The Flesh Eaters 1964

One-Eyed Willy couldn't get any shut-eye last night, so he watched The Flesh Eaters and sends us this review. Thanks Willy.

Back in 1964, The Evil of Frankenstein, 2000 Maniacs, and Black Sabbath flickered across theater screens, as well as many other notable horror films. Then there's The Flesh Eaters; a B+movie that, while not all that good, is not all that bad either. Written by Arnold Drake and directed by Jack Curtis, it combines pulp-dialog with a minuscule budget that confines the action to a small tent, a Long Island beach, and a few over the top characters. How can you not love it?

With it's neo-Nazi marine biologist, played with malicious glee by naturally gleefully-malicious Martin Kosleck, an All-American pilot who keeps taking his shirt off, and Omar the beatnik — and glowing parasitic nasties that strip flesh from bone faster than you can yell "that's gotta hurt!" — the movie is a fun 87 minutes. It's also touted as being the first gore film, though that's debatable.

Indies take note: this is definitely one movie that should be remade; how can you not remake a flesh-eating parasite movie that takes place on a beach? I mean the photo opportunities for T and A are endless, right? Toss in a little beefcake for the mixed crowd, and you've got yourself a steady, box office winner.

It opens with two frolicsome young people going for a dip, only the dip goes for them and they wind up picked clean. Cut to the big city, and Ms. Winters, movie starlet and lush, along with her comely assistant, Jan, need a quick flight to Provincetown for one of her gigs.

Enter Murdoch (Byron Sanders) with his square jaw, v-shaped torso, and cocky attitude. Reluctantly he piles them into his sea-plane and off they go, right into a bad storm with a frozen gas line. They've got to land the plane fast, and as luck would have it, they pick the island with the anti-social marine biologist and his parasitic pets. Murdoch moors the tipsy Ms. Winters on the beach first, then moors the plane. The marine biologist, Bartel, pops out of the water wearing his wet suit — how he doesn't get eaten escapes me — and frightens the already melodramatic actress. When Ms. Winters finds a frolicsome young person's skeleton on the beach it doesn't help matters, either. Bartel makes up some BS about sharks, but Murdoch doesn't quite buy it.

But they need to secure the tent against the storm, so off they go. A few stock footage shots of crashing ocean waves later, Murdoch and Jan go for the luggage as the storm lightens up. Murdoch, in-between putting the moves on the curvaceous Jan, notices Bartel going the long way for supplies that were supposed to be just in back of the tent. He's suspicious of Bartel's motives now.

Meanwhile, our movie starlet, who desperately needs her glass luggage — made by the Jack Daniel's company —slips into something a little more comfortable — and low-cut. Bartel starts putting the moves on her with a real-men-are-neo-nazi-marine-biologists line that falls flat, and she calls him a tin god. At this point, the dialog ranges from "what did he say?" to "man, that's so bad it's funny." Take my word for it: get this baby and have a horror DVD party, you'll love it.

Our desperate starlet runs away from him and heads to the plane to slosh more liquor down. That pulp-dialog kicks in again as she goes into a maudlin soliloquy that would shame Hamlet. Would, if it were written better, but this is a B+movie, after all, and there's the rub. After polishing off a bottle of the good stuff, she falls off the plane and dozes on the beach. While she's in dreamland, neo-Nazi beachcomber Bartel comes across a lot of glowing fish skeletons, smiles with malicious glee, and unties the mooring lines to the plane.

The next morning, Murdoch and Jan find Ms. Winters and the fish skeletons, prompting Murdoch to blame the actress for untying the plane in a drunken stupor, and telling Bartel "face facts, professor, we stumbled onto a living horror!"

Ms. Winters, taking her dramatic cue, runs away in shame, and to grab her "luggage" floating in the water. Right, that water where all the fish skeletons came from. Murdoch races to stop her. She freezes on top of the rocks jutting out into that parasitic smörgåsbord, and can't jump back over to him. So Mr. All-American jumps over to her. He then picks her up and attempts to jump back over the splashing water-filled gap in the rocks with her added weight. Right, you guessed it. Bartel comes running over with a knife to slice off a chunk of Murdoch's leg skin which is now smoking and bloody and hurting like hell. Nice gore effect, too, and unexpected.

That's when Gilligan -- sorry, Omar the kooky beatnik shows up on his rickety raft. Is it me, or does he not look like Tony Timpone from Fangoria magazine? Lord knows where he came from, but he's sailing right into the flesh-eating parasites. They go after his beatnik sandals while Murdoch yells at him to "shut that big mouth of yours before you become a skeleton!"

