Zombie

I Eat Your Skin finds novelist William Joyce eating up his advance money without turning out any pages of his next potboiler novel. So his publisher Dan Stapleton says he knows of a great Caribbean island where the natives do do their voodoo real well and Joyce might get some local color there. So Joyce heads off with Stapleton and Stapleton's brassy wife Betty Hyatt Linton to an island where Walter Coy is doing some Dr. Moreau like experiments on the natives as the guest of plantation owner and medical doctor Robert Stanton and his daughter Heather Hewitt.

This all starts as looking for a cure for cancer using snake venom and who in the world suggested that line of research? Pretty soon these grotesque looking zombies get real restless and everyone has to abandon the island if they can.

Some nice calypso music is the best thing that I Eat Your Skin has going for it. It's bad, but it's deliciously campy bad and some folks have a taste for that sort of thing.

In an obtuse way, it was a bit entertaining. There's this island where the brave pilot goes for whatever reason. On the island are bug eyed zombies and people practicing voodoo. There is a potential cure for cancer that has gone amiss. The natives need a young blonde to sacrifice in order to get their skin cured. No dermatologists on the island. The whole thing is preposterous. There is a lot of dancing and gyrating, which seems to happen quite a bit in zombie movies. These scientists have this modern laboratory in the middle of all this, and the blonde girl's father is in the middle of the whole thing. Zombies wander all over the place, attack and kill. There's one scene where a man is decapitated, and because he seems to be Hispanic or some kind of islander, it's as if someone broke their bicycle. They don't even bother with his body. He is mentioned once later, but it doesn't matter. He was expendable. The main character, who his with him, doesn't even look down at him. Oh, yes, there is no skin eating going on, making this a bad skin eating movie.

What can I say about this one? It's odd - it uses snake venom modified to create the zombies. The natives believe in human sacrifice but it has to be a blonde virgin female. The movie really is nothing new as far as your average classic zombie movies go but adds its own twist like most all of them do - and it's kind of an odd one.

If you like the older style of zombie films then this one is just "ok" to watch - it's nothing special but not a complete snooze to watch either. Another slightly less than a middle of the road production.

I like the dancers in the film, in fact the scenes of the voodoo priest and his group are the best parts of this film to me. The rest of the film is meh! The acting is lacking but tolerable to watch. And the story, again, is just so-so. Watchable zombie film.

4/10

Del Tenney's I Eat Your Skin was filmed in Florida in 1964, under the working title Zombies. Alot of films were made at this time to cash in on the James Bond craze, Like this one. The opening and closing scenes are filmed at Miami's Fountainbleu Hotel, the same hotel where a few scenes of Goldfinger take place. This movie was originally titled Voodoo Blood Bath, but Tenney couldn't find a distributor and didn't have another feature to release along with it for a drive-in double feature. The movie sat on the shelf for years until, in 1971, producer Jerry Gross began searching for a film to release along with his I Drink Your Blood. Gross bought the rights for Tenney's film and retitled it. All of this explains why there is no skin eating in I Eat Your Skin.

I've seen this movie at least a dozen times. This is definately one of those, so bad it's good spook movies. The makeup effects, although cheap, are at the least memorable and not just grease-paint. The acting is also memorable, if only because it's so bad. The Uber macho-ism of lead character Tom Harris (played by a mostly shirtless William Joyce) will make you laugh out loud. I cannot recommend this movie enough. I was more entertained by this flick than the last 3 big budgeted movies I rented from Blockbusters!

I bought the "Elvira" version of this movie.The zombies with eyes that looked like fried sunny side up eggs were hilarious.They didn't have to spend too much on make up or clothing either.There is plenty of action combined with bad acting.The tantalizing and brief skinny dipping female in the early part made it fun to watch.Pretty racy for 1964.I also like the old airplane on the beach.What was an old horror movie with out an airplane.?The girls are pretty and they place a lot of importance on finding a blond virgin.The cheesiness of it is what makes it worth the time.I would recommend this one.Especially if you are a Baby Boomer who was raised on these stinkers.It helps if you like Elvira too.