The Flesh Eaters (1964)

Traveling out to sea, a group of seafarers crash landing on a deserted island and seek refuge with a professor on the island studying a group of silvery objects nearby that are keeping them on the island and forcing them to fight off the deadly creatures before they can leave.This one isn't that bad of a cheap creature feature. Among it's best features are the little creature in the film as it does some really good things with them being the star of the film. The fact that they're so small and quite imposing is a great feature, and since they're deadly this really manages to get a few good ideas thrown in. The fact that they're so small and can eat flesh gives them a nice advantage, since they can come up on their victims before they realize it is a fine feature, which is what happens several times in the film for great results of the creatures in some nice attack scenes here due to a couple of nice suspense scenes. There's the opening crawl over the beach during the windstorm and the later fight over the tide pools with the creatures below providing some decent and somewhat chilling scenes here. There's also some nice work here in the fact that because they live in the sea, it puts a damper on most of the potential escape attempts due to the fact that there's the opportunity of them to jump on board. That leaves a lot of potential ones to go through and not be workable, which is a great concept. This one is also a little more graphically violent than expected, and that is quite nice seeing the characters visibly covered with the creatures and the beginning stages of being eaten begin, and there's even a lot more shots of victims reduced to skeletons than normal, and there's a couple of others in here that are bloodier than expected. These here are what help the film, but there are a few flaws. Those, though, can all be traced back to one central idea, the film's cheap and cheesy appeal. Once the giant monsters appear at the end, this one is effectively pigeon-holed as such a film since they look really cheesy, perform even more so, and rarely look threatening. It is mostly noted for how they interact throughout here, which is where it gets the big mark for it's easily noticed that they're cheaply integrated together, and they make it that much more unlikable. The final fight with the huge one is the perfect example of this, and along with the hideous special effects work, is so cheesy that it's hard not to find it ridiculous. The last part is also based around the main twist at the end, which can be seen coming from a mile away and shouldn't even be considered a twist as it happens in nearly every single example with this set-up. These here are the film's biggest faults.Today's Rating/PG-13: Violence.

Martin Kosleck's number was in the Los Angeles phone directory,and I just happened to dial long distance on two occasions in 1982.The man himself answered the first time,and Christopher Drake the second,and between them,I had the opportunity to express my appreciation for "The Flesh Eaters"(1962).Mr.Drake(who also appeared in the film)related the sad news that the director,Jack Curtis,had died in 1970,and that all the filmmakers were justifiably proud of their efforts,though only the distributors saw much of the profits.He added that shooting was done on weekends over two successive summers,which confirms the impression that it was a labor of love.What I never learned until recently,is that the film was shot silent and completely post-dubbed,an amazing feat that is not obvious on first viewing.Rarely offered starring roles(and doing only a dozen features after 1948),Martin Kosleck here gets to play what I consider the most detestable villain in cinema history,and it is clearly his own voice on the soundtrack,done in the same dedicated fashion as the rest of the cast.While the beatnik character of Omar may be off-putting to some,his death scene is my favorite in the picture,as the doctor effortlessly convinces the ninny that they should drink a toast to friendship,which hits "the ever lovin' spot"(Omar's words),unaware that the doc has spiked his drink with a fatal dose of Flesh Eaters(which the audience is clearly shown).Far better written than just a clichéd mad scientist,there is never a point when Kosleck earns any sympathy,even when his death scene is shown to be just as horrific as Omar's.But at Universal in 1944-46,Kosleck was treated like a star,and fondly remembered one in particular,the 1946 thriller "House of Horrors," in which his villainous "starving artist of ill repute," driven insane in clichéd fashion by an unappreciative public,never once loses our sympathy as he induces a spine-snapping killer known as The Creeper(Rondo Hatton)to strike back at his enemies.The top-billed leads,Robert Lowery and Virginia Grey,are such a tiresome,colorless pair of boorish nincompoops(along with all of the big city critics on hapless display),you begin to wonder if Martin's character is written to be the hero! His roles in bigger films like Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent"(1940),"Confessions of a Nazi Spy"(1939),and numerous other Nazis were usually small,so it was these "forgotten little programmers" that gave him more exposure and garnered more fan mail.On a final note,he pointed out that the actor he most enjoyed working with was Basil Rathbone,first in 1940's "The Mad Doctor," then 1945's "Pursuit to Algiers." The former was not about your typical mad scientist but a complex psychodrama,with Kosleck snuffing out his share of victims,the latter was one of the last Sherlock Holmes adventures,with Kosleck as another homicidal maniac,whose knife-wielding abilities are negated by Holmes' swift actions.There aren't many left from Hollywood's Golden Age,and there won't be another due to changes in technology,the death of the drive-ins,and the radicalization of Tinseltown.The films will survive the people who made them.

