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.

Come on, if you love B drive-in movies this is a must. Stocked entirely with a phoned-in plot, a great Johnny-Quest-like soundtrack, stereotypes (the devil-may-care, hunky romance-writer hero, expendable blacks & Latinos, bimbo wives with stupid jealous husbands, mad scientist, zombies with sunny-side-up eggs over their eyes & bad skin--it's got them all).

Like draftees into the government-sanctioned moral hygiene videos of the '50s & '60s, the C-actors seem quite willing to mutter the screenplay's bizarre malapropisms: Rich guy welcoming guests to dinner at his uncharted island plantation: "If you want those cocktails I'm afraid your'll have to bring them with you. Juarita (?) is an excellent cook. One thing she will not tolerate is food getting cold. Perhaps it's just as well--I have a Borjelais (sic) I'm very proud of. Hard liquor will just dull the palate." The Spanish is even more improvised--as if translated by Google.

No less fun (to me, anyway) for its utter predictability. Cashing in on the James Bond trend for the Busch-&-popcorn drive-in set 50 years ago (though substituting clashes of race and class for the Cold War), the scariest thing about it is the window it offers into prevailing views of (white) manhood, (white) womanhood, and the nefarious darker-skinned people who try stand in their way.

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

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.