Flesh Feast

Flesh Feast Directed By Brad F. Grinter, Starring Veronica Lake (1970).


We're getting to the scrounging point of the VHS catalog. But everytime I think we've reached the bottom, more goodies rise to the surface. This was also featured in Mad Ron's Prevues From Hell, so it's doubly important. This one is considered Miami-sploitation and has "actors" we've talked about before like the Anti-Marijuana, chainsmoking fellow recently mentioned in Charles the Alien's review of Bloodfreak. There's Harry Kerwin, the brother of minor H.G. Lewis celebrity Bill Kerwin. There are a lot of these exploitation films from Miami that were not made by Italians and this one is clearly trying to dupe people into thinking it's some how related to Bloodfeast or H.G.
  

So here we go with a version special episode of Dragnet involving Veronica Lake and a Nazi conspiracy, also there's maggots! Sound fun? The stirring library music is exceptionally loud (which I was fine with) but the excruciating office typing is very annoying. Dr Frederick (played by Lake) and her boyfriend Carl Schumann, a flat topped morgue attendant looking goon are busy conducting secret experiments in their swinging pad. Everyone has a monotone tin sounding dubbed voice. A pissed off cop figures those pesky Nazis are responsible and heads out of the office to follow them.

I come to the Arby's walk-in to clear my thoughts

Psychedelic primary colors flash over slithering maggots, as the two unlikable people talk in code and keep their dialogue all so elusive. Paranoid nurses are nervous and don't trust their bosses, they work at her house. Lake constantly wears a bonnet on her head for some reason (maybe her brain is exposed). She sets up four tubs full of maggots that are used to reverse the aging process--which makes about as much sense as the fly larvae storm scene from Lucio "maggot king supreme" Fulci's Gates of Hell did. Maybe the Real House Wives (or any of the Botox junkies on Bravo should try maggots instead of facelifts)!

Get Andy Cohen on the phone, those tubs of barf need their own reality show!

Make sure you suspend all logic and don't pick on the film's ineptitude or it will be a difficult time, you could just fall asleep and wake up at the last five minutes and you'd be fine.

No one can say "Lake was confused or senile and had no idea what she was doing, because she produced this schlock!" I say good for her, she knew exploitation horror was money in the bank.

When is this film over so I can buy some more booze!

Carl looks like one of those walking corpses from Carnival of Souls and has a robotic voice. Him and Dr. Elaine spend a lot of time lounging on the couch and drinking. This film is only an hour and change but it feels like three! YAWN, man this thing is slow, I was hoping Mike and the Bots might emerge from the bottom half of the screen but they never do.

OW! I just got lockjaw!

Two girls in curlers wonder what experiments are going on down in the lab and see a mortician saw through some bones (in the most PG friendly way possible). Some ambiguously foreign men in suits and a hippie show up at the house and stir up trouble. They talk about a revolution, which made me think about the lyrics of that Beatles song, didn't they mention Flesh Feast in their somewhere?

The hippie is accosted by one of the girls who just showed up and they still haven't established if she's the Dr.'s daughter or what?

This film attempts to invent some kind of conspiracy but is way out of its league, the scriptwriter has no clue, he doesn't attempt to explain anything or establish the motives of the characters. From what I can piece together, the (fill in the blank) foreign agents, hippies and crypt kickers are all involved in a second wave of The Third Reich, but I'm basically giving the writer more credit then he deserves.They show a withered Hitler in the grand finale, I'd flash the ((SPOILER ALERT)) sign, but every description of this film gives it all away. I guess that's the only reason to watch this one is for the creative ending. It's a hilarious concept that she brought back Hitler only to humiliate him by putting maggots on his face and the switcheroo ending is kind of E.C. comic-esque. This film is hard to take and you'd be better off firing up another viewing of Frozen Dead, which has similar Nazipoitation and 60's Disney looking characters and a talking severed head but is insanely better than this dreck (check out my review of this gem over at Kindertrauma).

DON'T BOTHER! DRINK ANOTHER ORANGE FANTA INSTEAD (The Only Soda invented in Nazi Germany).

Hey it's the guy from Taste of Blood, thanks for stopping by

AGONY AAA-GONNE-EAAYY (in Bugs Bunny voice)