At an airport phone booth, an undercover reporter, Dan Carter (Harry Kerwin), is on the phone with his boss, Ed Casey (Phil Philbin) when he is stabbed to death by a mysterious hit man. The hit man had been tailing a man named Carl Schumann (Doug Foster), a notorious arms dealer, who had just returned from South America. When Casey learns about Carter’s death he has Schumann investigated.
Casey discovers that Schumann is involved with Dr. Elaine Frederick (Veronica Lake). Frederick had been in a sanitarium but Schumann had her released and set her up with a secret laboratory where she does research and performs secret experiments. Casey has an informant, Kristine (Heather Grinter), who is currently working for Dr. Frederick and sending back reports to him. Through Kristine Casey learns that Frederick is working on a project to restore a person’s youth using a specially bred form of flesh eating maggots and body parts from corpses.
A clandestine group of Nazis, led by a guy named Benito Pettis (Otto Schlessinger) invades Dr. Frederick’s home and lab to make sure all is secure before bringing in a test patient. The experiments are being done for a specific client but before he is subjected to the treatment, Dr. Frederick uses an old man, Max Bauer (Chris Martell), as a guinea pig. The treatment, which also entails a convoluted process incorporating the color spectrum and temperature along with the specialized maggots, works and Max is turned into a young man. Satisfied that the treatment works, Benito brings in the real patient, an old Adolph Hitler.
“Flesh Feast” was released in 1970 and was written produced and directed by Brad F. Grinter. It is a low budget American horror movie. The film was reportedly shot in 1967 but not released until 1970.
There’s supposed to be a lot of mystery here with a couple twists at the end. There’s really none of that, just a rather talky and badly acted exploitation film similar in themes to films such as “They Saved Hitler’s Brain” 1968, “The Frozen Dead” 1967 and perhaps even “Nazi’s At the Center of the Earth” 2012. Of course it’s not hard to determine who the special patient is and spoilers are going to be difficult to get away from so I won’t bother. Even Hitler and Nazi’s in Miami aren’t enough to save the film. The movie is filled with the usual bad acting and lame plot as well as a slow and plodding pace.
This was Veronica Lake’s last film. In addition to starring in the film Ms. Lake was also the executive producer. Veronica Lake was a glamour star in the forties and early fifties. Eventually, alcoholism destroyed her career. Her famous peek-a-boo hairstyle was copied for the animated character Jessica Rabbit in the film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”. She died of hepatitis in Burlington, Vermont in July 1973. She was 50 years old.
Heather Grinter, who plays Kristine, was married to director Brad F. Grinter.