Making a huge splash recently with its debut at the New York Horror Film Festival this past October is BC Furtney's Culinary Art.  Some of you may recognize his name from the Fangoria Blood Drive series - being the only filmmaker to appear on both DVDs, first with Mr. Eryams, and more recently with Disposer (if you missed the review you can catch it here).  Culinary Art is an over-the-top gorefest of a short - complete with an orchestral score, awesome original music by Trevin Pinto, and splatter beyond your wildest dreams.

The premise is simple - an absolutely beautiful woman, played by Melissa Pollard, is dressed quaintly in a white dress, tinkering around in her kitchen.  She's slicing tomatoes, dicing veggies...  preparing a dinner for her date.  She makes conversation with her dinner guest, who is outside the camera's view.  Very delicately, she speaks of how she just moved to the city, and how much culinary art has "sunk its teeth" into her.  Very feminine and certainly non-threatening, our cook simmers her vegetables and pours herself a glass of dark red wine (poetic foreshadowing) - sweetly mentioning how her mother was excited that she had a date "with a boy".  What man wouldn't want to be in this kitchen with her.

Very concerned not to offend her guest, she apologetically questions how she's coming across.  She obviously doesn't want to be insensitive and ruin a beautiful thing on the first date.  What a dame.  Well - the vegetables are almost ready.  Better get that meat in the oven.  Now things take a bitter turn for the worse.  Slowly she dons a pair of latex gloves.  "Im glad you're not a vegetarian,"  she admits.  "That'd be the worst date ever."  Laughing that off, she begins to fit goggles over her eyes.  "Which do you prefer - the leg or the breast."  She ponders for a second, as a gracious host would.  "How about both?"

"I'm so hungry I could eat my own leg,"  she jests.  But now she is reaching for a chainsaw, placed conveniently upon the counter as every cooking tool should be.  To her dinner guest's horrific dismay, and to our gore-loving delight, we now see what this is climaxing to.  Gloves, goggles, chainsaw...  "Just hang on - it won't take long."  With the manners of a church girl, she readies her guest, grabs the chainsaw, and walks across the kitchen.

Now we can clearly see that her man for the evening, played by Wayne Kryka, is bound shirtless on the floor of the kitchen - hands tied behind his back, his half of the room shrouded in plastic.  Ah yes - not only is he the dinner guest - he is the dinner as well.  She approaches her prey, chainsaw whirring, and begins to cut away.

Cue the orchestral music, which every classy dinner should have - as "Die Pilger Sind's", composed by Richard Wagner, licks delectably at your ears.  Our cook soon leans in and applies pressure - and the flesh begins to grind and churn.  Not in a long time have I seen such a gorgeous display of hammer horror, bright red splatter, so uninhibitedly sprayed on film, quenching even the most blood thirsty of fans like myself.  It soon becomes quite obvious that there will be no censorship here, as BC does another Furtney styled, lengthy gaze into the violent carnage for every cell of your eyes to soak in.  Frame after frame just glides by, soaked in crimson, sinew gobbing up in the chainsaw, flesh grinding like scrambled eggs... and soon the screaming ends.  But our cook is a master of culinary art, and she makes several accurate cuts to ensure that the best slices of meat are removed for her preheated oven.

The makeup and special effects were handled by conneseur Karen Stein, who MUST have gone down to the local meat market to pick up a couple of roasts in order to shoot this gorifically climactic finale.  There was nothing fake about this meat.  As far as realism goes, your eyes will not be picking out latex skin and prosthetic attachments - this is a gore-fest filmed beautifully - as about as perfect a short splatter film can get.  Not sure as of yet where this one will end up - on Fangoria Blood Drive 3 perhaps?  Either way, if you ever come across access to this short film, jump on the opportunity to view it.

I spoke briefly with BC about the special effects from Culinary Art.  "The leg meat was some poor beast's shank we scored from a butcher,"  said Furtney.  "Melissa never actually cut anything with it, the close-ups are my wielding.  That kitchen smelled damn foul by night's end.  The first blood blast overshot Melissa and hit our photographer in the face.  It was non-toxic haunted house paint, again going for that Hammer technicolor feel."

Final analysis:  Culinary Art is the caviar of short splatter films.  A delectable slice of film fitting for even the most finicky of horror fans.  BC Furtney is on the rise, and each of his works seem to out-do the previous.  Without a doubt one of the most promising up-and-coming horror filmmakers of our time.  You can a great overview of all his works over at www.bcfurtney.com