Amazingly, Omar makes it to the beach, but his sandals must go. "Boy, that's one lovin' appetite, man," he remarks, as Bartel's glims narrow listening to Omar's jive. Everybody knows Neo-Nazi marine biologists just aren't hip to the jive.

As Murdoch and Jan go to slide their jibs, they come across a huge solar battery. Murdoch questions Bartel on it's use, and he tells them it's to power his marine-biologist equipment — all 10,000 volts of it. Bartel then comes up with the idea to use it to shock the little buggers and see if it kills them. He already knows it won't, but he does know that that amount of electricity will stun them enough to escape the island. Their plan is to run huge positive and negative cables down to the water and electrify the entire ocean. Good plan; 10,000 volts should be more than enough to do that.

While the others are running the cable to the beach, Bartel gives Omar a parasitic-cocktail; probably because he's pissed off at all his jive talking. Omar's little indigestion soon bubbles out of his gut in a bloody gore scene, ending his beatnik days for good.

As Bartel rigs up a fake death for Omar to fool the others, Ms. Winters discovers that the shocked parasites in the tent are very much alive, and growing into something nasty. She knows that Bartel knows, but now that he knows that she knows, her sudden I-find-Neo-Nazi-marine-biologists-hot line doesn't work. He knifes her and buries her in the sand. She still has one more performance in her, though.

Moving right along, a sailor approaches the island in a small boat, only to wind up getting a splash of parasites in his face. Scratch one sailor.

Murdoch and Jan confront Bartel, who introduces them to his little friend, a German Luger. At this point, I noticed that Murdoch doesn't grow facial hair, and Jan still looks as fresh as a daisy. Anyway, Bartel, now gloating over his success as an evil Neo-Nazi marine biologist, chats up a storm about the Nazi experiments he researched on behalf of the US government. Included on the DVD is the cut flashback sequence illustrating those evil experiments with nubile young woman sans clothing. It's a pretty cheesy bit even for this film, so I can understand why it didn't make it in.

Murdoch once again takes his shirt off to flash the beefcake, and Jan is sent back to the tent to get the lead containers that the professor wants to store parasite samples in. She meets his bigger friend, the shocked parasites that "have mutated into a monster beyond belief. A slimy, bloated thing!" She's too late in warning them not to shock the entire ocean, so now they've got a bigger problem to worry about.

The smaller, terrifying-tentacled-tent-monster (sorry, I couldn't resist) goes after them. In typical horror film fashion, while impending doom approaches, they fight like hell among themselves. Ms. Winters suddenly appears, tries to knife Bartel, gets shot lots of times, and stumbles into the TTTM. Her knife conveniently finds its weakest point, it's gelatinous eye. Her blood causes it to pop, killing it. Bartel gives some cockamamie pseudo-scientific "nucleus sensitive to hemoglobin" spiel to explain why it's dead, and they quickly create a weapon to deal with the much larger creature soon to appear. Then they go back to fighting among themselves.

In the kooky climax, Bartel gets his comeuppance, and Murdoch and Jan square off against the much bigger, terrifying-tentacled-ocean-monster. Murdoch, the same idiot who tried to jump a big gap in the rocks with Ms. Winters in his arms, once again shows us his mettle. No brains, just mettle.

In the photo you can see him standing in front of the creature's mouth. It's eye is about three stories above him. How he gets to it so he can plunge his little weapon into it must be seen to appreciate fully. You wouldn't believe me if I told you, anyway.

Dark Sky Films has done a remarkable restoration on the film. I'm not sure exactly why they bothered, but they did and I appreciate it. This is one of those films that gets overshadowed by the bigger boys, but still deserves it's place in the horror fan's sun.

Comments

[sir jorge]

Such a creepy film, I love it.

[IL]

Yes, it's super weird. Martin Kosleck really puts a capital W in it with his snotty, I'm a super evil genius, act, and that makes it lots of fun. A great film to party with. The ending is classic, wow, he's bigger than I thought, I better get lucky or I'm toast. Omar's comic relief is fun, too.

[MystMoonstruck]

American Movie Classics has been airing this on occasion, and I've watched it every time so far, even videotaping it. Now what I need is the DVD! I very much enjoy the film and have a feeling that it has inspired other filmmakers, for some scenes remind me of everything from "Jaws" to "Deep Rising".

Naturally, I can comment only on the edited-for-AMC version, but I doubt I'd change my mind once I see the rest of it~although I think I could do without the Nazi experiment bit.