Flesh Feast

Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars, But With Mixed Feelings
Review: I was tempted to give this collection 1 star for its inclusion of one truly offensive film with no redeeming qualities, but it is still an extremely worthwhile collection for those on a budget for other reasons.

The two films which make this collection worthwhile for people on a budget are "I Eat Your Skin" and "The Undertaker and His Pals". Both are fun films, and the picture quality for both films as found in this collection are about as good as they'll ever get.

THE UNDERTAKER... is a fun black comedy about two j.d.'s who run a diner who team up with a crooked undertaker in a scheme to cook up business. They murder people, the diner gets some free meat, and the undertaker gets bodies he can bury while charging large reconstructive cosmetics fees to the deceaseds' relatives. Extremely low brow satire, but better than any of the Evil Dead films. H. Gordon Lewis style gore with laughs.

I EAT YOUR SKIN is for fans of bad but fun old movies. A scientist is forced to create zombies for a power hungry island landowner. Lots of bad makeup and PRC/Monogram style low-budget horror. No gore in this one despite the title (which was slapped onto the film in the 1970s when it became part of a double bill with I Drink Your Blood), but who needs that for a good time?

THE SEVERED ARM (described in detail in another review) was too long for my taste. It has a great set up and ending, but the middle drags. This is quite unfortunate given the film's great potential. I'd love to see The Severed Arm released with some excess fat removed and cleaned up for easier digestion (Sorry. I couldn't avoid the temptation).

SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD has all the elements of your typical 1970s/early 1980s Italian cannibal film: 1) stupid people wander off into the jungle; 2) argue with each other for a boring hour and a half while various animals get killed for real; until 3) they run into a bunch of cannibals who kill most of them off while the audience cheers. Unlike some people, I don't think nature is a happy fun land where animals live together in peace and eat nothing but marshmallows and ice cream, nor do I have any illusions over where the meat on my plate comes from, but neither do I find it necessary for a film which is supposed to be entertaining to dwell at such great length on scenes of animals killing each other. Sure, when you are filming in the jungle you are presented with opportunities to capture such things on camera and use it to help establish the setting of the film. This has not coloured my opinion of other similar films. But here, e.g., you have one scene of a monkey being killed very slowly by a snake which goes on forever and in graphic detail to the point of complete tastelessness, and in one truly offensive scene natives cut apart an iguana while keeping it alive as long as possible. This is just plain unnecessary cruelty. Resorting to such immature shock tactics does not serve to salvage this film's poor attempt at a story. This is not daring art making some grand statement; it is just people unable to elicit any reaction but boredom without stooping to the lowest depths.

For those who, like me, don't want to own a DVD with scenes of deliberately staged animal cruelty (as distinguished from acts of nature) "The Undertaker and His Pals" is also available solo in a great copy from VCI, and "I Eat Your Skin" is available from Something Weird as a second feature to "The Child" along with some great shorts. The tradeoff is that you'll be paying more and will miss out on "The Severed Arm".

Rating:
Summary: slave of the cannibal god - flesh feast
Review: I was very disturbed by the movie "Slave of the Cannibal God". There are great deal of scenes in which animals are placed in scenes together and filmed fighting to the death. Most disturbing was a scene early in the film in which a monkey is being eaten alive by a snake. I threw my copy of this movie away and suggest others do the same. I am a fan a horror movies but this is an example of trash and animal cruelty.

Rating:
Summary: slave of the cannibal god - flesh feast
Review: I was very disturbed by the movie "Slave of the Cannibal God". There are great deal of scenes in which animals are placed in scenes together and filmed fighting to the death. Most disturbing was a scene early in the film in which a monkey is being eaten alive by a snake. I threw my copy of this movie away and suggest others do the same. I am a fan a horror movies but this is an example of trash and animal cruelty.

Rating:
Summary: Worth a watch
Review: Only if you're a Veronica Lake fan will you have any interest in this movie, which was her last. She has the lead role, and plays a scientist who experiments with maggots. For a DVD transfer, it was just awful. Smudges and particles litter the screen and the colors weren't that good. I was interested in seeing an old Veronica Lake, because I have heard rumors she became a big alcoholic and her looks faded and her teeth fell out. Those rumors were SOOOO exaggerated. She looked perfectly fine to me, and she DOES have her own teeth! This isn't one I would watch over and over, and I would suggest ONLY buying from a Marketplace Seller for a few bucks; not really worth $20, but if you're a Lake fan you'll want it. And no, it wasn't THAT bad like people say.

