Restaurant Dogs: Watch Eli Roth's Early Tribute to Tarantino

MovieWeb

By Brian Gallagher

Published May 1, 2015

Eli Roth explains that his student film Restaurant Dogs almost prevented him from graduating film school, and now you can see it online.

Several years before Eli Roth made his feature directorial debut with 2002's Cabin Fever, the filmmaker won a Student Academy Award with his short film Restaurant Dogs in 1995. The 11-minute short film only screened in one theater after winning the award, but now fans every where can check it out for themselves. If you couldn't guess from the title, Restaurant Dogs is a parody, of sorts, of Quentin Tarantino's feature film debut, Reservoir Dogs, featuring much different versions of beloved fast food icons such as Ronald McDonald, Officer Hamburger, Grimace, Hamburglar, The Fries Guys, Mayor McCheese and even the King from Burger King. Eli Roth also gives a brief introduction about the history of Restaurant Dogs, which you can check out below, courtesy of Crypt TV.

"I look at this now like an old girlfriend from college, which seemed like a great idea at the time, and now I look back and go, 'What the hell was I thinking?' I have absolutely no explanation for this. It's probably everything I loved, at the time, put into one movie. It's totally nuts. My professors were completely confounded. Some of the remarks were, 'This is not a film. This is a music video. This person should not graduate.' The other students loved it. The professors absolutely hated it. So I entered it in the Student Academy Awards, which is nationwide, and I was one of the winners. Here's my certificate for being the Division III winner with Restaurant Dogs, and they actually had a ceremony at the Museum of Modern Art. So, the film you are about to see, the only theater it ever played in, was MOMA. Don't ask me why. They had the 'alternative category," because it was 1994 or 1995. So, there it is. Over 20 years old, shot on film. I'm the original Tarantino rip-off, because this was shot before Pulp Fiction, so enjoy it. Restaurant Dogs."

The story starts out with a fast food customer at Burger King, who just wants a milkshake. He is taken to see The King, where he learns that Ronald McDonald has kidnapped his daughter, the Dairy Queen, and plans to "milk her dry" before turning her into hamburger meat. This average customer decides to save the Dairy Queen, as the bizarre and outlandish story unfolds. CLICK HERE to take a look at Eli Roth's Student Academy Award-winning short film Restaurant Dogs.