Welcome to Arrow Beach

A real oddity, this one. Stars Laurence Harvey who also directed and would die before the film was released. Indeed Harvey does not look well or perform well and it is sad that his career should have ended this way. Not that I ever thought him much of an actor but he certainly had a presence when younger and could successfully bring his personality to bear on a film if nothing else. Not here sadly for this is generally poorly directed and poorly performed by all concerned, though we do get a spirited performance from an aged Gloria LeRoy. Indeed her turn precipitates the best sequence in the whole film and certainly prevents any chance of dropping off. Just about worth seeing for it is certainly a little bit different but could have been so much better.

I honestly wouldn't go as far as to call "Welcome to Arrow Beach" a good film, not nearly in fact, but it's definitely an intriguing and bizarrely compelling mess! This film features the themes and plot aspects of a typically sick-spirited and coarse exploitation flick of the early 70s, but at the same time it has the cast and the musical guidance (Lou Rawls!) of a more sophisticated and ambitious melodrama. The supportive cast is already impressive, with names like Joanna Pettet and John Ireland, while the lead actor/director Laurence Harvey even briefly was a respectable A-listed actor who appeared in blockbusters like "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Alamo". For some incomprehensible reason, Laurence Harvey decided – shortly before his untimely death due to stomach cancer – to direct himself depicting a dangerously disturbed Korean War veteran who lures gullible girls into the fancy beach house that he shares with his sister, but only with the intention to hack 'em up in the basement and EAT them! We slowly (… VERY slowly…), through incomplete and obscure flashbacks, learn that Harvey's character Jason Henry got forced to revert to cannibalism during the war in order to survive, which evidently left him severely traumatized and mentally unstable for life. The main problem with "Welcome to Arrow Beach", apart from the at times intolerably slow pacing, is that practically nothing happens and that the horror of it all almost exclusively relies on suggestion. We never see Jason Henry consume human flesh and there are only two short and rather vague sequences in which he waves around a meat cleaver and pulls the face of a genuine madman. The other 98% of the film's footage revolves around the naive but lush hippie girl Robbin Stanley (played by a young Meg Foster who only just recently had a glorious supportive role in Rob Zombie's "31") who consecutively survives a wicked hitch-hike with a crazed hot rod driver, narrowly escapes from Henry's slaughter basement, gets called a liar by the police and then flees with a hunky doctor's assistant. Then there's also the completely irrelevant and dull sub plot of the local Sheriff who runs a campaign in order to get re-elected… There are a few isolated moments of suspense, mainly accomplished by Harvey himself thanks to his intense performance, and the fairly brutish massacre of a depressed middle-aged prostitute is the film's dubious highlight.

Gotta dig that funky 70's soundtrack, and at times the film doesn't know if it is a romance, comedy, thriller, or horror film, but it is still pretty entertaining. The ending was a little abrupt and there were lots of plot threads left dangling, but all in all it takes you right back to 1974.

Harvey's last film (in which he reportedly help edit by phone in his deathbed) is a twisted would be horror film that Warner Bros barely released. (it played in Seattle many years later in one drive-in as TENDER FLESH released by Brut). Harvey plays a Korean war vet who ate human flesh to survive in the jungle, but now he has a sickness and not even his sister (who's also his lover) Pettet can stop. Meg Foster plays a hitchhiker that he befriends, who witnesses him doing something evil in the basement and she might be his next victim. Interesting cast (whitman and Ireland together again for the 4th time), and lurid feel that the film has. Lou Rawls sings the main theme, which is a nice song, but really has nothing to do witht he film! There's a blooper in the end credit as you see cars drive backwards. I don't know why Harvey, a respected actor would direct a B horror film, but I read many stories on him being strange, so the story must have grabbed him. Use to be a cable classic in the old days, and played very heavily cut on TV with cut out the cannibal angle so the film is very confusing, as the TV version just makes him out to be a killer, and nothing more. I believe it is the first major studio film to deal with cannibalism.

A veteran of the Korean War whose grisly past experiences has given him an unhealthy appetite for human flesh, owns a large beach house in California where he lives with his similarly unhinged sister. An unsuspecting young woman winds up spending the night at their house of horrors.

This little horror obscurity has cannibalism as its central theme. Although, in fairness, there wasn't much in the way of actual cannibalism on display here. In fact, there is only a quite limited serving of horror at all in this one. This is a bit of a shame, as when the movie decides to ramp things up with a bit of bloody mayhem, it is quite effectively done. The most memorable scene in this regard is the bloody murder of a middle-aged woman which was somewhat visceral in a sort of H.G. Lewis sort of a way. In other words, when our chief cannibal madman brandishes a meat cleaver and sports a demented look, you know things are about to pick up. Mostly though, the horror is implied and under the surface. I am also always pretty forgiving for any early 70's movie with a sunny Californian vibe and especially forgiving if it features a hippy chick, so I kind of cut this one a bit of slack more or less straight away. The schlock horror, while limited, was also just excessive enough to be memorably gruesome. In summary, this is a fairly basic film but it offers enough if you have a weakness for early 70's exploitation.