The Flesh Eaters starts in New York as Jan Lettreman (Barbara Wilkin) the secretary of alcoholic stage & screen star Laura Winters (Rita Morley) hires pilot Grant Murdoch (Byron Sanders) to fly them to Province Town for a casting call, Murdoch agrees but warns the two ladies that a large tropical storm may cause problems. While flying the plane gets into trouble & is forced to land on an isolated island, at first they think they are alone but soon find out German marine biologist Professor Peter Bartell (Martin Kosleck) is stationed on the island carrying out some experiments involving tiny flesh eating creatures that infest the waters surrounding the island. They quickly find themselves trapped on the island as the flesh eaters strip flesh to the bone within seconds, somehow they must find a way to kill the flesh eaters & leave the island for safety but their troubles aren't just confined to the flesh eaters in the water...Co-produced & directed by Jack Curtis this piece of early 60's exploitative sci-fi horror turns into a creature feature by the end with the obligatory giant monster running amok but it's far better than one might expect & far better than most of it's peers from the period. The script flips between fairly serious sci-fi & horror themes about Nazi experiments & flesh eating creatures & fairly laid back humour with a nice line in bickering between Murdoch & the alcoholic Winters & then there's goofy hippie character Omar whose dialogue is often laugh out loud but in a cute amusing sort of way & he ends up getting horribly killed anyway so that's a nice satisfying moment. At 87 minutes long it moves at a decent pace, it starts off fairly mysteriously with Professor Bartell's motives & identity in particular kept a mystery before a climax involving a giant monster that was probably included because of the period it was made & giant monster films were quite popular back them I suppose. Of course it's not perfect by any means, the scene when Murdoch rescues Winters from the rocks is strange as I was just sat thinking to myself why doesn't she just go back the way she got out there in the first place? Then there's the dumb revelation that blood kills the flesh eaters, now if we think about that for a moment are the makers of this seriously trying to say that creatures that eat nothing but flesh, muscle, skin & bodily organs only weakness is being exposed to blood? No offence but how do they eat flesh & avoid blood anyway? It just doesn't make sense. Then there's that coat bit, Murdoch covers a skeleton with a coat & then the next day after a huge tropical storm the skeleton is there where they left it & the coat is as well having somehow not blown away. Then there's a daft bit at the end when Murdoch manages to get Bartell's pistol off him but within five minutes lets him get it back through stupidity & how exactly is Bartell planning to control these flesh eaters anyway? Although clichéd the character's are quite likable expect for Bartell the bad guy who just happens to be German, the dialogue is surprisingly snappy & quite amusing at times & it's a fun watch that holds up quite well & some decent gore & a decent final monster also help.Apparently filmed in 1961-ish & the copyright date on the credits reads 1962 this wasn't released until 1964, I suppose you could argue that The Flesh Eaters was the first true gore film but it's not that gory, the black and white photography lessens the impact & although made later Herschell Gorodn Lewis' Blood Feast (1963) is gorier, in colour & was actually released the previous year. There's some gore here, there's some blood splatter, a melted face or two, someone cuts a chunk out of someones leg & someone is seen with a great big hole through their body. The economy of the film is quite admirable with the entire thing taking place on one beach front & in a tent but it never feels cramped or like the makers were compromised & there's some surprisingly effective cinematography here too. Apparently while shooting on location a real hurricane destroyed sets & equipment & the production was delayed for a year & legend has it that Terry Curtis wife of director Jack won $72,000 on a game show & some of that was used to finish it.With a supposed budget of little over $100,000 this looks pretty good & although the monster at the end isn't the greatest I can name a lot of monsters from this period that look worse, also available in a colourized version. Shot on location on Long Island in New York. The acting is alright although some if not all of them appear to be dubbed.The Flesh Eaters is a nice little sci-fi horror exploitation film that I enjoyed, sure some of it doesn't make sense & the science is questionable to say the least but it entertains for the right reasons & I liked it, so shoot me.

