The Criterion Collection

Director Paul Bartel decided that the character Raoul, Mary’s love (“lust”?) interest in Eating Raoul, should be a “Latin lover” type. He halfheartedly suggested to production designer Robert Schulenberg that his decision to spell the character’s name the French way was “a tribute to the great director Raoul Walsh,” but he ultimately admitted that he simply hadn’t known how to spell it in Spanish (Raúl).

The production’s budget didn’t allow for printing up an entire prop newspaper for Cruel Carla and Naughty Nancy’s ad, the bait that the Blands use to lure their victims. So Schulenberg simply designed an ad and ran it in an LA weekly. In contrast to the avalanche of responses in the film, in reality, Schulenberg received only one reply.

Bartel ultimately financed Eating Raoul himself (helped greatly by the sale of his parents’ home). The film was perpetually out of money, fostering an all-hands-on-deck atmosphere on set. Bit parts were played by various members of the crew, including Bartel’s coscreenwriter Richard Blackburn in a memorable turn as the painfully square real estate agent “James from the Valley.”

The unforgettable sound of the pan hitting the swingers’ heads was a recording of a cast iron pan hitting a cantaloupe.

The film was shot on multiple stocks, cadged from a variety of sources. Much of it was shot on donated “short ends,” short unused portions of unexposed film. Some of the longer runs of stock given to the production had been rejected by the donors because of noticeable mold growth on the cans that held it. The team shot the film and then crossed their fingers and delivered it to the developing lab.

Star Mary Woronov was a big fan of the LA punk scene, and she plays the mother in the iconic 1983 Suicidal Tendencies video for “Institutionalized.” (I’ve actually known this fact since I was a teenager but couldn’t resist including it here.)

Many of the great cameo performers in the film (Edie McClurg, Ed Begley Jr., John Paragon, and Garry Goodrow, among others) were recruited from the legendary Los Angeles improv group the Groundlings.

For the Eating Raoul soundtrack, Blackburn recruited a relatively unknown group, Los Lobos, to do a Spanish-language cover of Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels’ song “Devil with a Blue Dress On.”

When Bartel called costar Robert Beltran and asked him if he wanted to play the title character in a film called Eating Raoul, Beltran responded angrily, “No way—I don’t do those kinds of movies!” Beltran remained suspicious until Bartel told him that he had directed 1975’s Death Race 2000, which Beltran had coincidentally seen and liked at a drive-in just a few days before.

The “blanc de veau” served at the end of the film was eventually eaten by Schulenberg’s cat.

Issa Clubb is a producer at the Criterion Collection.