Color Me Blood Red (1965)

The third collaboration between director Herschell Gordon Lewis and the 'sultan of sleaze', producer Dave Friedman, is a ramshackle and shoddy affair not worthy of the infamous status it has attained over the years. This instantly forgettable movie is scuppered from the start by the amateurish production levels, from the inaudible sound (in which the character's dialogue is drowned by the sound of crashing waves) to the static camera and the wooden acting on display. Sadly there isn't even the benefit of many gruesome gore scenes for horror fans to enjoy, as this is a very small-scale film there are only two or three deaths on view.The only incidental pleasures come from viewing the film in the frame of mind that you are watching a "so-bad-it's-good" type of film, and from this viewpoint there is some fun to be had. The first is the acting of Gordon Oas-Heim (or so the credits say) as the deranged artist; his "acting" consists of periods of quiet brooding followed by some extreme overacting. He's pretty poor, yes, but he shows more emotion than the rest of the wooden cast put together. Halfway through the eighty-minute production a quartet of obnoxious teenagers arrive on the scene to participate in a beach party, and the film seems to chart their endless amusements. It has to be said that the sight of these overgrown actors and actresses parading around in red swimming costumes and joking together is pretty funny, although they quickly outstay their welcome! The occasional line of dialogue is hilarious, like when one of them discovers a buried corpse on the beach : "Holy Bananas! It's a girl's leg!".The first of the few gore scenes comes when Adam Sorg - the artist - decides to do in his girlfriend by driving a sharp implement into the side of her face (we're later treated to a lovely closeup of her gory countenance as it is devoured by insects). Later on, he attacks a man in his speedboat, impaling him with a spear before driving over his body! A female is chained up in a back room, and Sorg arrives to squeeze blood from her intestine in a scene which disturbingly resembles a man milking a cow! Sadly, other than the villain's own bloody demise, this is as much gore as the film has to offer.The ending unforgivably lets the partying teens survive for another day, but still offers some amusement to be had from the confrontation between madman and teenage boy, who eventually shoots the psycho in the head with his own gun, conveniently left lying around! The loose plot is cribbed from Corman's A BUCKET OF BLOOD, so the it doesn't even have the saving grace of being original either. My advice is to pick up one of the duo's other, better films such as BLOOD FEAST, and give this boring amateurish obscurity a miss at all costs!

For the second film in his infamous 'Blood' trilogy, 'Godfather of Gore' Herschell Gordon Lewis gleefully rips off Roger Corman's beatnik horror A Bucket of Blood, but fails to deliver in almost every department: the direction is dull; the dialogue is awful ('Holy Bananas, it's a girl's leg!' exclaims one character upon finding a dead body); the acting is atrocious; the music is bland, generic jazz; and the one factor that audiences have come to expect from Lewis—outrageous 'grand guignol' style splatter—is notable by its absence (only one scene, in which the protagonist squeezes blood from one of his victim's intestines, comes close to providing gore-hounds with the goods).Gordon Oas-Heim is reasonably convincing as obnoxious artist Adam Sorg, who discovers that he produces his best work when painting in blood, but almost everyone else puts in absolutely dreadful performances, with special mention going to Pat Lee as wig-wearing teen Sydney: her incessant use of hip 60s slang ('where's the snacks, Jack?', 'on the patio, Daddio', 'dig that crazy driftwood') might be amusing at first, but is guaranteed to eventually grate on the nerves.Fans of Lewis will no doubt wish to see this film so that they can complete the trilogy, and those with a thing for curvaceous cuties in big bikinis might get the occasional thrill, but it's hard to imagine anyone else finding Color Me Blood Red to be anything other than a bore.3.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

Macabre black comedy from schlock gore director Herschell Gordon Lewis has a very disturbed painter killing innocent people for their blood supply which lends to creative masterworks on canvas. He sets his eyes on a cute blond teenage girl as his next victim with complicated results.As you'd expect from an HGL picture, there's rather painful(..but often hilarious) dialogue, tedious filler(..featuring a goofy teenage foursome playing in the water near a beach), embarrassing performances, ugly photography(..there are these awkward camera shots which linger endlessly away from a particular scene slowly but surely moving to the actions in progress), and blunt, rather oddly orchestrated gore.The boy-girl couple with beatnik dialogue and "hip" behavior produce plenty of cringe-worthy chuckles and contribute some memorable zingers. The violence exhibited thanks to the deranged attacks by Adam Sorg(Gordon Oas-Heim)is what remains the vital ingredient that will appeal to HGL's cult audience. There's a scalpel stabbed into Sorg's demanding fiancé's throat, a couple are attacked while driving their bicycle water boats(..a water exercise vehicle used throughout)with the man getting speared and his girl's intestine squeezed of blood into a bowl! Candi Conder is April Carter, Sorg's chosen victim for his supposed supreme masterpiece, with Jerome Eden as Rolf her beau, matinée idol handsome, eventually coming to her rescue when he finds her tied up, the maniac holding an ax in one hand, a bloody bowl in the other. The discovery of the buried dead body is priceless(..the ridiculously corny dialogue which accompanies it cinches the scene as forever memorable within the HGL canon). Elyn Warner is Gigi, Sorg's always-complaining, very opinionated girlfriend. The color red is vibrantly used with lots of fake blood contributing to the plot(..what little there is). Oas-Heim as the lunatic painter doesn't hold back, letting it all hang out..quite a face which successfully conveys just how nuts the character of Sorg really is. The paintings are impressively grotesque. Again, this is not a work of art, and director Lewis understood this, so COLOR ME BLOOD RED might entertain less discriminating viewers who are accustomed to how his movies are made. I personally never expected anything other than a wacky graphic violent affair with bizarre flourishes and a sick premise, and COLOR ME BLOOD RED didn't disappoint in that regard..not exactly a ringing endorsement for the film, but I think some will find it amusing.Then again, HGL has become a guilty pleasure director of mine, so perhaps I find value in his movies many others with better sound minds do not.

"Color me Blood Red" completes the infamous Blood-trilogy by the even more infamous director Hershell Gordon Lewis and, although my least favorite film of the three, it's another silly entertaining and smutty gore classic. Don't look for many film-making qualities here, as the story is rather unoriginal (imitating Roger Corman's 1959 "Bucket of Blood"), the acting is unspeakable and – especially compared to "Two Thousand Maniacs" – it's clumsily edited together. Good old Lewis brings the art of finger painting to a whole new dimension here, when mentally unstable artist Adam Sorg discovers that the blood of his girlfriend's cut finger supplies him with the exact right shade of red he needs for his macabre paintings. He's going to need more, of course, and thus he kills her as well as various other models in order to complete his masterful art gallery exhibits. I spotted LESS gore than in the previous two Blood-trilogy films, still there are some effectively nauseating scenes, most notably the one where Sorg literally squeezes all the blood out of one his victims' intestines. Other than the gore, there are the hilariously inept dialogues and the complete lack of context to enjoy. If you're not into The Godfather of Gore's work, however, this will just seem like a mindless and sadistic trash-movie.