What a waste of my time!!!

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Jack Curtis's The Flesh Eaters opens in fine style with a pre-credits scene that reminds me a lot of the first shark attack in Jaws: a couple frolicking on a sailboat end up in the water (the woman minus her bikini top) where they are both devoured by something lurking unseen beneath the surface. Could Spielberg be a fan of this cult flick? I know I am, 'cos it's got virtually everything I could ask for in a low budget 60s monster movie, and then some: a mad scientist, buxom females, a beatnik spouting incomprehensible 'beat-speak', a silly monster or two, graphic violence, and best of all, in the restored version I saw, a spot of Nazisploitation.Byron Sanders stars as seaplane pilot Grant Murdoch, who is hired by beautiful PA Jan Letterman (Barbara Wilkin) to fly herself and alcoholic actress Laura Winters (Rita Morley) to Provincetown. En route, the plane experiences engine trouble, and Murdoch is forced to land at a remote, supposedly uninhabited island where the pilot and his two passengers must wait for a storm to blow over; there, they meet marine biologist Peter Bartell (Martin Kosleck), who is on the island running experiments on a microscopic parasite that lives in the surrounding waters. When a human skeleton is washed up on the beach (holding a bikini top), Bartell claims it to be the work of a shark, but Murdoch is not so sure, suspecting that the shifty looking scientist knows a lot more than he is letting on. Eventually, it transpires that the parasitic organisms in the water are microscopic flesh eaters, the result of Nazi biological weapons experiments during the war, and that Bartell intends to use these creatures for financial gain, and he isn't about to let anyone get in his way.Although the script for The Flesh Eaters is fairly routine for a 60s creature feature, with stock characters and clichéd dialogue, the film stands head and shoulders above most of its B-movie contemporaries thanks to an unusually grim atmosphere, some surprisingly gruesome effects, and its shameless Nazi plot device, which adds a delightfully lurid quality to proceedings. Most monster movies are guaranteed to feature a few characters that won't survive to see the end credits, but rarely do they meet their fate in such nasty ways as they do here, the death scenes including a man having his face eaten away and another being devoured from the inside out leaving a hole in his torso and his ribs and spine in clear view, a bloody gunshot to the eye, and a brutal stabbing. So graphic are these scenes that, even though the film is in black and white, some people still regard this as the first true gore movie, beating H.G. Lewis's splatter classic Blood Feast (1963) by a couple of years (the film was released in 1964, but completed in 1961).Perhaps even more shocking than the gore are the film's Nazi experiments, which predate similar exploitative scenes in films like SS Experiment Camp and Ilsa She Wolf of the SS by over a decade: shot in a documentary style, they depict female prisoners being stripped naked and forced into a test pool teeming with the man-made flesh eaters. The faux realism of these scenes makes them rather uncomfortable viewing despite the silly nature of the experiment itself. Fans of the Nazisploitation genre should definitely give this a watch purely for the sake of completion.The film ends in typically daft monster movie fashion, with the microscopic flesh munchers mutating into a single giant creature that can only be destroyed by an injection of plasma directly into its nucleus. Brave Murdoch risks his life to do so, ending the film with a suitably large explosion.8.5 out of 10, happily rounded up to 9 for the gratuitous scene where Jan takes off her blouse so that Murdoch can bandage his leg.

I love this film! Well paced and brisk B-movie, incredibly gory for its time. It is NOT a "comedy-horror" as shown in the listing, but it has at least one unique comic relief character: a hippie raft drifter named Omar is warned not to come near the island shore, teeming with Flesh Eaters. "Yeah, gimme the love, man!" But the Hero shouts back, "Shut your big mouth before you end up a skeleton!" Omar is totally befuddled. "Hey, I feel the love dryin' up, man."Martin Kosleck is, as always, a quintessentially sadistic villain, using victims as guinea pigs for bacterial warfare experiments. *SPOILER ALERT*: In the most sadistic scene, Kosleck drops a flesh eater into Omar's drink that chews a hole through his stomach. Kosleck tape records his agonizing death screams, and sets Omar's corpse back onto the raft with the tape playing.My only gripe is that I wish they had restored the deleted scenes back into the original print, rather than show them separately as an extra. Nor does it have the original red-tint color scene, but I've only seen that from old 16mm transfers. This print offered on the DVD is very clean and well worth the price. And that music score - just perfect. Highly recommended for b-movie monster fans.

This movie is truly mind boggling. It can't even be called camp or corn, it is so bad! But it is also so hilarious. I could not stop laughing. Even for it's time this was hilariously horrible. The flesh eaters are a sort of monster much like the amoeba of "Angry Red Planet" It begins as a bunch of small flesh eaters, but a mad scientist changes it into one big one, and one super big one. What is so hilarious is that the two lead actors are so horrible, but the supporting cast seems to at least try to be thespians. The most interesting one is a beatnik. He pretty well steals the show for his small air time. Meanwhile the hero and heroine take off as many clothes as they can, and deliver lines so bad, you'd swear they were trying to be bad. I can almost promise their delivery will make you burst out laughing, because the others are almost convincing, then these two say their lines, and you can't help but laugh. I really believe that these two were secretly the butt of the jokes from the others. I not only mean the few actors, but the director, film crew, and stage hands. They no doubt set these two up and made them fools, and the two stars probably never knew. It's a good thing they weren't around a live volcano or in a crowded lifeboat. Guess which two would have been sacrificed through some sneaky planning? You'll also laugh at the scenes in which the hero jumps at the camera. It is proof that the crew were in cahoots to make him look stupid. I can just see them all laughing after a day's shoot, snickering at the two leads. I don't mean the two leads any disrespect. No doubt they did what they were told. At some time, we've all been fools. But you won't stop laughing. Still, it is a bad film.

Truth to tell, I had not heard of this movie until recently, but after reading several laudatory reviews in various film books, and after hearing a coworker buddy of mine rave about it, I quickly put it at the very top of my list of films to rent. And boy, am I ever glad I did! "The Flesh Eaters" (1964), as it turns out, is nothing less than a horror minimasterpiece; a genuine sleeper whose relative obscurity may soon change, thanks to this crisp-looking DVD from the fine folks at Dark Sky. In it, an alcoholic actress, her hotty blonde assistant and their hunky-dude plane pilot are forced to land on a barren island near NY's Long Island, right before a hurricane. There, they encounter a scientist played by Martin Kosleck, who is working with the teensy critters that give this film its name. Kosleck, a German Jew who nonetheless excelled at portraying weasly Nazi types throughout the '40s, is superb in the lead role, but then again, all the actors in this film are surprisingly fine. The film also boasts beautiful, high-contrast B&W photography, utilizing bizarre camera angles and point-of-view shots; some highly effective gross-out scenes; and some truly original-looking monsters, both large and small. The film gets wilder and wilder as it proceeds,and offers some real surprises toward the end. Thus, this little independent shocker is just dynamite, and a real find for the jaded horror fan. It's also suitable for the kiddies...say, from 10 and up. It'll warp them a little, but they won't soon forget it, and will probably rave about it to THEIR coworkers one day...