Blood Feast (1963)

Blood Feast. 1963. I wasn't even a twinkle in my parents eyes. So. With that said, let's get on with our review. Hey, you can't knock Blood Feast! A budget of under 25 grand, and you even got a Playboy babe in the film? Where else, folks, where else? Pennies pissed into production, and you made millions off this massive hunk of sh*t. Genius, Herschell. Genius! We lost our director in 2016, the mad slasher year of several talented celebrities. While Herschell may have been known as the underground horror giant of several films, such as this and 20,000 Maniacs, his movies have earned him a cult following...and remains that status to this very day. This film proves my theory true about film, both classic and modern: Just because a movie didn't make money at the box office doesn't mean it's not any good. And, in the example of Blood Feast, just because the movie made money...does not mean you have made anything to be proud of. The movie boasts to be a horror movie. However, it is not. It's more of a mystery. All the victims are female, and missing certain body parts. Leg. Eye. Oh! That eye! To put a stop to this killer, a detective must figure out why this killer is doing what he is doing. Well, you better get to work quickly, because this movie is only an hour and ten minutes long! Not much of an investigation. And, really, come on...IMDB actually spoils the mystery part, and tells you why he is doing this, in the sypnosis. Great! Now you don't have to watch it, you already know. However, I know there is a following for 60's, 70's, and 80's trash films...I review these films respectively, however, am not a big fan of them. If this is your kind of thing, you may want to give Blood Feast a fair shake, but I, on the other hand, steer clear of it. I only watched it all the way through, to find out, how they off the killer out of the picture! So many ways to do it. Bullet to the head, knife to the throat, push him down an elevator shaft, set him on fire, you know, something good like that. However, the way that he dies....it is so drop dead funny, and I want to tell you, but I am still laughing just thinking about it. Watch it! Fast forward to the ending if you have to. Watch him die....just the last ten minutes! Heh heh! Turns this mystery horror movie into a comedy!

I wanted to rate it higher than 6 but I think that would be too generous for it's simple storyline and it's underdeveloped characters. The killer does not really have a clear idea how to revive the Egyptian goddess and also it seems way too easy how he could victimize the young girls which had to serve as sacrifices for his plan. The final victim he wanted to make looks rather amateurish and the way he gets caught made me frown a bit. The ending feels quite rushed too. However where the movie excels and certainly for the time it was released is the graphical (read gore, blood and guts) department. It looks very real and still shocking to today's standards I think. It might not be the first splatter as I have read there is a Japanese movie which name escaped me now that came before it. But for one of the earliest movies in this genre is surely deserves some more recognition.

Back in the early 1960's, when drive-in theaters were still all the rage and the place to go for some haunted house and alien invasion B-movie thrills, producers were completely oblivious to a colossal gap in the market. That is until 1963, when producer David F. Friedman and director Herschell Gordon Lewis came up with a 'script' called Egyptian Blood Feast, a film that would be designed to not only show gratuitous violence, but to have the explicit gore as its main selling point. So Friedman hyped up publicity by handing out 'vomit bags' at screenings, and going as far as taking out an injunction on its own film so kick up a fuss. The film was pants, but the legacy is history, and so was born gore cinema, a sub-genre that horny teenagers still flock to in order to get their cheap thrills.The film follows the exploits of Muad Ramses (Mal Arnold), an exotic caterer and author of 'Ancient Weird Religious Rights'. Socialite Dorothy Freemont (Lyn Bolton) enters his store and asks Ramses to create a party to remember for her daughter Suzette (Connie Mason), to which Ramses obliges, hoping to create an Egyptian feast that will re-awaken his god Ishtar. The town is beset by gruesome murders, with bodies being butchered and dismembered, puzzling Detective Pete Thornton (William Kerwin), who is co-incidentally studying Egyptian history with, co- incidentally (there's a pattern emerging!) Suzette. Will the detectives be able to unravel the mystery? Will Ramses create his feast, causing the re-birth of Ishtar? Will anyone point out how ridiculous Ramses' fake eyebrows are?It is easy to make fun of this film - this is H.G. Lewis after all. Yet while every conceivable factor of Blood Feast's production is of the lowest standard, you can't argue with the film's importance. Ramses is an instantly forgettable madman, but he is the original machete-wielding maniac, paving the way for countless slasher imitators, from Michael Myers to Jason Voorhees. Lewis himself said it best - "I've often referred to Blood Feast as a Walt Whitman poem. It's no good, but it was the first of its type." Shockingly, this is arguably Lewis' most gruesome, with the gore factors dropping noticeably with follow-ups Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965) (now dubbed The Gore Trilogy). At only 67 minutes, this still tries the patience, and has more plot holes than I care to mention (maybe to stop the killings, someone should have told Ramses that Ishtar is a Babylonian goddess!), but its historical significance has cemented it's place in horror history.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

In director Herschell Gordon Lewis's own words, his landmark gore film may not be anything exactly "good", but it is a trailblazer and it does command a certain amount of respect. Lewis, or HGL as he is affectionately also known, and his filmmaking partner, David F. Friedman, realized they needed to move away from the "nudie cuties" that they'd already made and find a new element to exploit. And, man, did they find it. The now legendary "Blood Feast" features ingredients that would make his subsequent efforts identifiable, such as the hilarious bad acting, the tacky, bright & colourful effects, and the dark humour.The story concerns a mad caterer, Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold, playing the role with hysterical eye popping gusto), intent on creating a feast to honour his god Ishtar and using human body parts as part of the process. The detectives on the case are just about useless; meanwhile, Ramses is hired to cater the birthday party for local gal Suzette Fremont (Connie Mason, Playboy Playmate of the month, June 1963), so will Suzette be his ultimate victim or will her detective boyfriend Pete Thornton (William Kerwin, billed as Thomas Wood) figure everything out in time?As the awesomeness that is "Blood Feast" plays out, we are treated to such things as limb amputation, tongue & brain removal, and flagellation - all done in loving close up for the camera. The atmospheric music, done by Lewis himself (he served as the cinematographer as well) is a hoot, with those drums pounding away and those violins and organs creating priceless accompaniment. Among the thespians robbed at Oscar time include Lyn Bolton as Suzette's hat loving mom Dorothy, Scott H. Hall as the police captain (you can actually see him reading his lines on camera), and especially Gene Courtier as the grieving boyfriend on the beach. That's emoting at its finest! Mason is much more notable for her looks than her acting, but given her looks, who wants to complain? Kerwin is likable as the one guy with presumably at least half a brain in his head, and Arnold is extremely memorable. "Have you ever had...an Egyptian FEAST?"The immense success of the movie, due in no small part to Friedman's marketing genius (including the distribution of vomit bags at showings, and insuring interest by obtaining an injunction against the film in Sarasota, Florida), and led to more of the same for HGL: "Two Thousand Maniacs!" and "Colour Me Blood Red", rounding out the "Blood Trilogy", as well as "The Gruesome Twosome", "The Wizard of Gore", and "The Gore Gore Girls".His work is all recommended, but "Blood Feast" is the perfect place to start for fans eager to check out the horror & exploitation films of yesteryear.Eight out of 10.