swinging at the swingers
by Douglas Messerli
Richard
Blackburn and Paul Bartel (screenplay), Paul Bartel (director) Eating Raoul / 1982
Mr.
and Mrs. Bland (Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel) is a perfectly happy couple
living in a TV-version world of 1950s in an appropriately bland apartment,
decked-out with Paul’s mother’s 1950s plates, lamps and other accessories,
double-beds with matching bedspreads and matching pajamas. The couple has equally
bland dreams of opening a restaurant to be called Chez Bland or Paul &
Mary’s Country Kitchen.
The only trouble is that they are living
in the hubristic, self-centered culture of Los Angeles of the late 1970s and
early 1980s, when booze, swinging sex, and cocaine were served up at nearly
every celebratory event. The long-legged, statuesque Mary is sexually accosted
not only by the patients she is nursing, but by the bank manager, Mr. Leech
(Buck Henry), from whom she attempts to get a loan. Paul is ogled by a buxom woman
customer in the liquor store where he works. Even taking down the garbage is an
ordeal, as Paul is pulled into a party where Doris the Dominatrix (Susan
Saiger) immediately attempts to whip him into submission. Swingers pour into their apartment building, seeking
out parties, while the clean-living Blands have, as the film begins, recently had
their credit cards cancelled; Paul has just lost his job for ordering a case of
Château Lafite Rothschild and refusing to sell his customers the rotgot
featured by his boss. Although Mary, in particular, attempts to maintain her
natural good spirits, both realize that life doesn’t seem to be fair. All the
swingers seem to have wads of cash.
A space just perfect their restaurant
has just been discovered by their real estate agent James, who’s about to join
them for dinner, but how are they going to pay for it in the two weeks they’ve
been given to raise the cash? As if this weren’t enough, a drunken swinger
forces open their apartment door and attempts to rape Mary. When Paul slugs him
in the stomach, he retches all over their bland shag rug, in response to which Mary
joyfully sprays the entire room with a fragrant carpet deodorant.
After pulling him off to the bathroom, the
drunken delinquent appears to drown himself in the bathroom toilet, only, soon
after, to revive and, once again, try to rape poor Mary. What is the accosted
couple supposed to do? The quick-thinking Paul picks up their ready frying pan
and hits the man over the head, this time truly doing him in. In his billfold
they discover several hundred dollars, money which will certainly go well
toward that down payment for the restaurant location. With their guest at the
door, the couple throws the body into a garbage bag and, after the agent
leaves, tosses the intruder into the apartment garbage compactor. Now, that
wasn’t so hard, was it? And Los Angeles now has one less “pervert.”
Bartel’s dark comedy is so very funny because,
even though the Blands are imaginatively living in another era, they are as blinded
by selfish motives and are just as violent as the world in which they actually
live; in short, they are Americans. Like the batty sisters who kindly poison
the lonely men they encounter in the comedy Arsenic
and Old Lace, the Blands quickly decide to become serial killers with all
the good intentions of societal redeemers.
Putting an ad in a local newspaper read by
all the swingers, they promise to play any fetish or sexual scenario
imaginable, and part of the fun in this world of upside-down morality is the
fantasies they are forced to play out: a Nazi camp matron (after that “fantasist’s”
death, Mary quips “Why don’t you go to bed, honey. I’ll bag the Nazi and
straighten things up around here.”), a hippie chick, and a maniacal nurse. As
David Ehrenstein, writing in the DVD accompanying flyer, describes one of
Woronov’s best scenes, “…in a Minnie Mouse-like outfit and having served up the
latest sex maniac to Paul’s trusty frying pan, she sits down, exhausted, in a chair and complains about the heat—as if she
were a typical wife finding it hard to unwind after a long, hard day.” But now,
little by little, the money comes in, as they work, like any ordinary couple,
to obtain their American Dream.
The only trouble they encounter comes in
the form of a handsome Chicano locksmith, the Raoul of the film’s title (played
by Zoot Suit star Robert Beltran).
Raoul, while attempting to rob the couple, discovers their secrets, and offers
to help them by disposing their victims’ bodies, selling the dead men’s clothes,
rings, hats and other accessories, and rendering up their “meat” as dog food.
He shares some of the profits with the couple; but what he doesn’t tell them is
that he also tracks down the victims’ cars, selling them at a huge profit.
Such a symbiotic relationship might have
worked, nonetheless, had Raoul not determined to also collect further payment
in the form of sex with Mary. Plying her with drugs, he awakens her not so very
deeply buried libido, resulting in her secret entry into the very world she and
her husband are trying to cleanse. After blackmailing her into a deeper
relationship, Paul begins to suspect, following their collaborator, only to
discover what he’s been doing with the bodies, etc.
Desperate to raise enough for their
final down-payment, the couple determine to attend a swingers party themselves,
where Mary, once again, encounters the sex-obsessed banker; when he tries to
force himself upon her, she is forced to kill him and toss out a bathroom
window. And when they attempt to retrieve the body, the entire naked group,
having jumped en masse into a
hot tub, demand they join them. A nearby space
heater, which Paul lobs into the tub, results in a mass murder of the gyrating
orgy-participants. This time, they themselves sell the wealthy partygoers cars!
Hearing of their new-found success, Raoul
goes in for the kill, determining to take Paul out of the triangle. The film’s
title says everything; the trusty flying pan is swung once again, as the Blands
sit down to dinner, for a final meal with their real estate agent, who comments
how tasty Mary’s new dish is. This time they can pay him for the restaurant.
And we are left wondering whether the new dish, Ã la Sweeney Todd, has actually made it onto their menu.
Los Angeles,
January 20, 2016
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