Warning: Some of the videos in this blog show scenes of violent death by food. Definitely 18s only. You have been warned.
When I was eight years old I saw a woman
kill her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. Once the woman had dispatched her fella she cooked the lamb
and, in a scene reminiscent of an episode of Tales Of The Unexpected, served it up for the unsuspecting, scene-of-crime
police officers. It was, of
course, from an episode of Tales Of The Unexpected called ‘Lamb To The Slaughter’. It was a sight that had such an effect
on my young mind that even now I find it difficult to watch a lady of a certain
age rummage in the deep freeze.
As crazy, foodie murder weapons go, I
wasn’t sure that I’d see the like of a frozen leg of lamb again. Oh sure, there have been plenty of
movies that have placed kitchen tools in the hands of the desperate psychopath,
but killing with food itself is a much rarer delight. Take True Romance’s Alabama, played by Patricia Arquette. Alabama is a hooker with a heart and,
dare one say, plenty of spunk as well.
In one memorable scene she stabs a brutal gangster with a
cork-screw. Not just the waiters’
friend but the prostitute-getting-her-head-kicked-ins’ friend too.
Once the tool of molecular gastronomists,
the meat thermometer is now as ubiqitious as stacked Cuban heels in Tom
Cruise’s closet. So it was only a
matter of time before an inventive filmmaker used one to bump someone off. Step forward Robert Rodriguez and his
B-movie, The Machete. A henchman gets a meat thermometer
stabbed in his neck and later, when a bomb explodes, it pops out to indicate
he’s ready to eat. Heston would be
so proud.
To find some food used to do some damage we
have to turn to the ever-creative Jackie Chan and his 1987 cracker, Jackie
Chan's Project A2 (it’s
the sequel to Jackie Chan’s Project A in case you’re wondering). Being chased through a village by a gang of ne’er-do-wells,
JC sees a huge basket of small red chillis. He stuffs handfuls of the chillis
in his mouth, chews them and spits the seeds into his hands. The pepper fumes on his karate chops
blind his assailants allowing The Chan to throw them from rooftops into handily
positioned baskets below. However,
with a body count of zero, I’m afraid that as inventive as this is it is no
match for a frozen hunk of meat.
For similar reasons we must also ignore the
‘wafer thin mint’ that ends Mr. Creosote’s days in The Meaning Of Life.
It’s true that he dies by overeating to the point of explosion but I’m
afraid no court in the land would convict the waiter of murder. Manslaughter maybe but murder? No.
We get a full-on food assisted murder, or
FAM, in the 2009 movie, Law Abiding Citizen. In one scene Gerard Butler’s character Clyde uses
the T-bone of a Porterhouse steak to stab his cellmate to death. The murder whilst perfectly effective
and marvelously bloody is completely without flair. I mean, if you’re going to go to the trouble of killing
someone with a morcel of deliciousness then I really must insist on a cheeky
one-liner.
And so we find ourselves in the company of
Clive Owen in the film Shoot ‘Em Up. He’s a
man who loves killing people, and his weapon of choice? Nature’s humble carrot. He kills one enemy by shoving one
through his eyeball and another by ramming a carrot down his throat so hard
that it comes out the back of his head.
Each kill is wonderfully gory and accompanied by a sizzling one-liner
like “what’s up doc?” or “eat your vegetables”. In Clive’s hands the carrot becomes a more than worthy
deadly successor to the frozen leg of lamb.
Now, if we can just find someone to do a
murder with a potato we’ll have ourselves the makings of a lethal Lancashire
Hotpot.
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