Calling all B-movie fans, calling all B-movie fans, have I got a gem for you.Made with zero money, no notable actors and a rookie director who never directed a film again, somehow, The Flesh Eaters warmed my heart by keeping me genuinely engaged throughout. The film concerns harried transport pilot Grant Murdoch (Byron Sanders), endlessly hassled by debtors, who agrees to shuttle an unlikeable, drunk diva named Laura Winters (Rita Morley) and her genial assistant Jan (Barbara Wilkin) through harsh weather to a film shoot. Not surprisingly, the plane is forced to make a harsh landing on a desolate island. After running into creepy German scientist Prof. Bartell (Martin Kosleck, making an wonderfully spooky entrance), a skeleton, picked clean to the bone, washes up on the shore. asserts that it was sharks, but there is another menace afoot: flesh-eating bacteria! The film is well-put-together, far, far better than it has any right to be. The effects are simple and effective: bacteria itself has no business being anything but microscopic, and a little bit of overlay in the shimmering water does the trick beautifully. The film is also known as one of the first 'gore' films, coming on the heels of Herschell Gordon Lewis's Blood Feast, thought the very first. The opening sequence (which is so identical to the opening hook of Jaws that I wouldn't be surprised if Spielberg stole it) sets the grisly tone right off the bat, and throughout The Flesh Eaters, the gore is ably applied, and would be acceptable in contemporary films as well (as evidenced by the gushing infection that attacks Murdoch's leg). The acting is also uniformly good. Most of the reviews seem to take it for a given that it has bad acting, but taken on its own merits, the actors have much success in crafting believable, three-dimensional characters (Our Hero Grant doesn't always make the right decision, Our Lush Diva Laura feels guilty about drinking and makes attempts to stop, and even Our Villain Bartell has motivations that aren't completely sinister and nonsensical). Really, the only character that comes off as a caricature is Omar (Ray Tudor), a hippie love magnet on a wooden raft that someone ends up floating into shore, narrowly avoiding the eaters (and has his chest eaten through from the inside by drinking some of them, in yet another effectively gnarly sequence).Carson Davidson's cinematography (in what was, shockingly, also his one and only trip behind the lens) is far better than it has any right to be. Director Jack Curtis, was, hilariously, the voice of Pops in the English dub of Speed Racer. One-and-only-CREDIT Julian Stein's much is effective. The screenplay is by comic book writer Arnold Drake, whose only other film credit is the delightfully-named 50,000 BC (Before Clothing). Jack Curtis's cousin Roy Benson did the special effects and his work never appeared on another screen. Hell, even the production company Vulcan Productions was a one-and-done. In fact, it seems like the only position of any importance behind the camera to have a career that lasted more than the week and a half it took to shoot this film is editor Radley Metzger (pulling double-duty on the sound board, and whose credits are almost wholly porn), also doing fantastic work, as the film is a brisk 87 minutes, breezily-paced without being unfulfilling.The Flesh Eaters isn't perfect (the less said about it's ludicrous and wholly unnecessary finale, the better), but as a B-movie connoisseur, I've sat through far too many movies where it was obvious that no one involved had any idea what they were doing, and honestly, the more names I click on and find one credit to their names, the more I feel shortchanged. There's so many directors, and writers, and composers, and effects men and production houses that pump out crappy film after crappy film after crappy film, and yet, get to keep making them. But with The Flesh Eaters, it seems like everybody gave their best effort, and called it a day.If you're being scared away by the fact that it sounds too much like Cabin Fever, don't fret; that film is about as scary as a watermelon. Anyone who considers themselves a fan of trash, of exploitation, or grindhouse fare, you own it to yourself to track down a copy of The Flesh Eaters. The DVD has crisp sound, extra scenes, and a transfer so gloriously clean that Criterion couldn't have done a better job (and considering they occasionally release genre pics, all the work would be done for them!), yet another thing that it has going in its favor despite the fact that it has no right to have it so good.Damn you, Jack Curtis. You are an enigma of missed opportunities. But alas, you were busy fixing the Mach 5, so I guess the blame for this one rests solely on the shoulders of Racer X. Or Chim-Chim.{Grade: 8.25/10 (B+/B) / #14 (of 28) of 1964}