A real ladies’ man of an author (William Joyce) is convinced by his publisher to hop a flight from Miami to the Caribbean isle of Voodoo, because he thinks the stories of human sacrifices there might make good research for a rip-roarin’ adventure novel. Our writer is not convinced, however, until he hears of the island’s 5-to-1 girl-guy ratio, and he’s all, like, “Homina homina homina!”
Armed with a litany of sleazy pick-up lines (ranging from “What part of heaven did you fly out from?” to the less subtle “We’ve got some dictation to do!”), he soon scores with a blonde bombshell (Heather Hewitt), whose father is a scientist who feeds radiated snake venom to natives, turning them into crusty-faced, bug-eyed zombies. Although our hero quickly dispatches one with a tiki torch to the face, a random Mexican isn’t so lucky, losing his head to a zombie-slung machete.
I Eat Your Skin was directed by Del Tenney, the guy who gave us the legendarily awful Horror of Party Beach, and it shows. You get to see a tube shoved down the throat of a live snake, and when an alarm goes off, you also get to hear someone saying “Whoop!” repeatedly on the soundtrack. Certainly a cheapie like this can’t be scary, but it’s definitely charming in its own Playboy After Dark meets Revolt of the Zombies kinda way. —Rod Lott