We're down on the beach at midnight in a small South American resort. As a courting couple engage in what could, in Victorian times, be described as foreplay, a car draws up to thwart the unlikely possibility of sex taking place. A masked figure emerges and, after depositing the lifeless body of a young woman, drives off into the night. The post mortem reveals traces of heroin in the victims body, though one Dr Bermudez (Candeau) is quick to discount any possibility of narcotics being the cause of death. As the body count increases, with each victim stabbed in the heart with a hypodermic needle, Inspector Lauria (De Ferraris) arrives, making the Malibu Hotel his base camp.
If the loathsome Lauria had been a bit sharper than his local counterpart, Feast Of Flesh would have ended a lot sooner than it's eventual 70 minute running time. Unfortunately, Vieyra had other ideas, forcing us to wade through the celluloid equivalent of quicksand where 2 characters are placed as prime suspects when there's clearly a third party responsible: by the time the truth emerges, we're past caring. As the killer lures women to their doom by means of an hypnotic soundtrack of death (an admitedly unnerving organ dirge), Lauria tries to match Italian cops for sheer incompetence, setting up a 'honey trap' that badly misfires and generally running around doing not a great deal. While Lauria's reprehensible attitude towards date- rape will surely leave a bad taste in your mouth, an absurd attempt to extract the killer's identity by way of an LSD truth drug does at least provide a little light relief amidst a tedious plot that gives zero inspiration to a cast of 4th-rate no-hopers.
Director Emilio Vieyra has earned a few lines in exploitation history for his slightly superior film, The Curious Dr Humpp, although this particular turkey benefits from life-saving surgery by it's American distributor who added additional footage of a salacious nature. What a shame, then, that no-one saw fit to do a similar number on Feast Of Flesh, which is hardly a gourmets delight unless you're into bare backs and arms folded over breasts.
Vieyra's film made it's digital debut as part of a double-header DVD with Night Of The Bloody Apes, courtesy of Something Weird Video. While Apes enjoys a stunning transfer taken from the original negative, Feast Of Flesh is not exactly pristine, with its black and white picture often mutating into black and grey. To be fair, it is a reasonably sharp transfer which, quite frankly, is more than it deserves.
Argentinian exploitation director who injected a heady dose of sleaze to the politically correct Argentinian film industry of the ’60s. His best known work is The Curious Dr. Humpp, a warped tale of sex experimentation, while other notable films include Feast of Flesh, Blood of Virgins and The Naked Beast. Continued to direct into the 1990s.
