Beth Conner (Lyndsey Craine, Book of Monsters) is a vegan-goth introvert who attends an elite high school in England. She emerges from her shell when new teacher Miss Campbell (Lala Barlow) arrives on campus. Their affair triggers Beth to develop a new appetite. Let’s just say she’s definitely not a vegan anymore. The new Beth is eager to win the school’s celebrated “All You Can Eat Massacre” contest that has a very unique first prize. Can she devour everything to achieve her dream?
What We Thought:
I’ve been watching Troma films for decades now and being a fan I’ve come to have certain expectations. The low budget films tend to not have the best acting or highest production value, but usually the story works for me. Unfortunately that’s not the case for Eating Miss Campbell. It’s too meta and self aware and that’s a shame because it had potential.
I did like the lead actress, Lyndsey Craine, who plays “teenager” Beth. I put teenager in quotes there because she’s clearly not a teenager and the film makes references to other movies/shows who clearly don’t use real teens for their roles. The Beth character is a vegan goth who wants to die and not be stuck in a horror movie, again, it’s self aware of what it is. She’s bullied by the mean girls Sabrina, Melissa, and Clarissa, named for 90s darling Melissa Joan Hart who starred in Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Clarissa Explains It All (which is referenced a few times). Beth finds an ally in a new teacher, an American in this English school. She also develops a taste for human flesh and decides she’s going to win the all-you-can-eat tournament to win a gun and kill herself.
The gun is a prize because the school is taken over by an American and what’s more American than a school massacre? The satire might work if the film was better. The acting, besides its lead, is pretty bad even for a Troma production. The characters are all walking stereotypes and the film is way more complicated than it needs to be. There’s a side story that explains the death of Beth’s mother and her father and new stepmother are annoying. There’s a boy who is the typical stud that you know has to have something bad happen to him. Other than Craine’s best effort, none of the characters resonated with me.
Maybe I’m putting way too much thought into Eating Miss Campbell, it is a Troma production after all, but I just couldn’t get into it. It makes references to another film, but it isn’t a direct sequel. Characters seem to be in both, but the stories don’t seem to connect. I think if it got rid of the fourth wall breaking and meta aspect the story would have landed better, but the mix of stereotypical characters, bad acting, self awareness and everything else just didn’t do it for me.
The Nerds Templar 