Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Nightmare Cafe: Aliens ate my Lunch

In the mid-90s Craven developed a television anthology series starring Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund called NIGHTMARE CAFÉ. It only lasted 6 episodes, and Craven directed the last one, ALIENS ATE MY LUNCH, that we'll be talking about today.

The premise of the series is kinda interesting but way over-explained. Robert Englund stars as Blackie, some kind of shape-shifting super natural being that runs Nightmare Café, where the only 2 employees (Jack Coleman and Lindsay Frost) are some form of undead ghosts doomed to work there for eternity. The Café itself (kind of a retro greasy-spoon diner) is able to hop from location to location, and each week our characters get involved with some other story. So it's like the Twilight Zone, but with recurring characters.

ALIENS ATE MY LUNCH is a simple tale about a tabloid writer (Bobby Slayton) who stages an alien invasion in a Midwestern cow town in order to have something to report on. In the mean time, however, real aliens have invaded and wacky hijinks ensue.

The real aliens are disguised as a trio of eastern European dwarf circus performers (Arturo Gil, Jimmy Briscoe and Kevin Thompson) who Slayton picks up as hitchhikers on his road trip and enlists in his scam. The local sheriff (Don S. Davis) doesn't take kindly to strangers, especially if they're stealing cows or from space (or both).

Englund gets most of the best lines and moments here, which makes sense, since the show is basically a showcase for him to do his thing without having to wear a pound of makeup and a pointy glove. Also, the fact that he's able to jump into different personas allows him to flex his acting chops a little more than just the cackling one liners of Krueger fame, so that's fun to watch. Unfortunately, he has a little too much narration (not his fault). Imagine if Rod Serling jumped in every two seconds to continue narrating every TWILIGHT ZONE episode. Even too much Rod Serling is too much for me, and he rules.

One funny thing – at the beginning of the show, I was starting to question the premise. I mean, imagine a diner suddenly shows up in your small town. I was wondering, what, it's magic, so the people don't notice it came out of nowhere? I figured that was a major gimmie I was going to have to hand to Craven in order to buy his premise.

But I was wrong! There's a whole scene devoted to the sheriff questioning where the diner came from, if they have all the appropriate paperwork and permits, etc. So, good on ya, Craven. Ya got me!

In the end the series would have probably been better as a straight up anthology. The framing device is too integrated into the story, but not enough of a story on its own to warrant the time it takes up. Englund could have probably hosted, or guest starred in each episode as a different character, and they could have ditched the two diner workers and gone from there.

Oh well, at least it was less than an hour long.