The Cinematheque

In Person: Laurence Keane

Is Big Meat Eater, like, the very best sci-fi zombie horror musical comedy ever made in British Columbia? Uh, probably! Former SFU film students Chris Windsor (directing) and Laurence Keane (producing) co-wrote this anti-suburbia satire and ready-made cult classic, a fond and freaky tribute to the B‑movie. George Dawson is Bob Sanderson, a mild-mannered butcher in sleepy Burquitlam whose business becomes a little shop of horrors when he’s forced to contend with a murderous employee, an alien invasion, and a hot market for radioactive ​“Balonium.” Canadian jazz/​blues great Clarence ​“Big” Miller looms large as Abdullah, the ​“Big Meat Eater” of the title. An admiring review in London’s Time Out magazine described the film as a ​“response to the slander that all Canadian movies look like they’re made by social workers.” Totally freakin’ awesome!

DCP courtesy of Library and Archives Canada

preceded by

Lupo the Butcher
Canada 1987
Danny Antonucci
3 min. DCP

A psychotic butcher with a bad temper and a big cleaver is the stuff of deranged comedy in Vancouver animator Antonucci’s solo debut and cult classic, produced by Marv Newland’s International Rocketship Ltd.