Rating:
Summary: Teaching Your Zombies Table Manners By Keeping Humans Away
Review: While I'm not going to profess that this DVD set, a four-part collection containing I Eat Your Skin, The Severed Arm, Slave to the Cannibal God (only the rated -R version), and The Undertaker and his Pals, is stunning in the fields of picture quality (unless you're one of those people who believes everyone should have a little grain in their diet), I will say that it is admirable for its price and well worth purchasing. Also, while I won't go into great detail on all of the movies contained here (I have on other reviews which can readily be found), I will go into more detail about one, The Severed Arm, because the only way to really find this piece is in collections such as this one.

The movies are:
Slave of the Cannibal God, a gruesome little piece revolving around the dubiously enchanting Susan Stevenson (Ursula Andress) and her strangely Germanic brother Arthur as they head for South America in search of her long lost, and presumably deceased, explorer/husband. Once there, they enlist the help of the, weird Dr. Edward Foster and find that their destination isn't in the jungle, but is instead on an island teeming with mystery - and underfed cannibals. Unfortunately this isn't the uncut version, but its still pretty graphically appealing.

I Eat Your Skin is something of a blast from the past, taking its audience back to a place where the zombie movement in films was just beginning and when it was fine to blame everything on the strangely exotic practices of Voodoo. Its plot hinges around a cancer researcher stationed on a Caribbean Island that discovers, quite to his dismay, that by treating the natives with snake venom he can turn them into bug-eyed zombies. Not at all interested in this, he is unfortunately forced to use this information to create something after my own heart, an army of (unfortunately tame) zombies to conquer the world. I found this fairly entertaining to watch because the translations of the Voodoo ceremonies, with the people writing around as a priest and priestess dance banally around a fire while sprinkling ceremonial dust about and waiting for a bit of human sacrifice, is so cliche. Sadly, though, the zombies here do everything but eat skin, and I can't truly recall a scene where any skin was lost (a head, but no skin).

The Undertaker and His Pals is one of the more comedic portions of this collection, hinging on the practice that an undertaker and his two restaurant-owning pals are into, one of killing people for profit in their own individual ways. The undertaker makes his money by burying the dead while berating his clientele while his friends use parts of the victim's bodies (i.e., leg of Lamb from a Ms. Lamb) for their specials of the day. Loaded with a lot of humor, this B-movie was something of a jovial surprise to find hiding in this collection and is highly recommended.

The Severed Arm, one of the best pieces in the set, begins with one of our main characters receiving something alarming in the mail - a nice looking box! - o, and a left arm inside. Instead of going to the police about this, however, he instead goes to a doctor friend of his who relapses into a flashback that explains everything in a sickly humorous fashion. These two, along with three others, had been exploring a cave when a bumbling mishap lead to a cave-in and they found themselves trapped. In order to ward off starvation, the five decide (actually, only a few decide and the rest are bullied) into drawing straws to see who will lose a limb so that everyone can lives. The loser, distraught, begs for a few more hours, receives only a fraction of these before his arm is cut off, and then is greeted by the cruelest "hand" that fate can deal him. Before anyone even has the chance to dig into that succulently uncooked morsel, they hear the knocking of rescuers that have found them and are attempting to dig them out. Fearful of jail time, the four men band together and say that the arm was crushed in a cave-in and then amputated and rebut the claims of narrowly averted cannibalism with claims of fever-wrought delirium that has stricken their companion. Before being halled off, however, our now one-armed spelunker swears vengeance. Five years after the fact it looks like he might be coming for it, too, for, one by one, the four are assaulted and their left arms are liberated, leading to an ending that is so beautifully cruel that I had to watch the whole thing over and over again with a smile.

Yes, these four movies are all good in their own right, some better than others and some purely sick gems, making it a set to pick up and disgust your loved ones with as you find yourself laughing over and over again while noting that only the Zombies refain from eating human beings.