The set-up for this ultra low-budget ($11k allegedly) attempt at a latterday Grindhouse horror movie is promising enough : the eponymous Bubba (S. Mike Davis) oversees a popular Texan chili parlor. Some recently acquired meat from the government turns out to be infected with a particularly nasty strain of Mad Cow Disease, and those that devour his chili joins a growing army of cheapo zombies.

BUBBA’S CHILI PARLOR looked very out of place on the Leicester Square Odeon’s big screen at this year’s Fright fest in London. It’s the kind of movie that would struggle to divert a Friday night six-pack crowd on a small TV screen, let alone provide satisfying Saturday primetime evening entertainment for nigh on 1000 horror fans in the West End. In its favor, Joey Evans’ well intentioned homage is more accurate, mostly due to its tiny budget, in capturing the lo-fi grainy scrungey look and feel (complete with poor sound) of a mediocre Grindhouse flick than the Tarantino / Rodriguez movie, which had enough of a budget to pull off the kind of outlandish effects 70’s Grindhouse movies probably dreamed of achieving.

The problem is, Evans also captures the painfully stilted acting and snail pacing of a bad 70’s Grindhouse movie and misses out on the entertainment value of the good Grindhouse flicks. Ultimately, unlike GRINDHOUSE, this movie is as interminable and (deliberately) amateurish as the worst of that decade’s independent genre films…which makes it almost no fun whatsoever. Many attempts are made to complete the Grindhouse experience, with faux intermissions, adverts for nearby eateries and public service announcements, though all of these are overly specific (to American drive-ins) and executed boringly straight.

Duplicating the gritty reel changes and bashed-up picture quality of its genuine predecessors, the film fails to deliver the nudity or inventive gore that were key drawing cards for the movies it pays tribute to. There’s a brief flirtation with Monty Python-esque splat-stick during a scene of an advancing zombie gradually being relieved of its limbs one by one, but there’s no momentum and the characters are too abrasive to be even remotely appealing.

The old-school electronic score produces some cute moments that will resonate among anyone who grew up in the period where nearly every horror film was accompanied by similar music, but this is a movie (save for a couple of amusing dialogue snippets) devoid of wit or charm. Outstaying its welcome by at least half an hour, it could have, with some extra work and more likeable characters, made a decent