a straight razor then Franklin.  After he starts cutting them they boot his ass to the curb.  They stop at a gas station but a lazy eyed, buck toothed attendant tells them the pumps are empty.

​They still proceed to the homestead which is dilapidated.  They run up and down it having as much fun as young adults can in a shit-hole while Franklin sits in his wheel chair at the foot of the stairs and pouts.  Kirk and Pam go try to find a swimming hole Franklin knew about but instead find another house.  They go to investigate it.  They knock on the door and get no answer.

​Kirk sees a human molar on the porch and hands it to his girlfriend like it’s going to be a hilarious joke.  She disgustedly walks away from him leaving him there alone.  Then he decides to step inside.  He hears a noise.  Out of nowhere a huge guy with a mask made of skin, Leatherface, smashes his head with a sledgehammer and drags him into a meat locker.  Pam is apparently deaf for not hearing the 250lb gorilla wail on her boyfriend with a maul. She goes to investigate.

​She sees furniture made of bones and a chicken kept in a cage suspended above it.  Instead of bolting out of there she stays only to be grabbed by Leatherface and impaled with a meathook.  It’s starting to get late so Jerry goes to look for Kirk and Pam and finds the house.  He steps inside and sees a freezer where he discovers Pam is still alive inside.  But it doesn’t matter because Leatherface appears and bashes his brains in with a sledgehammer as well.  Good lord. He doesn’t even need to try to look for victims.  They are coming gift wrapped.

​It is now dark and Franklin and Sally are by the van calling for Jerry.  Sally wants to go look for him but Franklin doesn’t want to be left alone since he is handicapped.  They argue for a bit until like ninja cat Leatherface leaps out and kills Franklin with a chainsaw.  He then chases Sally through the woods. Marilyn Burns, the girl that plays Sally, starts to really bring it home now.  She plays terror like no one I’ve ever seen.

​Sally makes it to the death house and finds her way upstairs.  There she sees an ancient old man and the mummified corpse of an old woman.  Sally bolts out the second floor window.  She runs to the gas station where she babbles to the odd looking attendant about her friends and how she is being chased.  He says he is going to get help.  He comes back and ties her up and drives her back to the house.

​He arrives at the same time as the hitchhiker who it turns out is Leatherface’s younger brother.  They taunt and torment Sally as she is tied and helpless.  She is begging for her life and they laugh maniacally at her.  It’s an amazingly scary scene.  They bring down the old man from upstairs and cut her finger to let him drink her blood.  They then say they should let “Grandpa” kill her.  So they give the old man a hammer. But his grip is too weak and in all the commotion she breaks free and smashes out the window.

​Free of the mad house she runs out into the street being pursued by Leatherface armed with his chainsaw and the hitchhiker with his straight razor.  The hitchhicker is run over by a passing semi driver.  The driver gets out to help Sally but sees Leatherface starts to run himself.  When he gets chased he grabs a huge wrench from the cab of his truck and hurls it at Leatherface.  It nails him causing him to fall down and the chainsaw to fall on his leg cutting him badly.  He gets back up and gives chase but the trucker has split and Sally has found another passing truck and gotten in its flatbed and escaped.

​The final scene is her madly laughing as she is getting away.  Leatherface is doing a frustrated dance with the chainsaw. And Sally is looking back in mad terror laughing to be alive.   It’s a shocking and brutal movie.  I love it.  I think that this movie and “Halloween” changed things for a new generation of horror.  It’s worth watching if you ever want to see rural paranoia at some of its finest.