Flesh Feast (1970) Movie Review
Written by: ML
Edited by: Grave Reviews Staff
Film Information
Director: Brad F. Grinter
Producers: Brad F. Grinter, Veronica Lake
Writers: Thomas Casey, Brad F. Grinter
Date Released: April 8, 1970
Cast:
Veronica Lake as Dr. Elaine Frederick
Phil Philbin as Ed Casey
Doug Foster as Carl Schumann
Heather Hughes as Kristine
Martha Mischon – Virginia Day
Yanka Mann – Miss Powell
Dete Parsons as Sharon
Dianne Wilhite as the nurse
Chris Martell – Max Bauer
Bill Rogers as Jose
Otto Schlessinger as Benito
Rating = 1/5 Graves
***May contain some spoilers***
Synopsis
The story is about a mad scientist who was working on an experiment on eternal youth using maggots. This was what she was trying to do to convince a group of goons who wanted to start a revolution to take on her services. The revolution involves reviving Hitler and making the commanders look young again to take over the world. What they do not know is that the scientist was planning to use the experiments to finally get revenge on the leader of the group for the death of her mother.
Gore Factor
As much as a feast is concerned, the title does not give justice to it. The only notable scenes that will make audiences squirm include the frequent close-up shots of the crawling maggots, sawing the leg and chopping the dead body to feed to the maggots, the secret room where the chopped-up body parts were hanging, and the epic scene where Adolf Hitler was being fed to the maggots.
The Grave Review
From the title itself, one would expect a series of flesh-eating sequences in the movie. But there was none. The only actual flesh-eating scene can be found during the last few minutes of the movie.
In terms of acting, only the character of Dr. Frederick showed great prowess. The other characters were stiff and theatrical. The dialogues of the minor characters were not delivered naturally which ended up sounding like they were just throwing lines with different intonations.
The movie was also filled with scenes that are somewhat irrelevant to the purpose which were probably put there to make the film longer. For example, the scene with the women giggling and drinking, the police who were trying to investigate the experiments and the death of their colleague, and the scenes with the goons who wanted to see progress every once in a while, among others.
This made the movie a bit dragging and without showing much of the horror until at the very last minute. For almost the entire duration of the movie, dialogues were used to explain the experiments without actually showing the grisly truth. Even the process done to Max Bauer to make him look young was not shown.
All these were in preparation for the twisted ending which started when Max Bauer raped and killed Sharon, and in turn was stabbed and killed by Jose. From there, chaos ensued especially with the involvement of the police and the arrival of Adolf Hitler who wanted to experience the youth that Bauer was given.
The ending was a bit abrupt, closing with the mad scientist laughing hysterically while Hitler was being eaten by the maggots. That was the flesh feast the movie was talking about.
Overall, this movie can still be added to a classic gore collection.
For the foregoing reasons, Grave Reviews gives Flesh Feast (1970) one grave out of five graves.
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