You know, I've heard a rumor that there's an army of walking dead on this island.
Only have time for the one "Chilling Classic" today, which is just as well because Del Tenney's I Eat Your Skin is crappy enough for two. Written, produced and directed by Tenney (who also made the MST3K favorite The Horror of Party Beach and The Curse of the Living Corpse, which just so happened to be Roy Scheider's film debut), the film was originally released in 1964 as Zombies, but it wasn't given its more common title until it was re-released in 1971 on a double bill with I Drink Your Blood. Ah, the golden age of the drive-in... (So why isn't this on the "Drive-In Movie Classics" set? You tell me.)
Anyway, I Eat Your Skin (which, it must be said, is about voodoo zombies, so there isn't any actual skin-eating involved) opens with a voodoo ceremony where we watch a bikini-clad girl gyrating for several minutes, thus satisfying most of the young males in the audience right off the bat. Then we're off to Miami Beach, where playboy writer William Joyce is poolside, spinning a seductive tale for several young ladies when his agent (Dan Stapleton) whisks him away to an uncharted island to get material for his next (apparently overdue) novel. Of course, why Stapleton would bring his floozy wife (Betty Hyatt Linton) and she would bring her two poodles along is beyond me, but I guess Tenney decided his film needed more dead weight.
Curiously enough, the plane they charter barely has enough fuel for a one-way trip, which doesn't seem like good planning to me, so after an emergency beach landing (which Joyce insists on doing himself because that's the sort of thing movie heroes do), Joyce goes exploring by himself. Naturally one of the first things he sees is a girl skinny dipping, but she is scared off by something lurking in the jungle. Investigating further, Joyce discovers that the natives of the island speak Spanish and is attacked by a machete-wielding zombie, who beheads the fisherman he had conscripted as a guide. Before the zombie can do the same to Joyce, he is rescued by Walter Coy, the overseer of the island's plantation and their host for the duration of their stay.
In addition to housing visiting writers, agents and floozies, Coy also has a scientist in residence (Robert Stanton), who's working on a snake venom-based cancer cure, and the scientist's nubile young daughter (Heather Hewitt), because there has to be somebody for Joyce to fall madly in love with. Once all of the characters are in play, it's only a matter of time before they get mixed-up with the voodoo-practicing natives (who are led by a mysterious figure who hides his identity behind a beaded mask, top hat and sunglasses -- no points for guessing who he is ahead of time). And it's only a matter of time before we see some zombie transformations, which mostly involve the application of spackle to actors' faces and a number of dissolves. Ooh, scary.