[click on photos |  | "Nothing so appalling in the annals of horror! You'll recoil
and shudder as you witness the slaughter and mutilation of nubile young
girls--in a weird and horrendous ancient rite! Box Office Spectaculars
presents BLOOD FEAST--more grisly than ever in Blood Color!"
--1963 ad copy
"WARNING! This program contains graphic violence."
--2000 DVD sleeve admonition
How times have changed. It's no secret today that a generous portion of the films sold under the banner of "horror" (not to mention plenty from other
genres) contain all manner of gruesome excesses. The simple, understated
admonition above has become a fairly common catch-all. But think back to
1963. No such thing as a "gore film" existed.
Exploitation filmmakers had exhausted their options when it came to
providing audiences with sexy thrills that the censors didn't want them to
see. They had succeeded to such a degree that mainstream Hollywood studios
were now beating them at their own game. With "adapt or die" as the rule,
producer David F. Friedman and Herschell Gordon Lewis chose innovation over imitation. Asking themselves what
they could still surprise an audience with, they arrived at a simultaneous
answer--and the answer was an enthusiastic "Gore!" And the result was
Blood Feast.
The film's story is a simple one: mad caterer Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold) is
collecting body parts from various female victims, ingredients for a special
recipe to be prepared in the honor of the goddess Ishtar. Ramses' victims
practically choose themselves by ordering his book on "Weird Religious
Rites." "Have you ever had...an Egyptian feast?" Ramses asks a customer.
This customer wants to hire a caterer for her teenage daughter Suzette's birthday
party--and thanks to Ramses' hypnotic powers, she happily agrees to
his strange idea, never dreaming that Suzette will be the final ingredient
if the caterer gets his way. It's up to two heroic police detectives
(William Kerwin--billed here as "Thomas Wood"--and Scott Hall) to follow
the madman's trail and save the innocent Suzette before it's too late.
Lewis and Friedman promised a shocker, and they made good before the credits had
even rolled. While Hitchcock's Psycho stunned viewers with its
classic shower scene,
Blood Feast offered its counterpart--the "bathtub scene"--as an opener. No
exercise in cinematic style or character development this--just a literal
bloodbath culminating in a graphic leg amputation. Full color, full detail,
nothing left to the imagination. And during the progress of this rather
short feature, several more gut-punches were in store--the most infamous
being the "tongue" scene, which requires no explanation (though the story
behind the achievement of this effect--duly recounted on the commentary
track of this DVD--is almost as disturbing as the scene itself).
This wasn't the 1980s--no viewer of Blood Feast could claim that they'd
seen plenty of such material in other films. And this wasn't the 1990s--the
point had not been reached where every act of cinematic violence was held up
to the light and analyzed by both sides of a national social-political
debate. No context for graphic screen gore had been established. It was
simply there because it hadn't been there before. It was there to surprise;
to shock; to cause an immediate sensation. There was no way it couldn't
succeed in this purpose: viewers were left reeling.
And as they reeled, they didn't have a chance to make fun of the film's
deficiencies: the less-than-convincing acting; the budgetary limitations
(Ishtar is a department-store mannequin, for instance); the continuity
errors (one howler involves a straw hat quickly painted black as a
substitute for the actor's forgotten original); and other elements which
make Blood Feast a laugh riot for those viewers of today with the stomach
to handle it. Lewis has often been quoted as saying that his pioneering
gore film is "...like a Walt Whitman poem--it's no good, but it's the first
of it's type". In fact, he repeats this sentiment during the audio commentary track of Something Weird's DVD release of Blood Feast. Poetry scholars may object, but the point is clear, nonetheless. In
fairness, the film is not without technical merit: Lewis and Friedman were
far too experienced to allow sloppy photography or sound recording, and the
unique, eerie music, accentuated with a driving drumbeat, sparks recognition
to this day.
Something Weird's DVD is, without exaggeration, a stunner. The film's
colors have never looked so bright or vivid in any previous video
incarnation, while the print used here (presented in fine Dolby Digital mono
sound) is sharp, clean, and flawless. The strengths and weaknesses of Lewis's
film are equally highlighted. A bounty of supplemental material comes with
the package, as well. Both Lewis and Friedman are heard on the
aforementioned audio commentary--an entertaining and informative interview
conducted by Something Weird's Mike Vraney. The theatrical trailer is
included, and a "Gallery of Exploitation Art" displays all manner of
advertising material for this and many related items. (This material can also
be viewed in the Christopher Wayne Curry's book A Taste of Blood.)
The biggest surprise (to even the filmmakers)
was the discovery of roughly fifty minutes worth of Blood Feast
outtakes; however, this novelty quickly wears thin. No audio was available
for these clips (so sound bites from several Lewis films are played as
accompaniment); and aside from the revelation that the opening bathtub scene
originally involved nudity (the film as presented has none), there's
nothing truly startling or unfamiliar here. Most amusing of the supplements
is the educational short "Carving Magic," which features Lewis players
William Kerwin and Harvey Korman, who enjoy exchanging potshots at each
other's meat-carving abilities, until enlightenment arrives in the form of a
nationally-televised home-economics expert. This short is described as
"grisly" on the DVD packaging, but a trip to the slaughterhouse it
isn't. It's here because no one could deny the novelty value of its
inclusion.
If one truly wants to learn about Herschell Gordon Lewis and his work, there
is no better starting point than this DVD. For those who already consider
themselves Lewis fans, of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Now
that Lewis had "shocked the world," the inevitable question was..."what do
you do for an encore?"
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