Famous firsts are important in movies. Every great moment had its start somewhere: The Girl Who Knew Too Much was the first of the proper giallos, while Halloween led the way for the American slasher--The Lost World in 1925 was the first giant monster movie, and 1932's Doctor X was the first horror film in color. Now, these are all inaccurate in their own way, as I'm sure a lot of you already know; there were plenty of mysterious maniacs stalking and offing teenagers in American films prior to Michael Myers' debut, for example. Every genre has its roots, and while you can only go back so far, it seems there's always a movie that crops up that beat such-and-such to the punch. And that's largely due to the simple fact that history records events and happenings that most easily float to the surface. Halloween was the first slasher that people who weren't genre fans heard of in a big way, so consequently it is the "first" slasher. Talking about the prospect of a first gore film is a more nebulous matter, simply because there are many films that contained blood prior to what most people would cite as the most obvious contender, Blood Feast. Hell, there are even some which feature dismemberment: people get their heads lopped off in Intolerance from way back in 1916. Yet Intolerance is not a gore film, because while its violence can certainly be interpreted horrifically, it is not a horror film. If you're thinking of movies that feature blood and guts for the sake of horror, you probably do have to go to the early '60s, as anything truly graphic prior to then would have probably been some long-lost underground presentation. Volume, too, is important: there has to be a lot of blood in order for it to count, not just someone nicking their finger on a knife in a shot the censors were cool with. There has to be so much blood that the movie is borderline about the blood. That's what makes it a gore flick.
The Flesh Eaters almost beat H.G. Lewis to the punch with a 1962 production date, though the film would not see release until 1964, several months after Blood Feast emerged. While it is properly described as a mad scientist monster movie, its emphasis on graphic injury is so prominent, and so totally unlike other monster movies of its time, that it has to be described as a gore film. Indeed, massive amounts of blood turn out to be what our heroes need to survive the film, so my prior comment about gore films being about the gore turns out to be true from a story perspective too! What's great is that The Flesh Eaters isn't just entertaining for gore hounds. No, it's an engaging and dramatic little slice of tight cinema that will leave you wondering why so many other monster movies from the time ended up being comparatively tedious.
Jan Letterman is a woman with a mission--she's got to get her boss, alcoholic actress Laura Winters, to her next gig ASAP! To this end she hires undergrad pilot Grant Murdoch to fly them to where they need to go, but Murdoch is forced to land on a small island due to a storm. Here, they meet Germanic scientist Peter Bartell, who eventually makes it clear to the group that the waters around the island are infested with macrobacterial creatures that devour living flesh. In case the Team Fortress 2 Medic accent wasn't enough, we the audience swiftly learn something the characters don't (at least not right away): Bartell has his own agenda, and his own unique relationship with the Flesh Eaters. The group is eventually joined by an incredibly strange character named Omar, who is subjected to one of Bartell's tests involving the Flesh Eaters after Bartell ostensibly succeeds in killing the creatures with electricity. Unfortunately, unbeknownst even to Bartell, electricity is the strength of the Eaters as well as their weakness. If the palm-sized individuals can kill a person in moments, imagine what they'd do if they got any bigger...
Like I said above, The Flesh Eaters is actually a pretty well-made movie. The performances are all wonderful, and help bring what is already an awesome script to life. These characters become realistic by way of their cynicism--the dialogue stings in places, and consistently hints at the variety of troubles the characters have faced in the past. And it's not just that they're "realistic" too--our trio of protagonists are all likable in spite of, or perhaps because of, their faults. The performances that accomplish this depth and likability blend with some really impressive cinematography; take, for example, one of our earliest hints of Bartell's shadiness. The group discusses the strange events they've witnessed since arriving on the island, all framed in the background but still perfectly audible. Bartell is nearer to the camera, in profile, listening to the conversation. The focus is on him, and on the significant glances that flash across his eyes as he studies the castaways' words. It implies so much, and it makes us curious because all throughout the film, Bartell is generally a nice guy. It's been awhile since I've seen framing that has worked that well, and the movie is littered with it--it really has to be seen to be believed.
Speaking of that which must be seen to be credible: yes, we're gonna talk about the gore. I don't know if it's the black and white leaving more to my imagination or what, but the grue in this movie could compete with Lucio Fulci for sheer visceral nature. As much as I hate to overuse the "twin beds" metaphor, this is a movie that revels in showing us chunks of meat being hacked off of someone's leg in pretty good detail, coming from an era where it was still considered not done to show a married couple sharing a bed. It shows a close-up of a face with its eye blown out! Blood Feast caused literal rioting, and I only wish I knew what happened when The Flesh Eaters hit screens in '64. Perhaps the audiences had been inoculated--but I can't imagine that everyone took it well. The scene where Omar meets an unfortunate gastric demise by drinking water with a "dead" Flesh Eater in it will draw comparisons to Alien, but honestly, I gripped my seat tighter here than I did while watching Ridley Scott's film. Add in the fact that there are nude women as well. As in Blood Feast, there are no crotches or nipples allowed, but the context around these nude women will probably make you thankful that this isn't being played to be sexy.
I do want to talk about Omar a little bit. When I say a character is strange, that's by my standards--Omar represents the uncomfortable cinematic transition between beatniks and hippies, at a moment in time when neither really existed. The closest thing was the sort of hipster epitomized by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, and even then, those wouldn't become as recognizable as their hippie descendants and beat forebears until 1968, when Tom Wolfe published The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Omar talks like a beatnik, but is clearly on something significantly stronger than marijuana. He's also something of an evangelist, though it isn't made clear if the "weapon of love" he keeps referring to is meant to be Christian. It seems to be some sort of idiosyncratic micro-faith that Omar alone practices, loosely based on Christianity but loaded up with a lot of generic hippiness. Whatever it is, it doesn't keep him from trying to convert people. I wish we found out why, exactly, he's drifting on a raft in the middle of the Atlantic. I also wish we knew why he's weirdly content with this situation, since he seems to lack both food and drinkable water.
There's just one last detail I want to talk about before we wrap this up. The Flesh Eaters was Jack Curtis' only directorial credit--most of his work in film involved doing dub work for Japanese productions, including Mothra vs. Godzilla, the first Gamera film, and Prince of Space. Anime fans probably know him best as the voice of Pops Racer from Speed Racer. The film's screenwriter Arnold Drake, meanwhile, is generally remembered for his comic book work, where he created such wonderful characters as the Doom Patrol and Super-Hip. And also some nobody named Beast Boy, who I'm told never went on to join significant teams or garner any fans. I just think it's interesting that this movie is put together by two people who had such backgrounds.
The Flesh Eaters shatters the mold for '60s monster movies in a way I've never seen before, even if sometimes it resorts to belting out lines like, "You've created a monster...something beyond belief!" It's fun to talk about movies that have some noteworthy place in history, but it's even better when those movies are awesome even outside of being a first. I can only hope that in time we'll uncover something from 1961 that once more forces us to question our knowledge of the movies of the past.
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