One really wants to like Eating Raoul more than one does. It’s directed by (and stars) Paul Bartel, whose Death Race 2000 (1975) was a textbook example of how to make the most of the most minimal of resources, it co-stars the wonderful Mary Woronov and its tale of middle-class serial murder and cannibalism was ripe with possibilities. Sadly, it’s never quite as funny as one would expect. There are some very amusing moments but somehow it feels just a bit lacking.

Paul (Bartel) and Mary Bland (Woronov) are an uptight, prudish middle-class couple living in Hollywood. He’s a wine snob reduced to selling cheap plonk in a downmarket shop, she’s a nurse who is constantly sexually harassed by her patients. They live in an apartment building where swingers partners are a nightly occurrence and dream of escaping it all and opening a restaurant in the country – but those dreams are scuppered when Paul is fired. When a drunken partygoer wanders into their apartment and tries to assault Mary (Mary almost being raped is a persistent thread throughout the film), Paul kills him by stoving in his head with a frying pan. They steal money from his wallet and dispose of his body in trash compactor. The soon realise that there’s money to be made from these “sexual freaks” (among them Ed Begley Jr as a hippie) and on the advice of Doris the Dominatrix (Susan Saiger), they place a small ad offering kinky sex services, luring in a string of hapless punters that meet the flat end of Paul’s frying pan. But locksmith and small-time hustler Raoul (Robert Beltran, later Commander Chakotay in Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)) stumbles on their scheme and cuts himself in on the deal, disposing of the bodies at the Doggie King dog food factory for a share of the take. He begins an affair with Mary, an affair that will end in tragedy – and with Raoul on the menu for a very important dinner guest.

You can’t fault Bartel’s commitment to Eating Raoul. He self-financed the film, shooting it over the course of a couple of years using odd ends of film reels for his stock. His ambitions were sky high too: “My movie touches on many things,” he said at the time. “The perversion of middle-class values, the resurgence of Nixonism, Latin machismo versus WASP fastidiousness, film noir. Finally, however, it’s about how financial considerations overpower emotional ones.”

Whether you feel this frequently campy satire – it often feels like a twisted sitcom; all that’s missing is the laugh track – achieves any or all of those ambitions will colour whether or not you think the satire works. When it hits its targets, Bartel manages to delve into some murky territory while still maintaining a light comedic touch. It’s very eccentric, dark satirical and deeply odd though it feels too restrained, too John Waters-light. Even an orgy scene feels mild. And while it’s often clever, it’s just not as funny as it once seemed. It feels like the whole film is building up to its flesh-eating punchline, a gag given away by the title. It’s a variation on the plot of the Tales of the Unexpected (1979-1988) episode Lamb to the Slaughter (1979).

The opening sequence features a comically earnest voice over warning against Hollywood’s pursuit of “instant gratification,” where “rampant vice and amorality permeate every strata [sic] of society, and the barrier between food and sex has totally dissolved.” It feels like mission statement, but the linking of food and sex becomes muddied as the film goes along to the point where it no longer means much of anything.

One of the less palatable strands that run through the film is the constant and supposedly comedic efforts by just about every man in the film to rape Mary, something that should have landed the film in hot water in 1982 and will certainly cause it problems today. That said, had Bartel the courage to push the limits of bad taste further elsewhere, the film might have worked better. As it is, it feels half-hearted, like naughty schoolkids who have seen a John Waters film and are trying to emulate it – they almost get the feel right, but it lacks the authentic perversity of Waters’ more out there work.

Woronov of course handles all the indignities heaped upon her namesake character with all the aplomb you’d expect and she’s the best thing about the film, challenged in the acting stakes only by Saiger who is terrific as the dominatrix with the disarmingly mundane home life, discussing golden showers with Paul and Mary while serving up breakfast for her young child.

Despite all these misgivings, Eating Raoul has become something a cult favourite and Paul and Mary (characters and actors) returned for a brief cameo in Jim Wynorski’s killer robot tale Chopping Mall (1986). It is, at best, an OK film, one that doesn’t make good on its initial promise, quickly becomes repetitive but which has just enough amusing – rarely any laugh-out-loud – moments to keep you hanging in there. If only it had been a bit braver – and a lot funnier.