The final screen appearance of Lithuanian-born,British-raised actor Laurence Harvey is a crude,grade-Z style horror movie which is made only just about tolerable because of a non-grade Z cast,with mildly well-known performers such as Stuart Whitman,John Ireland,Joanna Pettet and Meg Foster.
Harvey of course made one previous film about Korean war veterans,THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE(1962),but all similarities after this should be immediately erased.The former is now regarded as an all-time classic;this tasteless(literally!)story of a former soldier turned cannibal unable to escape his past is thinly plotted,poorly photographed,dismally produced and unsubtly directed(by Harvey himself).The shock scenes of gore and mutilated bodies in fridges are slightly effective in a grubby,clumsy way,but the film apparently was barely released by it's studio(Warners).Only the personable cast mentioned above make it very marginally watchable;odd member of the cast list lower down is veteran comic actress Florence Lake,playing a landlady,in one of her final film roles.The best remembered of Edgar Kennedy's screen wives in his series of two-reeler's,this probably hastened her retirement about a year later.
Harvey of course made one previous film about Korean war veterans,THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE(1962),but all similarities after this should be immediately erased.The former is now regarded as an all-time classic;this tasteless(literally!)story of a former soldier turned cannibal unable to escape his past is thinly plotted,poorly photographed,dismally produced and unsubtly directed(by Harvey himself).The shock scenes of gore and mutilated bodies in fridges are slightly effective in a grubby,clumsy way,but the film apparently was barely released by it's studio(Warners).Only the personable cast mentioned above make it very marginally watchable;odd member of the cast list lower down is veteran comic actress Florence Lake,playing a landlady,in one of her final film roles.The best remembered of Edgar Kennedy's screen wives in his series of two-reeler's,this probably hastened her retirement about a year later.