The Horror!? 91: I Eat Your Skin (1964)

Swinging, womanizing, gun-toting writer of questionable talent Tom Harris (William Joyce) enjoys the pool life in "Monty Carlo", when his agent/publisher/something like that Duncan Fairchild (Dan Stapleton) hedges a great plan to drag the slothful bastard back to work: Take him to the wonderful Voodoo Island for inspiration, a place that promises poisonous snakes and an army of the living dead. Surprisingly, Tom is not that interested in such a place, until Fairchild mentions the existence of a mystical thing called virgin girls on the island.

So off Fairchild, his wife Coral (Betty Hyatt Lynton, whose voice could be the most terrifying thing I'll ever hear) and Harris go, only to soon land in the clutches of an evil voodoo cult, madmen and bug eyed zombies armed with machetes. Well, at least Harris gets to use his gun and other heroic manly charms to a) blast some people and/or undead and b) woo the love of his life Jeannie Biladeaux (Heather Hewitt). As on the Love Boat, so on Voodoo Island.

There are two ways to look at Del Tenney's I Eat Your Skin. You can either see an inept piece of the trashiest filmmaking of the Sixties without any redeeming features or you can look at it as a gloriously wrong, but attractively early example of an American Swingin' Sixties horror/action movie, that may not be any good, but is extremely entertaining.

I of course chose the latter way to interpret reality and so had some great fun while watching William Joyce's idiotically horny "hero" hit some zombies, charm women with the magnetism of his hairy chest and butcher his lines with the routine of a real pro.

Also, the movie's incredible stupidity is mitigated by comic relief so unfunny I couldn't stop laughing about it, a really cool soundtrack and an admirable absence of filler. Like in a good serial, there is seldom anything happening that makes sense, but there is always something happening.

 

 

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