I Eat Your Skin (1971)
Rating: C+
Dir: Del Tenney
Star: William Joyce, Heather Hewitt, Dan Stapleton, Betty Hyatt Linton
Oddly, I was munching on a pack of pork scratchings while I watched this, and that’s closer to skin-eating than anyone in this movie gets – it was retitled the 1970’s to double-bill with I Drink Your Blood. The original name, Voodoo Blood Bath, is a better fit: pulp author Tom Harris (Joyce) heads to Voodoo Island, with his annoying publisher and even more irritating wife, to get ideas for a new book. And boy, does he; within ten minutes, he’s seen a local decapitated by a machete-wielding zombie. Not long after, the zombies try to capture the daughter of the local scientist (every island has one), so something is clearly up. Killing natives is one thing, but when they start going after Caucasian virgin girls…
Though I suspect she doesn’t remain virgin for long, since Harris seems to think he’s James Bond (and this movie shared one location with Goldfinger). Not that this seems to bother the voodoo-ists much. The plot is similar to Plague of the Zombies, made two years later, though this sat on the shelf for seven years and lacks the extra bizarreness of Hammer’s Cornish setting. The zombie effects are pretty poor – hardly beyond a third-rate Jekyll & Hyde – but the story keeps moving. There are also occasional moments of coolness, such as the zombie with a box of explosives, heading relentlessly towards the aircraft which is the only escape route for the good, e.g. white characters. Hardly a classic, admittedly, this is still much less painfully tedious than the average 60’s b&w horror.
The Severed Arm (1973)
Rating: D-
Dir: Thomas Alderman
Star: Deborah Walley, Paul Carr, John Crawford, Marvin Kaplan
Yes, Virginia – they did have slasher movies before Halloween and Friday the 13th. Not very good ones, true, but the core elements can certainly be found here: a lunatic, seeking vengeance, taking out those responsible, one body part at a time. Here, prime suspect is Ted, who lost an arm during a caving expedition. Actually, after two weeks trapped by a rock-fall, his compatriots cut it off as food. They were rescued before needing to chow down, but claimed Ted was merely delirious rather than ‘fessing up. If I was Ted, I’d be pissed too. Anyway, five years later, one of the wannabe-cannibals gets a severed arm in the mail, and soon, his friends are losing limbs like autumn leaves. Can they find Ted before any more ‘arm is done? [Sorry!]
The pacing on this is definitely sluggish, and the viewer will be several steps ahead, looking over their shoulder, waiting for the script to catch up. But it’s nice to see an early example of “The phone call came from your other line!” If Marvin Kaplan as Mad Man Herman sounds familiar, it’s because he voiced Choo Choo in Top Cat, and Herman actually has a spark of life, more than can be said for the rest of the cast. There’s one impressive example of arms reduction, but otherwise this is too low on the evolutionary chain to be of much interest nowadays. Keep banging the rocks together, guys.
Slave of the Cannibal God (1978)
Rating: D
Dir: Sergio Martino
Star: Ursula Andress, Stacey Keach, Claudio Cassinelli, Antonio Marsina
a.k.a. Mountain of the Cannibal God
My tolerance for cannibal films is pretty low, since few go beyond being a squalid exercise in bad effects. Despite the presence of “name” actors and an obvious budget, neither does this one, though it’s still a cut above later entries like Ferox and Holocaust. Andress plays a devoted wife, who tracks into the Papua New Guinea jungle, guided by Keach, in search of her missing husband. But why is Keach carrying a Geiger counter? It’s kinda like Gwendoline with less bondage, though Andress is mistaken for a goddess by one tribe – they must have seen Dr. No – so gets tied up and covered in what might be tomato soup, but probably isn’t.
Along the way, there’s the usual tension, sexual and otherwise, innumerable shots of Ursula looking horrified (and probably deciding how to fire her agent), plus much footage of nature being red in tooth and claw. The look on that monkey’s face as the python closes its jaws will stay with me for a while, and I’m damn sure the film crew didn’t just happen across it by accident. Even allowing for the fact this was made pre-Discovery Channel, the results are pretty tedious, though I was briefly amused by the midget cannibal. Occasionally, it seems to head for Aguirre territory, but needs someone like Klaus Kinski, proclaiming himself God, rather than Stacey Keach channelling Oliver Reed badly.
The Undertaker and His Pals (1966)
Rating: D+
Dir: T.L.P. Swicegood
Star: Ray Dannis, Warrene Ott, Rad Fulton, Sally Frei
I suspect Swicegood to be a pseudonym – my money is on either Ray Dennis Steckler, a man with almost as many names as movies, or Ted V. Mikels. Either would seem viable contenders for a cheap and cheerful piece of schlock such as this. A trio of motorcyclists dismember pretty girls: two use bit carved off as ingredients in their cafe, while the third, the titular funeral director, overcharges grieving relatives to bury what’s left. But when one of their victims, Miss Poultry (no prizes for guessing that she ends up on the menu as “breast of chicken”), is the secretary of a private eye, the net begins to tighten, and the murderers prove there’s no honour among psychotic, cannibalistic serial killers.
Obviously inspired by the gore films of H.G. Lewis, this adopts a similarly tongue-in-cheek approach, mixing cheap (but enthusiastic) gore with black comedy, hammy overacting and a clear self-awareness of its own limitations. However, knowing that you suck is entirely different from not sucking, and it’s probably fortunate that this barely scrapes over the hour mark. Dannis, as the undertaker, makes a decent impression, but the rest of the cast are forgettable or annoying, and the attempts at humour rarely provoke more than a smile.