I seem to remember this one being referred to as "The Happy Ending" when I first heard about it though, not "The Happy Finish". "Ending" seems to make more sense because any good pervert knows what a "Happy Ending" is, and when the preceding installment of your series is called Sloppy Seconds, "Happy Ending" is pretty much a necessity. Oh well. Either way, those face raping breeder beasties are back once again. What started off as a one-shot horror flick plucked from the loins of the third (and final) season of "Project Greenlight" quickly blossomed into a three picture deal with Dimension. We can thank the American justice system for that, since Dimension recent line of "Dimension EXTREME" movies have been part of a plea deal resulting from the massive civil suit brought against them by horror fans for all those shitty neo-slasher pussy-fart movies they made in the '90s. The system works folks. It really works.

When we last left our Feast friends... uhm... shit. You know, it's been a few months since I reviewed Sloppy Seconds, and already my memories of it are wafting away like smoke from Sarah Palin's ears when her brain actually tries to process what comes out of her mouth. Let me think. Okay. I remember there being a pair of midget brothers who were professional wrestling locksmiths, as well as a gang of biker dykes, a used car salesman who throws a baby at some point, and... Oh yeah! Clu Gulager beat the collagen out of a bitch and bounced her head off of a toilet a few times! Bitches, never do wrong by The Gulag, or you'll find yourself staring at somebody's unflushed floater while trying to maintain consciousness.

After a brief opening title sequence of the Bartender (still Old Man Clu) caked in blood and lying in a desert highway (that looks like a film school student's mid-term submission), we check in on our doomed and rooftop relegated friends whom we last left stranded and surrounded by a small army of the flesh hungry bug ape demon thingies of questionable origin. I'm happy to say that our cast introductions return to the first movie's method of profiling, dropping the previous flick's "video dating service" intros for characters we've already met, and instead giving a quick snapshot, a line or two of amusing character info, and those delightful "life expectancy" blurbs I missed so much from Sloppy Seconds! Woohoo! After reliving the previous entry's last minute bodycount fluctuation, we're left short a couple of dwarfs (*rimshot*), but well stocked on nekkid biker chick titties, and everything's got a gooey sheen of sticky crimson. Oh, and Honey Pie is still on her "fuck everybody else, I only look out for number one!" personality kick... then immediately suffers the karmic rochambeau that any douche bag in her position deserves. Yes, it's just as ridiculous, vulgar, and disgusting as you'd expect from a Feast finale.

Our ever dwindling selection of survivors give up hope on making their way from the rooftop they spent much of the last movie's final 30 minutes on to the vaunted police station across the street (where the town's resident hobo has set himself up as the mayor of Shitsville), so having had enough of the view they grab whatever good skull caving objects are within reach and make their way street level. Last minute rescue (and our first of the new cast additions) arrives in the unwashed form of redneck alpha-male Shitkicker (John "Killer Klowns From Outer Space" Nelson!), who runs down a few monsters on his way into town courtesy of his Army supply truck and cow catcher attachment. Never trust the sale prices on those damn car commercials: the cool Mad Max add-ons are always cost more and never come standard.

Shitty (best moniker ever) brings with him the somber news that the big military rescue operation everybody's been waiting on isn't coming, so it's up to our ragtag armchair militia to whip out their balls, strap on their guns, and earn the right not to be eaten... or worse. After busting into the pig pantry with their new best buddy and literally beating the shit out of the uncooperative vagrant, the gang regroups and tries to work out a plan to get back to Slasher's used car lot and arm themselves... with savings!... and cars.... so they can escape. Slasher's unfaithful wife Secrets (reminder: so called because she's one of those pseudo-spiritualist Secrets bandwagon people) does something that makes us question whether she's unfortunately clumsy, fucked up out of her gourd, or just deceptively sinister for reasons all her own. I won't say what it is beyond that it's one of those "HOLY SHIT!" moments that Feast flicks are known for... though by this point they happen so much that the actual "HOLY SHIT!" factor is really starting to wear off.

No matter what our misfits try, it seems like nothing works and they'll never get out of Smalltown alive. This may change though, with the timely arrival of a mentally retarded live-action role-player decked out in D&D finery and calling himself "The Prophet" (aka Short Bus Gus). Despite looking like he spent the last decade working his way up from Everquest to World of Warcraft in his grandma's basement, Proph is actually useful, as the creatures seem to flee at his command. Can he really control the shaved skunk-apes, or is this all some bizarro movie coincidence that will reveal itself at an inopportune time and result in half the cast being turned into Sloppy Joe fixin's? If everything sticks to the "it's worked so far" formula of the series, my money's on the Manwich.

