I bought this for a few dollars in a second-hand store as I had long been curious about Flesh Feast as it is Veronica Lake's last ever movie. That's really the only thing it has going for it. Flesh Feast is an utterly forgettable, amateurish waste of time.
Lake stars as a "doctor" in some kind or nursing home/retreat who does secret experiments using maggots to restore youth. She is called upon by a foreign military group to treat their leader and this eventually leads to the "shock ending".
The film doesn't make a lot of sense. All the acting is poor, and Veronica Lake is no exception, although as all the dialogue is dubbed, it's hard to tell how good she may have been if the sound had been recorded live. If Veronica Lake was a beauty in her Hollywood heyday, she certainly isn't here. She first appears in a black suit and hat which do hint at a glimmer of sophistication, but this is soon discarded and she spends rest of the movie wearing either a white lab coat or what appears to be a hideously frumpy blue bowling shirt. The movie saves the most unflattering view of it's star for the ending, when Lake is seen in close up, laughing, which unfortunately showcases her mouthful of brown rotten teeth.
Inbetween gawking at Lake, most of the film is very boring. For bad movie fans though, there is one spectacularly hilarious scene when a young woman enters the forbidden laboratory and comes across a dissected corpse. It's hilarious because the body parts are hanging from the ceiling in clear view of the woman the entire time, but the actress feigns ignorance of the horrible sight until she has walked all the way across the room, past the legs, arms and head dangling inches from her nose (in bright harsh lighting no less), until she is finally cued to turn around, "spot" them, and then burst into the hammiest screams of horror you have ever seen. Much hilarity, and almost worth buying for that scene alone.
But when I say "almost" worth buying, I really mean that. The current DVD release by Telefilms International/Beverly Wiltshire Filmworks is atrocious. It's a DVD recording of a video tape, and not a very good one at that. The source video itself is fullscreen, blurry and comes complete with dropouts, wobble and flickers, all lovingly preserved in the digital medium. Worse still, the print that the video was made from is crackly and full of scratches, missing frames and blotches on the print. But as there appears to be no official release available, I presume this is currently the only way to see the masterpiece that is "Flesh Feast".
For the very curious only, and while this is the only print available, I advise paying no more than five dollars for a copy. If a new print of "Flesh Feast" is ever found and remastered, it might make it onto a Classic Bad Movie DVD list... but not in this state.
Lake stars as a "doctor" in some kind or nursing home/retreat who does secret experiments using maggots to restore youth. She is called upon by a foreign military group to treat their leader and this eventually leads to the "shock ending".
The film doesn't make a lot of sense. All the acting is poor, and Veronica Lake is no exception, although as all the dialogue is dubbed, it's hard to tell how good she may have been if the sound had been recorded live. If Veronica Lake was a beauty in her Hollywood heyday, she certainly isn't here. She first appears in a black suit and hat which do hint at a glimmer of sophistication, but this is soon discarded and she spends rest of the movie wearing either a white lab coat or what appears to be a hideously frumpy blue bowling shirt. The movie saves the most unflattering view of it's star for the ending, when Lake is seen in close up, laughing, which unfortunately showcases her mouthful of brown rotten teeth.
Inbetween gawking at Lake, most of the film is very boring. For bad movie fans though, there is one spectacularly hilarious scene when a young woman enters the forbidden laboratory and comes across a dissected corpse. It's hilarious because the body parts are hanging from the ceiling in clear view of the woman the entire time, but the actress feigns ignorance of the horrible sight until she has walked all the way across the room, past the legs, arms and head dangling inches from her nose (in bright harsh lighting no less), until she is finally cued to turn around, "spot" them, and then burst into the hammiest screams of horror you have ever seen. Much hilarity, and almost worth buying for that scene alone.
But when I say "almost" worth buying, I really mean that. The current DVD release by Telefilms International/Beverly Wiltshire Filmworks is atrocious. It's a DVD recording of a video tape, and not a very good one at that. The source video itself is fullscreen, blurry and comes complete with dropouts, wobble and flickers, all lovingly preserved in the digital medium. Worse still, the print that the video was made from is crackly and full of scratches, missing frames and blotches on the print. But as there appears to be no official release available, I presume this is currently the only way to see the masterpiece that is "Flesh Feast".
For the very curious only, and while this is the only print available, I advise paying no more than five dollars for a copy. If a new print of "Flesh Feast" is ever found and remastered, it might make it onto a Classic Bad Movie DVD list... but not in this state.