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I Eat Your Skin (1964)
Updated 4/13/2009.
Newspaper ad for the 1971 drive-in double feature I Drink Your Blood and I Eat Your Skin
the story behind i eat your skin
Del Tenney's I Eat Your Skin was filmed in Florida in 1964, under the working title Zombies. Dozens of films were made in the mid-1960s to catch the coattails of the James Bond craze, and this one
is no different. In fact, the opening and closing scenes are filmed at Miami's Fountainbleu Hotel, the same hotel where a few scenes of Goldfinger (1964) take place. This movie was originally titled Voodoo
Blood Bath, but Tenney couldn't find a distributor and didn't have another feature to release along with it for a drive-in double feature. The movie sat on the shelf for years until, in 1971, producer Jerry Gross began searching for a film to release along with his I Drink Your Blood. Gross secured the rights for Tenney's film and retitled it. All of this explains why there is no skin eating in I Eat Your Skin, yet it's still a great, campy, low-budget horror film.
Screen captures from I Eat Your Skin. LEFT: Novelist Tom Harris (William Joyce) is surrounded by a bevy of scantily clad housewives at the hotel pool. CENTER: Tom's agent Duncan Fairchild (Dan Stapleton) saves him from an irate husband. RIGHT: William Joyce as Tom Harris
The star of I Eat Your Skin is handsome actor William Joyce (often credited as Bill Joyce), who spends much of the film without his shirt on, chasing women. Joyce portrays novelist Tom Harris, who spends all his free time by the pool reading his works to a bevy of housewives. His publisher saves him from an irate husband just in time, only to fly him to Voodoo Island to do research for this next book. Joyce and his companions stumble upon zombies who walk the earth, killing unsuspecting humans. The zombies are the accidental creation of a visiting doctor on the island, whose lovely daughter Harris beds in the process.
Born in New York on October 21, 1930, Bill Joyce had an on-again, off-again career as an actor from the 1950s through the 1980s. While I Eat Your Skin was his biggest (and only starring) film role, Joyce also had roles in The Young Nurses (1973), The Parallax View (1974), and Lifeguard (1976; with Sam Elliot). Furthermore, he had recurring roles on the daytime dramas Somerset (mid 1970s) and Days of Our Lives (early 1980s). In addition, he made guest appearances on a number of television series, including Cannon, Barnaby Jones, The Rifleman, and The Rockford Files. Joyce also worked in the legitimate theater, working as an actor and sometimes dancer in such Broadway productions as Top Banana (early 1950s), Damn Yankees (mid 1950s), and Bye Bye Birdie (early 1960s). Joyce retired from the screen in the late 1980s and passed away in 1998 at the age of 67.
I Eat Your Skin [DVD](1964) DVD
Originally paired with "I Drink Your Blood," this gory goodie about a mad doctor who uses radioactive snake venom to help manufacture disgusting zombies stars William Joyce and Heather Hewitt; directed by Del Tenney ("Horror of Party Beach"). AKA: "Voodoo Blood Bath." 82 min. Standard; Soundtrack: English mono. Plays All Regions.
Great Cannibal Classics 3 On 1 [DVD] DVD
Includes "I Eat Your Skin," "The Severed Arm" and "The Undertaker and His Pals."
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