Placer sangriento

The only horror director of any fame to come from Argentina, Emilio Vieyra ("The Curious Dr. Humpp"), made the first of his low budget genre films with this minor shocker. Mauricio De Ferraris stars as a police inspector named Ernesto Lauria, who must solve the case of a masked maniac who injects women with heroin, and also uses organ music to turn them into zombie slaves.

Don't look for a particularly coherent story with this one, but you can expect a fair amount of black & white atmosphere. You can also enjoy a decent serving of sleaze, a steady assortment of sexy young women, and the creepiness of the villain. The mask he wears may be the most noteworthy thing about him. The performances are not great but they are adequate. The mystery to be solved is not all that difficult to deduce. The music is the work of a man named Victor Buchino, who also composed the song performed by one of our suspects in a nightclub. Pacing is efficient enough, resulting in a movie that wraps up in just over 70 minutes.

"Feast of Flesh" a.k.a. "The Deadly Organ" (as it is known here in North America) is no great shakes, but lovers of foreign B horror may appreciate its sense of weirdness and its ambience.

Five out of 10.

I can't blast Placer Sangriento like everyone else on this board. I liked it. It reminded me of early Franco as did Vieyera's later effort, Dr. Humpp. The black & white photography is very atmospheric and moody, the girls are very sexy and the storyline is sleazy enough. Like a lot of horror films of that time, the police procedural footage is dull. I've often wondered if these scenes were meant to be for restroom breaks when they played theatrically. The ominous, memorable central music theme reminded me of the sensational main theme by Allesandro Allesdandrini in a film made years later, The Devil's Nightmare. Placer Sangriento is currently playing in a 20 minute version on Comcast on Demand in the Something Weird section (they sell the full version on DVD).

Emilio Vierya strikes again! Or to be more accurate, Emilio Vierya strikes for the first time as this was the first of a series of bizarre horror films by Argentina's most famous (and only famous) horror director. And though Vierya may strike first-time viewers as an Argentinean Ed Wood, there is definitely method to his madness--the cheesy delirium evoked by his films is entirely intentional. A man in a ridiculous monster mask lures female Argentinean swingers partying on the beach with his strange organ music(thus the suggestive alternative title "The Deadly Organ"). He then injects them with heroin to make them his slaves. Why? You wouldn't believe me if I told you, but it really isn't important.

All the ingredients of a Vierya film are there--the free-spirited Latino hippies, the goofy music, the gratuitous nudity, the gratuitous dancing. His two regular actresses--Gloria Pratt and Susana Beltran--also appear. Beltran (who looks a lot like her Italian exploitation contemporary, Rosalba Neri)has the lead in this movie though, with Pratt relegated to a more perfunctory part. Thankfully, this one isn't padded with American-shot sex inserts like "The Curious Dr. Humpp", but unlike "Sangre de Virgenes" it is dubbed into English which is only a problem because instead of giving Beltran a sexy Latino accent, they give her this grating Texas one(!). And "Feast of Flesh", the title this has currently been saddled with by the distributors at Something Weird is very inaccurate as there is no flesh here in the gore sense and not much in the sex sense. The Spanish title "Placer Sangriento" (literally "Bloody Pleasures") isn't any more accurate. Both are bound to attract your indiscriminating gore fans rather than your more refined and erudite fans of bizarro Argentinean horror/sexploitation movies who will appreciate a film like this. I guess this movie really defies ANY title, but I like "The Deadly Organ" the best.

Okay, "Deadly Organ" isn't as wacky as "Humpp" but there are plenty thrills for lovers of weird and obscure films. A spooky guy with a monster mask wrecks havoc on the beaches of Argentina by injecting heroin (!) into helpless young girls. He then plays an organ (hence the title, I thought it was another kind of organ..ha ha) and young zombielike girls come to him. In the film's most outrageous scene two cops interview a heroine victim of who the psycho is BY USING LSD AS A TRUTH SERUM!!?! According to the Mondo Macabro book "Deadly Organ" was made in 1965! The audiences of Argentina must've been pretty shocked by this druginduced gem. Only for the boldest trashfilm fanatics - mainstream Lynch/cultfilm wannabes should stay clear of this twisted little marvel.

Yes, well... Any reason why I might recommend anyone seeing this? The black and white photography is crisp and attractive, as are most of the girls and the Les Baxter like music has some appeal. My disc has the ambiguous title of The Deadly Organ on it but it is almost universally known as, Feast of Flesh and with this title accompanies, Night of the Bloody Apes on the Something Weird label. To be honest The Deadly Organ is more appropriate but this is a tale with a monster, some girls and a lot of police guys doing a lot of chatting and no story at all. The night club scenes are OK because we get some silly dancing and the passable music but I must mention here that we also get, apropos nothing whatsoever, a striptease and it is the worst I have ever seen.