Eating Raoul was a "pet project" of Paul Bartel and actress Mary Woronov. It was characterized by Film Comment's David Chute as "a delicious?dextrous, beautifully timed macabre comedy of manners (which) tackles kinky sex, economics, gourmet cooking, modern marriage, and even cannibalism. Yet it also has a surprising gentleness." Bartel and Woronov play a married couple, the Blands. Poor but proud, and particularly prissy, they are hell bent on destroying the evil that surrounds them n the swinging singles complex in which they live. The Blands find sex distasteful but do love a good meal, and they have a dream of opening their own bistro, Chez Bland. They fund this project by luring swingers to their apartment and making creative use of the skillet to get at their victims' wallets, and at the same time rid the world of "horrible, sex-crazed perverts that nobody will miss anyway." This cuddly couple finds a culinary use for the body beautiful.