Monday, December 2, 2013

The Flesh Eaters, Castaways Vs. Nazi Scientist and Hungry Microbes

For beach horror, nothing says shocking terror like......the Long Island Sound.  Perhaps in a big budget movie location filming might converge on Hawaii or the Bahamas.  A B movie, however, opens up the coast line of the northeast United States.  The Horror Of Party Beach was shot in Connecticut, and today's selection, The Flesh Eaters, from 1964, was filmed at Montauk Point on Long Island.  This movie also develops the B movie fan's appreciation for competitive figure skating.
Great plot.  Four losers, escaping their recent pasts, board a small plane piloted by a handsome schmuck (who doesn't know how to fly).  You guessed it, he crashes the plane near an uncharted island.  The only inhabitants are an escaped Nazi scientist and his henchman.  The castaways include a failed and over the hill actress (microbe bait), her clean cut beautiful assistant, and a beatnik.   There is something in the water!  It eats flesh rapidly, and some of the castaways undergo a pretty gory death.  Whatever is eating them, it is a pretty sure bet that the Nazi has created it in a makeshift lab.  Unfortunately for our castaways, the toothy microbes are not the final end of this diabolical experiment, as we soon meet the mom of the microbes.  Can the pilot grow a brain and find escape for him and his new girlfriend (the actress's assistant)?
Now lets chat about U.S. figure skating Olympian, Barbara Wilson (pictured at top).  She is in one scene, but an unforgettable scene I assure you.  She looks great as a bikini model who takes a dip into the ocean.  Then...her skeleton looks really good, clad in the same bikini.  Wilson's figure skating prowess is shown in more detail in the 1959 classic shot in Sweden, Terror In The Midnight Sun.  Unusual for 1959, our figure skating star had a complete nude scene in this movie in which she battles an ape-like alien.
The gore in The Flesh Eaters is surprisingly good for 1964 and the big flesh eater which appears near the end is menacing.  The performances are wooden, but better than any Megan Fox performance.  On a very low budget the makers of this film had no difficulty delivering the scares.  A must see for you figure skating fans, or at least if you like to see bikini clad figure skaters eaten by microbes.

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