Best movie ever!

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Like Joan Crawford and TROG, FLESH FEAST was the swansong for former Hollywood starlet Veronica Lake, here aged beyond recognition and reduced to playing a mad scientist role in the tale of an anti-ageing treatment - administered via maggots, no less - which is hijacked by a group of Neo Nazis. The twist, of course, is that the film's reveal involves the body of Adolf Hitler, brought back to unceremonious life for the big twist climax. Unfortunately, this film is so cheaply made that the only reaction the viewer has to it is to laugh at it. It's inept throughout, badly scripted and acted, with the effects limited to cruddy make-up and rice standing in from the maggots. Even bad movie lovers will be hard-pressed to enjoy this one.

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.

In the 1940s, Veronica Lake made a meteoric rise to film stardom, thanks to her sultry beauty and, her highly exploited "peekaboo" hairstyle. She starred opposite big names like Alan Ladd and Fredric March, scoring screen successes in films like "This Gun For Hire" and "I Married A Witch". She held her own with female stars as well, and she surprised even her detractors with her performance as a bitter navy nurse in "So Proudly We Hail". But changing times and her own failings caught up with her, and by the end of the decade, her heyday was over. With two unsuccessful marriages behind her (and two more in her future) Veronica headed for New York City, where she made occasional television and summer stock appearances before dropping completely out of sight. It was briefly big news when she was found working as a barmaid in a second rate hotel in the early sixties. But by now, her longtime alcoholism and years of hard living had robbed her of her looks. Without them, public interest in her soon faded again. She did return to the stage in assorted vehicles, but her success was minimal. Eventually, she relocated to Miami, Florida, where she lived in relative obscurity. In 1966 she went to Canada for a part in an obscure movie called "Footsteps In The Snow" which had no U.S. release. The following year, she was discovered by some industrial filmmakers who had long wanted to produce a commercial feature. They approached her to star in their film "Time Is Terror" and convinced her to invest in the project. As one author put it, "If ever a movie queen suffered a terminal comedown, this was it". Surrounded by amateur performers and pathetic production values, she failed even to rise to a minimal level in this Miami, Florida shot quickie. Looking utterly ordinary in long shots, and luridly aged in close-ups, poor Veronica didn't act so much as walk through her part. As a deranged doctor, who has hit upon a successful youth restoration formula, using flesh-eating maggots!, she looks both bored and confused, her best moment coming when she is forced to ad-lib while she struggles desperately to don a pair of rubber gloves. The supporting cast is no help at all,merely advancing the plot by talking it to death, (when they aren't wandering aimlessly around the set, that is). Director Brad Grinter apparently only required the actors to move while the camera was pointed at them,so the fault isn't entirely theirs. As for the ''twist ending'' involving an attempt to put a supposedly long dead Dictator back in power- forget it. Just like the script does. There is, admittedly, one unintentionally hilarious scene involving a Private Detective/Nurse and a corpse in a wheelchair that predates ''Weekend At Bernie's'' by almost 20 years.)But there's a whole lot of nothing before you get there. According to Veronica herself, the film was shelved for three years because no master shots were filmed. Then, in 1970, the opportunistic production company scraped it together, changed the title to "Flesh Feast", and released it to cash in on Lake's just published biography. Because former leading ladies such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Olivia De Havilland had unexpectedly revived their careers in horror movies, this travesty was promoted as Veronica's "comeback film". This was a strange course of action for the filmmakers to pursue, though, because it's unlikely that the audience for a horror movie of THIS quality either knew (or cared) who Veronica Lake was. As expected, it did nothing for her career, and she died in poverty, three years later. A previous reviewer cites a scene in which the female detective working undercover as a nurse in the doctor's laboratory (overseeing the theft of bodies from a nearby morgue) enlists the help of a multi-talented chauffeur to cut up the body parts. "Poor Mrs. Lustig," she sighs, "I hope she doesn't mind leaving her body to science." "Try not to think about it," advises the chauffeur, sawing away. "I guess you are right, Hans." concludes the detective/nurse, "What is done is done." Alas, the unintentional humor is the only remotely entertaining part of this tripe. What a sad end to the career of a still fondly remembered star.

This is a legendary, seedy and satisfying horror movie. The camera work and special effects are outstanding considering the production date of this scary masterpiece. The story line could have been ironed out allot more before production, but who would have ever dreamt up a movie about flesh eating maggots? I recommend you watch this film before making any purchase, but I'm sure you will not be disappointed.