Vinegar Syndrome does cannibalism "tastefully" with a Blu-ray of the nineties obscurity AUNTIE LEE'S MEAT PIES.

Virile guys who make the mistake of passing through the desert town of Penance have a tendency to vanish, usually by way of accepting a ride from one of the comely nieces of Auntie Lee (Karen Black, BURNT OFFERINGS) – blonde bombshell Fawn (Playboy model Kristine Rose, Joe D'Amato's PASSION FLOWER), sharpshooter Magnolia (Ava Fabian, SKI SCHOOL), feisty Coral (Teri Weigel, SAVAGE BEACH), and saucy Sky (Pía Reyes, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3) – who uses their butchered bodies as filling for her popular meat pies. When private detective Harold Ivars (David Parry, THE LOST PLATOON) turns up investigating the disappearance of rich kid Bob Evans (martial artist Stephen Quadros, DEMON WIND), local sheriff Koal (Pat Morita, THE KARATE KID) thinks he has caught the culprit himself when he finds a bag of "souvenirs" in the trunk of Auntie Lee's mentally-impaired handyman Larry (Michael Berryman, THE HILLS HAVE EYES); however, Auntie Lee's nieces – along with "Baby" (Petra Verkaik, CITIZEN TOXIE) – are about to make a meal out of Ivars and a quartet of stranded punk rockers (KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE's Grant Cramer, STUDENT AFFAIRS' Louie Bonanno, DEEP BLOOD's Cort McCown, and RICH GIRL's Lex Lang).

Although seemingly patterned after THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART II for the nineties, AUNTIE LEE'S MEAT PIES is closer to a cross between the dreadful MICROWAVE MASSACRE and the more entertainingly throwaway NIGHTMARE SISTERS. The tone is farcical but played only Black, Berryman, and Morita are capable of delivering the correct pitch – although hats (and heads) off to SCARECROW's Richard Vidan as an early victim more nihilistic in demeanor than any of the punks – and the effects work of Ron Knyrim (TREMORS) and Jerry Macaluso (DARKMAN) are mostly constrained by the requirements of an R-rating. Director Joseph F. Robertson – a veteran of both softcore (Ed Wood's LOVE FEAST) and hardcore under the pseudonym Adele Robbins (DEBBIE DOES DALLAS III: THE FINAL CHAPTER) – and eighties horror/music video DP Arledge Armenaki (DEATH SPA, HOWLING V: THE REBIRTH) lend the film a slick eighties look with color gels and Day-Glo neons, but its never scary and very rarely even funny. The cast also includes character actress Leslie Simms (POINT OF TERROR) and her husband Phillip (CAN'T BUY ME LOVE), as well as Werner Pochath (MOSQUITO/BLOODLUST) as a German shopkeeper who must convert his prices in Deutsche Mark to dollars for his customers (Pochath was also the film's casting director and had presumably cast Rose and McCown for or from their works earlier in the decade for Joe D'Amato).

Given limited theatrical release by Trans World Entertainment before its bankruptcy and distributed on VHS by RCA/Columbia Pictures, AUNTIE LEE'S MEAT PIES went unreleased on DVD (presumably since it did not wind up with MGM like most of the Trans World stuff through the Epic package). Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen comes from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative and it looks quite stunning as befitting the lighting and photography of Armenaki, with popping neon colors, prosthetics and severed heads that hold up well in HD, and lending a sense of rustic texture to the Southern California locations. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo track boasts clear dialogue and some wild foley effects but the synth score has less presence and the punk numbers (including the track over the titles sequence) are not as bassy as one would hope. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.