Customer Reviews

Flesh Feast--Veronica Lake

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Only if you're a Veronica Lake fan will you have any interest in this movie, which was her last. She has the lead role, and plays a scientist who experiments with maggots. For a DVD transfer, it was just awful. Smudges and particles litter the screen and the colors weren't that good. I was interested in seeing an old Veronica Lake, because I have heard rumors she became a big alcoholic and her looks faded and her teeth fell out. Those rumors were SOOOO exaggerated. She looked perfectly fine to me, and she DOES have her own teeth! This isn't one I would watch over and over, and I would suggest ONLY buying from a Marketplace Seller for a few bucks; not really worth $20, but if you're a Lake fan you'll want it. And no, it wasn't THAT bad like people say.

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 most unintentionally hilarious moment coming when she is forced to ad-lib while she struggles gamefully to don a pair of rubber gloves. The supporting cast is no help at all, merely advancing the plot by talking it to death. Director Brad Grinter apparently only required the actors to move while the camera was pointed at them, no need for anything resembling entertainment. According to Veronica herself, the film was shelved for three years because no master shots were filmed. But in 1970, the production company scraped it together, changed the title to "Flesh Feast", and released it to cash in on Lake's just published biography. And, 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 seems a strange course of action for the filmmakers to pursue, though, because it's unlikely that the (young) audience for a horror film of this quality either knew or cared who Veronica Lake was. As expected, it did nothing for Veronica's career, and she died in poverty, three years later. A previous reviewer cites a scene in which a 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." What a sad end to the career of a still fondly remembered star. [phillindholm]

I was excited to see that this perverse, doofy vanity film, Veronica Lake's feeble attempt to enter the Joan Crawford horror sweepstakes, was out on DVD. That is, until I got home with it and saw the picture, er, quality. ECCHHHHHH!!!!

This has to be THE WORST LOOKING DVD in DVD history, to date. It looks as if it were badly videotaped off a TV station's antiquated film-chain system, and then, only after that videotape was duped once, twice, thrice was it committed to the digital realm.

It's even out of frame. At the bottom of the picture is a little sliver of the TOP of the picture.

If you can get past this visual assault, you're in for a demented, campy cheap-film treat. Shot in South Florida (which automatically makes any '60s Z-movie worth watching, IMHO), this amateurish effort transcends taste, logic, art and structure. I consider it to be the final gem of the cycle of low-grade horror/SF that started in the early '50s and stretched to roughly 1970.

Many quotable lines of dialogue, atmosphere that suggests a screwed-up episode of THE LUCY SHOW, some cheesy library music, and Lake's strident but appealing final performance: this crap-film's got it goin' on.

I hope someone (Criterion? ;D) will give this film the TLC it needs, and that one day we'll have a crisp, clear version of this demented gem to view.

creepy horror,bad acting,stupid story,but...you must see it!!!only for veronica lake's worst film ever!!!a must in bad taste!!

>I tried hard to take this psuedo-scary flick seriously but alas, it is so far/fetched and campy-that I finally was doing little more than half smiling at it's tackinous; asking myself the age-old question,"Why did they ever make movies like this?"!!! It could've been a lot better with {just} a tad bit more budget allowing for an upgrade of props, improved lighting and a cast with less put on accents of foreign nature; with an ameliorated script containing more punch.
>It's as though many lines are flubbed and just left in as is-per/diem, giving the viewer a sense of immediate distaste for the cast in general, including the star, Veronica Lake, who at very first glance appears wicked and detached from all that is around her; including the world in which she currently lives-except for the one she has created down in the basement of her Miami home that looks like little more than a space containing a 'junior scientist's lab starter kit' fresh outta the nearest dime store. With a bit more effort and a less gruesome nature, 'FleshFeast' might have served as the impetus for Veronica Lake's long/awaited comeback, that for reasons obvious in this film-was alas never to be as sadly, her character in this stale flick shows absolutely no redeeming qualities, leaving the disillusioned viewer wanting for a better actor who could have brought at least some semblence of life to this ego-driven maniac so surrounded by the celebration of death and human debris. The one character that is likeable, the young brunette nurse capable perhaps of being the film's heroine is instead wasted in a badly done scene-where in which a revitalized Nazi shamelessly attacks her brutally when she refuses his demands for sex and is subsequently strangled on a bed in an upstairs room within the Florida mansion that houses this entire awful nightmare.
>My opinion of 'FleshFeast' is that it is an all/around bad movie that could've been done much better with a few changes made in the casting and script, makeing for a window of opportunity through which Veronica Lake might have somehow or other-found the propulsion necessary for jumpstarting what had become a stale, hasbeen career...Unfortunately, in 'FlashFeast', she neither comes across as vital OR necessary.