Welcome to Arrow Beach (a.k.a. Tender Flesh) is a grungy and bizarre little horror flick from the mid-seventies that I bet you’ve never seen. Consider yourself fortunate.An anti-drug parable wrapped inside of a dreary tale of suburban cannibalism, Welcome to Arrow Beach may appease those on the hunt for painfully bad cinema; others need not apply.
The movie opens with a lovely young teenager who hitchhikes her way into a high-speed chase and subsequent accident. After being dismissed by the clueless local cops, Robin wanders onto a private seaside town know as (you guessed it) Arrow Beach. It’s there that she meets the polite-yet-seedy Jason Henry and his curiously zonked-out sister. Since Robin is an aimless drifter, it’s only logical that Jason will invite her to spend the night. “How nice,” thinks Robin. “Dinner,” thinks Jason.
Yep, that’s right: Robin has wandered into the den of a people-eater! But let’s not get excited here: Welcome to Arrow Beach is about as drab an unmoving as a low-grade exploitation pic is likely to get. Fans of the B-movie canon may enjoy seeing the ice-eyed Meg Foster (Masters of the Universe, Leviathan) in an early role, but even her most ardent supporters will most likely fall asleep before the end credits show up.
The touchstone of most low-budget snoozers is the “dialogue scene”, in that scenes of people chattering away are much cheaper to produce than are sequences which contain some form of action.'Stupidity' is not the biggest crime a low-rent movie can commit; 'Boredom' is.
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