Placer sangriento

Feast of Flesh (1967)

** (out of 4)

Argentina horror film about a masked killer who stalks women so that he can inject them with heroin and make them his slaves. Originally rated X when it was released to American drive-ins, this thing now is rather tame in its violence, subject matter and nudity but it's a shame the direction is so incredibly poor because we might have had a pretty good film otherwise. The look of the masked killer is the film's strong point but the rest of the film, while interesting, is rather dull due to the direction.

The only horror director of any fame to come from Argentina, Emilio Vieyra ("The Curious Dr. Humpp"), made the first of his low budget genre films with this minor shocker. Mauricio De Ferraris stars as a police inspector named Ernesto Lauria, who must solve the case of a masked maniac who injects women with heroin, and also uses organ music to turn them into zombie slaves.

Don't look for a particularly coherent story with this one, but you can expect a fair amount of black & white atmosphere. You can also enjoy a decent serving of sleaze, a steady assortment of sexy young women, and the creepiness of the villain. The mask he wears may be the most noteworthy thing about him. The performances are not great but they are adequate. The mystery to be solved is not all that difficult to deduce. The music is the work of a man named Victor Buchino, who also composed the song performed by one of our suspects in a nightclub. Pacing is efficient enough, resulting in a movie that wraps up in just over 70 minutes.

"Feast of Flesh" a.k.a. "The Deadly Organ" (as it is known here in North America) is no great shakes, but lovers of foreign B horror may appreciate its sense of weirdness and its ambience.

Five out of 10.

Okay, "Deadly Organ" isn't as wacky as "Humpp" but there are plenty thrills for lovers of weird and obscure films. A spooky guy with a monster mask wrecks havoc on the beaches of Argentina by injecting heroin (!) into helpless young girls. He then plays an organ (hence the title, I thought it was another kind of organ..ha ha) and young zombielike girls come to him. In the film's most outrageous scene two cops interview a heroine victim of who the psycho is BY USING LSD AS A TRUTH SERUM!!?! According to the Mondo Macabro book "Deadly Organ" was made in 1965! The audiences of Argentina must've been pretty shocked by this druginduced gem. Only for the boldest trashfilm fanatics - mainstream Lynch/cultfilm wannabes should stay clear of this twisted little marvel.

Organ player wearing grotesque looking mask stalks young women, injects them with heroin, and then hypnotizes them with his organ playing and turns them into his love slaves, before stabbing them with a hypodermic needle the size of a turkey baster and leaving them on a nearby beach.

Mm hmmm.

Really silly looking font for the title; beatniks playing bongos and dancing, then stripping; and buxom babes on the beach provide a few unintentional laughs. Occasionally (deliriously) atmospheric visuals, like killer shown reflected in shattered mirror, and its high contrast black-and-white photography and stark lighting give the flick a certain creepiness, but overall, this is the type of sleazy little flick which can only be watched to wonder what the hell was being taken/ drunk during filming (which couldn't have lasted more than a day or two)

Yes, well... Any reason why I might recommend anyone seeing this? The black and white photography is crisp and attractive, as are most of the girls and the Les Baxter like music has some appeal. My disc has the ambiguous title of The Deadly Organ on it but it is almost universally known as, Feast of Flesh and with this title accompanies, Night of the Bloody Apes on the Something Weird label. To be honest The Deadly Organ is more appropriate but this is a tale with a monster, some girls and a lot of police guys doing a lot of chatting and no story at all. The night club scenes are OK because we get some silly dancing and the passable music but I must mention here that we also get, apropos nothing whatsoever, a striptease and it is the worst I have ever seen.