Eating Raoul

Eating Raoul. 1982 20th Century Fox International Classics & Quartet Films, distributed to DVD by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment.
Starring: Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov, Robert Beltran, Susan Saiger, Ed Begley Jr., Buck Henry
Director: Paul Bartel
Amazon.com listing (discontinued; I bought my copy at Wal-Mart a couple of years ago for just four dollars).

Paul and Mary Bland (Bartel & Woronov) bemoan their low status in life, and dream of the day that they open a restaurant. They also live in an apartment building that regularly hosts swinger parties, something that changes their lives forever one evening when a drunken swinger stumbles into their apartment and tries to rape Mary. Paul kills the rapist with a heavy frying pan, and then take the money on him before dumping him down the trash compactor. After they kill another swinger in a similar fashion, Paul and Mary realize they could make money by killing "rich perverts". They seek advice on infiltrating the swinging lifestyle from one of the building's regulars, Doris the Dominatrix (Saiger).

They meet Raoul (Beltran), a locksmith, after deciding to change the lock on the apartment door to protect Mr. Bland's wine collection. Raoul also makes a habit of breaking into the homes of his clients, which he does one night to the Blands, only to find their latest victim, a Nazi fetishist. Paul confronts Raoul, and they make a deal: Raoul will keep their secret, and he also knows a place where he can "exchange" the bodies for cash (a dog food company). Raoul joins the Blands, and he starts selling the victims' cars after stealing them.

However, Raoul quickly oversteps his boundaries after he begins an affair with Mary after saving her from another would-be rapist (Begley Jr.) while Paul is away. After he finds out, Paul hires Doris to pose as a variety of people to try to get Raoul out of the picture by trying to convince him he's being deported. Eventually, Raoul drunkenly confronts Paul, and tells him he's marrying Mary, and lures him into the kitchen so that he and Mary can kill him. Instead, Mary kills Raoul with the frying pan. Remembering that they're expecting their real estate agent for dinner, and he's helping them buy their dream restaurant, Paul and Mary realize there's no food in the apartment. They simply decide to cook and serve Raoul for dinner, which certainly doesn't hinder their ambitions.

This is certainly a bizarre film, made all the more so by Paul and Mary's practice of killing "rich perverts", and finding their various sexual fetishes more disgusting than what they're doing to them, which is murdering them and selling their corpses to a dog food company. Highly recommended, although the DVD is out of print at this time. Maybe they're working on improving the transfer for a future release? (I've seen one source online claim that the VHS version of this film is actually superior to the DVD release)