12 of the Best Horror Movies With Evil Food

This anthology film is filled with short features, each by a different director, that tackle a different horror for each letter of the alphabet. The sheer variety alone makes the whole thing worth a watch, and it’s in the penultimate chapter, “Y is for Youth” directed by Soichi Umezawa, that we get the beauty of a ravenous hamburger acting out a young girl’s violent fantasy against her negligent family. If only her mother had served her something nutritious...

If the concept for this 2017 film feels derivative, well, the name is certainly a ripoff of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (more on that film later). But that doesn’t make it any less entertaining to watch a bunch of reanimated doughnuts turn against a small town full of doughnut lovers. The secret sauce that brings these pastries to life is, of course, a serum created by one doughnut shop worker’s mad scientist uncle. What else?

This film is the definition of a cult classic, one that was intentionally created as a spoof on B-movies of the time—and it delivers on every level. Even though the tomatoes themselves appear to be (literally) fairly toothless, the destruction they leave in their wake will make you rethink your next Bloody Mary. Yes, even the tomato juice can be deadly.

In Dead Heat, the undead Detective Mortis (har har) has just one thing in mind when he becomes reanimate: solving his own murder. Part of that quest brings Mortis to a butcher shop, where the state of his reanimation seems to be contagious. Zombie suckling pigs, plucked ducks, and an entire side of beef come for Mortis to stop him from finding out the truth.

A famous sushi chef’s martial-arts-filled leadership style proves to be too much for some employees in this modern Japanese classic. The best way to get revenge on the boss? Create a formula that turns raw fish into killer sushi, fangs and all. When the humans try to fight back, the result is a bloody, action-packed masterpiece.

Eyeballs aren’t always unusual in dining—sometimes a whole fish is looking back at you as you take a bite. But a blinking eye in a cake, well... if Drag Me to Hell has taught us anything, it’s that a Romani curse can lead to a pretty unpleasant dining experience at the most inopportune time. Always check your slice of dessert before you dig in.

There are many ways for food to be evil—it can literally attack you, or, in the case of The Food of the Gods, it can fuel the evil in mutant farm animals (who then come to attack you). Based on an H.G. Wells novel, this piece of sci-fi is meant to be legitimately terrifying, and is at times. But you can only see so many attempts at special effects in a ’70s horror flick before a chuckle or two sneaks out.

When the ashes of a serial killer get mixed into the ingredients of a small town bakery, the Gingerdead Man is born, ready to wreak havoc in not just one slasher flick, but four, the most recent of which is a crossover titled Gingerdead Man vs. The Evil Bong. Gary Busey voices the evil, murderous baked good in each and every one. Sounds like it’s time for a movie marathon.

The titular ice cream man—played by Clint Howard, who’s giving it everything he’s got—starts out with good intentions. He just wants to serve children treats that make them happy. But he also likes to experiment with grotesque ice cream concoctions in his lab, and if any of his customers turn out to be ungrateful brats, they just might find their way into the next cone.

When a new drug called soy sauce hits the streets, it’s soon discovered that one of its side effects just may be zombification. And while that in itself is enough to earn soy sauce the title of “evil food,” things get potentially more dangerous later on when a collection of sausages, fish, beef, poultry, and brrrraiiinnnns mysteriously assemble to form an ass-kicking meat monster.

This one is not for the faint of heart. While there’s humor built into to any Nightmare on Elm Street film due to the camp factor of its endless sequels, plus Freddy’s corny one-liners and general tendency to call everyone “bitch,” that doesn’t make watching a young woman being force fed to death any less stomach-churning.

Be careful of whatever new, trendy food is being pushed on your grocery store shelves—if high-camp satire The Stuff is to be believed, it’s only a matter of time before the food itself will take over your body and hollow you out. The dialogue is nonsensical, the performances are over the top, and the bubbling, crawling, disgustingly milky stuff is everywhere.