The Flesh Eaters
Dark Sky Pictures

Web: Http://www.darkskyfilms.com

1964 / B&W / 1:85 anamorphic 16:9 /
Starring Martin Kosleck, Byron Sanders, Barbara Wilkin, Rita Morley, Ray Tudor
Special Effects Roy Benson
Film Editor Radley Metzger
Produced by Bernard Cherin,Terry Curtis, Arnold Drake
Directed by Jack Curtis

The Flesh Eaters was one of the premium SF exploitation/horror films of its day. In the Sixties the market was flooded with strange monsters, flesh eating viruses and alien spectaculars, but The Flesh Eater stood head and shoulders above its contemporaries because of its added dark ambiance and gore. Sure, it wasn’t as violent as Blood Feast and the extravagant campy gore of Herschell Lewis, but the brooding storyline coupled with solid acting made this a far more confronting experience.

An actress (Rita Morley) with a weakness for the bottle and her rather voluptuous assistant (Barbara Wilkin) hire down on his luck pilot Grant Murdock (Byron Sanders) for a charter flight. He warns them of the danger of the weather, but with the offer of triple his normal fee and a devil make care attitude he decides to take the charter anyway. As the storm increases in intensity, the rather ill maintained plane develops an engine problem and crash-lands on what at first glance seems like an isolated and deserted island. The marooned team soon encounter a rather foreboding presence in German scientist Bartell (Martin Kosleck). As they wander across the islands beaches they come across a human skeleton stripped to the bone of all flesh and find strange fish, pulsating with a strange light, which have also been stripped bare.

Soon they discover the island’s dark secret, microorganisms that are capable of digesting the flesh of any living being which comes in contact with them. To give the film a more “comic” element, a rather eccentric beatnik (Ray Tudor) lands on the island with strange stories of love and dietary recommendations. As the story unfolds we discover that the island is actually the laboratory of Dr.Bartell and everybody is expendable in his quest for the perfect weapon. The climax of the film comes as Bartell explores the effects of electricity on these microorganisms, which, after some delay, turn into flesh eating creatures ! The first the size of a football and the second about 200 feet across. This of course leads to the grand finale of man versus monster !

While Flesh Eaters would considered one of the very earliest gore films, it was of course heavily edited for release. For the first time Dark Sky has restored the film and offered an uncut print. Also included are some very rare deleted sections which outlined the original Nazi experiments with the Flesh Eaters, these were considered way too extreme for inclusion at the time of original release. It is rumored these were shown in some cinemas, but cut from others after complaints. They were quite risky for the time, nude female prisoners of war being forced to jump into pools of flesh eating microorganisms !

The widescreen (1.85:1) anamorphic picture on this Dark Sky Films DVD presents a pristine enhanced Black and White transfer with clear sound. Considering the poor quality of earlier video releases of this film, this edition is truly impressive.

A must have DVD for any horror aficionado !