Proph leads his new dime store disciples into the Smalltown waterworks on a crackpot pilgrimage to the nearest metropolis. But, in the underground, they discover that there are more things than just the creatures to fear - like the tribe of psychotic sewer people mutated by the beasts' bodily fluids. But, on the plus side, they also manage to add another body to their ranks thanks to yet another timely cast arrival, this one in the guise of Jean-Claude Segal: a suburban ninja action movie wanna-be whose choice of vigilante gear (butcher knives strapped to his fists and a lacrosse helmet on his head) gets my Robot Ninja shellshock in an uproar. I'm sorry, I meant the politically correct term "PRNSD" (Post-Robot Ninja Stress Disorder). Fancying himself a "wasteland warrior", this faux Marc Dacascos takes his self-imposed role of kung-fu hero a little too seriously for us not to laugh at him. Can this ever-changing bad horror answer to the Fellowship of the Ring (whose resident hobbit has a mullet and spandex body suit) eventually find their way to safety, or are they really just destined to die terribly after three movies worth of being tortured, stalked, and maimed beyond recognition? I'll say this much: there's a scene right near the end that gives the Feast title a new meaning...

Oh yeah, and if you thought you knew how it was going to end, it's nothing like you thought. It's an appropriate finale to a trilogy of hardcore nonsense that explodes your brain like a bunch of M80s held together with duct tape and plastique. I don't care what you think it might end like, because whatever that is, it's not what happens! Some will laugh out loud in a random burst of unexpected glee. Some will cry foul and hate it, proclaiming it a big middle finger in the face of the audience. Some will be left with mouths agape, drowning in confusion, too unsure about what they just witnessed to pass a judgment either way. Whatever your reaction, you'll be surprised, I guarantee that much... unless you already read the spoilers elsewhere, in which case you're a dick.

The first Feast was one of those pleasant surprise movies that, though not perfect, is still a lot better than you thought it would be. The sequel, though lacking indy-mainstream cred by not including guys like Henry Rollins or Jason Mewes amongst its cast listing, was still pretty good. Sadly, as much as I should have enjoyed it more with the inclusion of lesbo bikers and midget luchadores, I just didn't like it as much as the original. I think my problem with the second was that the first was just over-the-top enough (in that it was really absurd, not in that it resembled Sylvester Stallone's arm wrestling "father-son bonding" trucker opus), while Sloppy Seconds upped the absurdity without going to Troma sized proportions, thus leaving it in an unbalanced wackiness limbo that oddly enough never seemed like it was going anywhere. Happy Finish rams in enough additional madness to the last movie to propel it beyond that limbo and into the crazy shit stratosphere.

The movie adds a new host of not only characters but fugly bad guys too. Though the new monsters and mutations make for some much needed variety in antagonists, on the survivors' side of things you can never get too invested in someone you like as, much like prior Feasts, everybody is little more than monster fodder and anybody can die horribly in the blink of a blood squirting eye... except for Clu, because being family you know he'll work for cheap and will thus be in all the sequels. Sometimes this "everybody's expendable" thing works in the flick's favor, but other times you find somebody in the cast that you like, only to see them getting skull fucked and dying in an explosion of brains, bone fragments, and beast sperm 17 seconds later. If you're looking for deep characters with rich backgrounds, then who are you and what are you doing here? My biggest complaint about the movie is its strobe light rave fight. Slideshow combat defeats the point of an action scene (i.e. the action) by slowing everything down to a series of veritable still frames. I can understand it as a means of trying something different or just as a cheap way of covering up some sloppy fight choreography, but either way that doesn't mean I have to like it. And here I thought shaky cams were the pinnacle of disorienting exercises in infuriation.

With a movie whose bread and butter is shock and awe, it's hard to refrain from spoiling a lot of the biggest WTF moments. But, as per my credo of no major spoilers for movies under 5 years, I'm going to point out a couple of must-mention moments of Happy Finish, but without telling you when they happen or who they happen to. At one point a creature shows us its predilection for pooper sex, possibly as a scare tactic for much of the male audience as well as a peace offering for the ladies offended by the "monster rape protein shake" of the first film. We also see a monster bite someone's head off only to immediately shit it back out (I see Jamie Lee Curtis's Activia campaign is reaching all kinds of audiences!), and someone suffers a brutal amateur hysterectomy. Ouch. A school bus meth lab bursts from the desert like Lone Wolf McQuade's Bronco, and resident bad movie Methuselah, Clu Gulager (still dressed like a register jockey at Roy Rogers'), farts in a midget's face. There are a few more I'd like to rattle off, but they hinge too much on pointing out who dies. Besides, you should want to see this for yourself after all this praise! As Secrets herself says, "When we believe, we will receive". If you stuck with Feast from the start, Happy Finish is your payoff.

Now, will director John Gulager and writers Pat Melton and Marc Dunstan go on to do a fourth feature together, or will they go their separate ways and try to make solo names for themselves? Or, will they just shelve their careers and go on to do something else with their lives? Personally, if Happy Finish represents the next step in the honing of their craft rather than just a lucky "third time's the charm" moment, I'm all up for another round!