Wonderful character development!

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

I EAT YOUR SKIN is a neat little zombie film, shot in 1964 (so we get the old-fashioned zombies here, not the Romero type) but not released until seven years later. The title makes it sound like a video nasty but in fact it's a largely tame black and white jungle adventure movie with much in common with the films made in the 1940s.The plot sees a group of characters heading into the deepest jungle (actually a Floridian island) and soon discovering that the place is awash with zombies that have been created by a misguided scientist's experiments. The film has a definite swinging sixties vibe to it with a playboy hero and lots of good-natured flirtation and dialogue between the characters.The zombies themselves are really cool-looking with some great make up. They look like they're suffering from bad psoriasis with bug eyes to boot and scenes of them stalking their victims through the jungle have a genuine frisson of excitement to them. It's not a gory film at all, even though there's a brief beheading, and at times it gets bogged down in stock native ritual padding. Otherwise it's a fun little effort and one for the fans.

Totally ridiculous! The 'Zombies' are comically unreal, not undead. The lead throws a guy off a boat, clubs the guy with his own rifle, 'THROWS THE RIFLE AWAY', climbs into the boat and grabs a flare gun. His buddy says "What are you gonna do with that?" He replies, " It's better than nothing!" Geez! He just threw away a perfectly good rifle! My thirteen year old granddaughter, used to the more modern zombie movies where the zombies just keep coming at you, was totally incensed that no one got killed, maimed, or otherwise hurt. Of course that is today's zombie culture at work. Damn! Today's kids are bloodthirsty! I am a Marine and not quite that bad in wanting to see death and destruction.

Pretty slick little number here, a way low budget zombie voodoo potboiler filmed on the quick in Florida at the height of the early James Bond craze. Expect lots of palm trees, swept back wayfarer sunglasses, a big brassy orchestra with twangy guitars + bongo drums, boozy bimbos swooning by the pool, and some sort of novel mode of transportation, in this case an airplane that is destroyed in the movie's biggest laugh.The film concerns itself with a swinging playboy writer who is dispatched to darkest Key West to get to the bottom of some wacky voodoo cult and meets a couple of decent looking dames between stops for cocktails. The natives use a powerful narcotic which transforms them into the living dead and explains the jungle being just a mess after all this time. The damndest thing is that Carey Grant would have felt right at home in this movie, even with the ping pong ball zombie monster makeup.The movie is awful for sure but it works in some miraculous way, partly due to the fact that it was aware it was an awful movie employing awful actors, using awful cinematography, awful music, and awful script, etc. The good news is that everybody participating was apparently briefed before hand lest any sort of sweeping performances or actual cinematic artfulness sneak past the dime store tiki torches, wet bars, and matching salt + pepper shakers. Some good one liners though, I guess that's harmless enough to allow without tempting anybody to take it too seriously. Then again with a title like that, who can?It's kitsch, bounding with energy and some decent smarmy humor that will either get on your nerves or catch you with a belly laugh when you aren't expecting one. I like another reader's comment when writing that they had enjoyed this film more than the three A list big budget event films they rented at a Blockbuster: PRECISELY! Yes, that's the spirit! They were able to relax and just watch this god awful no-name movie for what it was -- rather than being primed to have the world saved or the universe explained by Leonardo di Caprio -- and ended up having a pretty good time. Caught them by surprise probably. You can buy it on DVD for a dollar, probably less, and keep it for your very own. Try it.4/10

ZOMBIES was shown at the Solano Drive-In Theatre (Concord, CA) in 1971 on a double-bill that is well-known among lovers of trash cinema -- I DRINK YOUR BLOOD and I EAT YOUR SKIN. For this venue, the movie was retitled I EAT YOUR SKIN but, as many have pointed out, no skin is eaten. Bob Wilkins referred to this movie as something for weight watchers. The blatantly tacky newspaper ad campaign for that double bill was more memorable than either movie.Del Tenney is a Connecticut-based filmmaker who scored a major coup with 20th Century-Fox to release two of his films on the same double bill in 1964. CURSE OF THE LIVING CORPSE (1963) is known for introducing Roy Scheider to movie audiences, but is the lesser of the two movies. HORROR OF PARTY BEACH (1964) was the more significant production.As a movie-maker, Tenney is better than Ed Wood but is straddled with a stagey kind of directing style. This was suitable for CURSE OF THE LIVING CORPSE -- his drawing-room shocker. The high energy level of HORROR OF PARTY BEACH, upon which most of Tenney's reputation is derived, is absent in ZOMBIES. His 1964 double bill was a hit with satiated teen audience, who would tolerate more blood and gore in their weekend drive-in fare. The market for horror films had matured to the point where a little blood and sexual innuendo were reliable ingredients in a successful horror flick - William Castle was proving that year after year. Most of HORROR OF PARTY BEACH is a musical, as well, which indicates that Fox was interested in countering the then-popular BEACH PARTY movies from American International Pictures. Although Tenney was poised to succeed as a movie director, he never scored it big again. His follow-up was ZOMBIES, which is ambitiously set in the Caribbean/Florida. Unfortunately, the Bondian-style story and zombie subplot is sloppy and not frightening -- with a few exceptions.In addition, Tenney has been the unlikely subject of study by some good commentators in well-regarded books and magazines -- a horror movie "auteur" of the same era as Jean-Luc Godard and the era of early James Bond movies.In ZOMBIES, the playboy hero simultaneously courts a spectacularly dull ingenue and uncovers the secret of the tropical island he somewhat circuitously came to on holiday. Amid reflections of tie-and-tails life on the Caribbean island, a madman is transforming blacks into zombies. "Then why do they call this island Voodoo Island?" The dialog could be considered campy, but the lines are clichéd. The racist plot forces the viewer to see it as camp. Any way you look at it, it is a comedy. For example, the height of Tenney's cleverness comes in an singularly effective scene of the two insipid lovers delivering banalities while several zombies appear out of the darkness and follow them. A surprising decapitation scene might raise a mild gasp. The remaining running time pads out static talking heads scenes and uninspired romance. The major failing here, aside from Tenney's complete wrongness as the director of this type of material, are the actors. Almost all of them are terrible. This is a testament to Tenney, as well, so he really shoulders all the blame. ZOMBIES was filmed in 1963 or so and not released until 1971. As much as I want to forgive his lack of depth as an artist, I still see him as a minor pioneer who contributed in small ways too the development of cinematic horror in the 1960s.--Jeffrey Frentzen