Eating Raoul was a 1982 film comedy about a married couple living in Hollywood who eventually take to killing people for their money. It was directed by Paul Bartel and written by Paul Bartel and Richard Blackburn. The writers also commissioned a single issue comic book based on the movie for promotion; it was created by underground comics creator, Kim Deitch. 1982 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... ... Paul Bartel (August 6, 1938-May 13, 2000) was born in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is an American actor, writer and director and is well known for his 1982 hit black comedy Eating Raoul, which he wrote, starred in and directed. ... A comic book is a magazine or book containing the art form of comics. ... The term underground comics or comix describes the self-published or small press comic books that sprang up in the US in the late 1960s. ... An underground comic that Deitch contributed to. ...

Story

Mr. and Mrs. Bland are a wine dealer and a nurse, respectively, who grieve over their low statuses in life and dream of someday opening a restaurant.

After Mr. Bland is fired from his job at a wine shop (shortly after an unrelated in-store shooting), the couple are left relatively penniless, and the chances that they will ever realize their dream quickly diminish. Their strife is exacerbated by the fact that they live in an apartment building that is a regular host to orgies and bondage parties.

After a "swinger" (more or less along the lines of Austin Powers) wanders drunk into their apartment and tries to rape Mrs. Bland, Mr. Bland accidentally kills him by hitting him with a frying pan. They take his money and put him in the trash compactor. Later on, they kill another swinger along the same lines, and realize that they could actually make money by killing "rich perverts", and proceed to do so, getting advice from one of the apartment's orgy regulars, Doris the Dominatrix.. Swinging, sometimes referred to in North America as the swinging lifestyle or simply the lifestyle (although this simplified term is also used by people into Leather and BDSM), includes a wide range of sexual activities conducted between three or more people. ... Austin Powers in International Man of Mystery. ... An apartment (or flat) is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. ...

After finding a flyer attached to their car for cheap lock installation, they decide, for the safety of Mr. Bland's wine collection, to have it done.

The lock installer's name is Raoul, a swarthy Latino man who moonlights as a cat burglar, robbing the homes and apartments of his clients. He breaks into the Blands' apartment the night after installing their locks, only to stumble across the corpse of the Blands' latest victim, a Nazi fetishist, who has also decorated the apartment in Nazi paraphernalia before he was killed. In the United States, Latino refers to non-Anglo-Americans who are living in the United States of America and are of Hispanic background, typically Spanish speaking people. ...

Paul catches Raoul, and the two strike a deal: Not only will Raoul keep the Blands' secret, he tells them that he knows a place where he can "exchange" the corpses for cash. The Blands accept, and Raoul goes to work for them (he sells the corpses to a dog food company), also secretly stealing the victims' cars and selling them to an auto wrecking yard.

One night shortly afterwards, Mr. Bland leaves to buy groceries (and a new frying pan, "I'm a bit squeamish about cooking with the one we use to kill people") and Mrs. Bland is left alone in the house. Their next customer, a hippie Vietnam Veteran, arrives while Paul is gone, and when Mrs. Bland explains that he missed his appointment, he tries to rape her. Raoul wanders in, sees the hippie attacking Mrs. Bland, and strangles him to death with his belt. Raoul then offers Mary marijuana and they have sex.

This affair goes on for a while, with Raoul beginning to convince Mary to run away with him. After Raoul tries to run Paul down in his van, Paul hires Doris the Dominatrix to pose as a variety of people (including an immigration agent and a sexual health conselor) to try and get rid of Raoul (by making him believe he is being deported and feeding him salt peter, respectively). None of these plans work, however, and Raoul arrives in the Blands' apartment with a gun and prepares to kill Mr. Bland. He informs Paul that he and Mary will be getting married, and then brings Paul into the kitchen so that he and Mary can both kill him together; instead, Mary kills Raoul with a frying pan. The chemical compound potassium nitrate is a naturally occurring mineral source of nitrogen. ...

Mary and Paul then realize that they are going to be having a man over for dinner who wants to invest in their restaurant venture, and that the man is expecting to be served a sampler of the Blands' proposed menu. With no food left in the house, and little time before the investor's arrival, Paul and Mary cook Raoul and serve him up for dinner. The investor is impressed; the last shot of the film is a smiling Paul and Mary in front of their brand new restaurant, with the caption, "Bon apitite."

Major cast

• Mary Woronov — Mary Bland
• Paul Bartel — Paul Bland
• Robert Beltran — Raoul
• Susan Saiger — Doris the Dominatrix
• Ed Begley, Jr. — Hippie

Trivia: Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel later appeared together as Mr. and Mrs. Bland in a cameo scene in the movie Chopping Mall. Mary Woronov (b. ... Paul Bartel (August 6, 1938-May 13, 2000) was born in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is an American actor, writer and director and is well known for his 1982 hit black comedy Eating Raoul, which he wrote, starred in and directed. ... Robert Beltran (born November 19, 1953) is best known for his role as Commander Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager. ... Edward James Begley, Jr. ...

External links

• Eating Raoul at the Internet Movie Database

• The comic book, Eating Raoul, may be found at UndergroundCollectibles.com