Vividly recalled by those who saw it in passing on the late late show, this film is curiously forgotten today by the cult film illiterati. Those same film revivalists who've seen fit to place auteurs like Ed Wood, Jess Franco and Jack Hill on pedestals would seem to have little regard for Flesh Eaters, a rugged and robust low-budget shocker not without its laughable pretensions, but capable of making an impact even after repeated viewings. Produced by Jack and Terry Curtis, it is the only horror film I can think of shot entirely on Long Island. The Sound's sandy beaches stand in for the tropical atoll whereupon the titular carnivorous bacteria are bred. Released in 1964 through Cinema Distributors of America, the film made its profitably horrific rounds before popping up on television at regular intervals throughout the sixties. Its plot elements are rudimentary, a threadbare filmic canvas onto which solid shocks are painted by budget- encumbered yet adequately skilled hands. Considering the means by which producers accomplished the film's nominal special effects, the movie should have been far, far worse. The monsters, a glowing strain of radioactive bacteria, were simply etched onto the actual celluloid with pins. That the film's makers would even attempt to pull off the towering monstrosity that threatens the protagonists at the film's climax is laudable under such conditions. Co-producer Jack Curtis directed with considerable verve and several stunningly gory sequences have lost little of their impact today. Notably, his arguable merits as a shock filmmaker led to few subsequent exploitation film assignments. Of considerable curiosity value is the presence of editor Radley Metzger, who cut Flesh Eaters for Curtis, just prior to embarking on his own career as one of sexploitation's vanguard directors. The serviceable script was turned in by Arnold Drake, a comic book writer whose notable career included scribing a host of D.C. Comics titles like Our Army at War, Challengers of the Unknown and House of Secrets, as well as Marvel Comics' X-Men. His plotline broke little new ground, but its essential elements are served up with a sadistic energy calculated to satisfy thrill-hungry drive-in audiences. Character actor Martin Kosleck, Hollywood's Nazi-in-residence throughout the 1940s, lends a bit of much-needed gravitas to the threadbare Flesh Eaters. Kosleck, who had portrayed Joseph Goebbels no fewer than five times, approaches his role as a Mengelesque Nazi doctor with gusto. Busily breeding a strain of flesh-eating bacteria that he sees as the key ingredient to sparking a Third Reich revival, the sanctity of his private isle is shattered by the forced landing of a spoiled Hollywood starlet, her secretary and their hunky hired pilot. Rounding out the beleaguered ensemble is a jive-talking, shipwrecked beatnik who would have been employed as throwaway comic relief in many films. Flesh Eaters turns this convention on its ear by disposing of the character in graphically morbid fashion. One reward for cult fans industrious enough to seek out Flesh Eaters on video is the restoration of several gory seconds of film usually excised from TV prints. Most notable are a grainily stunning closeup of a human face, half eaten by the toxic maggots of the film's title, as well a horrific flashback depicting Nazi medicos dipping helpless women into vats of the nibbling microbes. As testily stated in the Flesh Eaters Salesmanship Manual, distributed to potential exhibitors, "We will not insult your intelligence by having nurses in attendance or other such trite gimmicks, however, if you are not strong enough to see human flesh stripped off a body before your eyes -- PLEASE DON'T COME!" This from the same distributors who supplied patrons with packets of 'instant blood' with which to sate the famished flesh eaters should they be attacked. Jaws was not the first film that attempted to terrify gullible beachgoers. The rocketing popularity of the Beach Blanket Bingo set inspired a spate of beach-combing beasts: The Beach Girls and the Monster (1964) Former matinee hunk Jon Hall directed and stars in this curious pastiche of of surfing and shocks. Sporting a shredded rubber suit, he terrorizes the local sun bunnies to the beat of original tunes by Frank Sinatra Jr. Acting: C Atmosphere: D Fun: A- Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959) Lensed on location just prior to the popularity of the clean-cut beach kiddies, this one stars Don Giant Gila Monster Sullivan and men's mag staple Jeanne Carmen. The crusty lighthouse keeper is responsible for tempting the titular monster ashore with butcher shop leftovers. Acting: B- Atmosphere: B- Fun: A- The Crawling Hand (1963) Though not ostensibly a beach-based flick, key ingredients demand its inclusion. A bikini-clad Miss Iceland, Sirriy Steffan, frolics in the sand before stumbling upon the severed stump of the title which has only recently washed ashore. At the teen's local hangout, Surfin' Bird squalls on the juke box. Acting: C Atmosphere: B- Fun: A Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1966) Horrormeister Vincent Price was brought on board to try to resuscitate a genre now gasping its last. As Dr. Goldfoot, he breeds buxom robots for use in bending the rich to his will. The surf-spattered cast includes Annette, Frankie, Dwayne Dobie Gillis Hickman and Susan Hart. Acting: B- Atmosphere: D- Fun: C-