The Flesh Eaters

This thoroughly weird but truly inspired monster flick is one of the earliest gore films to splatter across drive-in screens in the years prior to Herschell Gordon Lewis' notorious Blood Trilogy. The plot finds a besotted movie star (Rita Morley) and her entourage trapped on an island surrounded by aquatic flesh-munching amoebas (represented by scratches on the film emulsion) created by mad scientist Peter Bartell (Martin Kosleck). These sparkly little death-blobs make mincemeat of most of the cast, including a dorky beatnik (Ray Tudor) who ingests a few of the little buggers in his drink -- leading to an agonizingly fatal case of indigestion. Good photography and well-designed makeup effects make the most of a shoestring budget. Film editor Radley Metzger found his own way as the director of numerous soft-porn films in the '60s and '70s.