Blood Feast (1963)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

"Blood Feast" is one of those landmark films that began a whole new genre of 'cinematic art'. What "Psycho" (1960) did for slasher-flicks, what "Bonny and Clyde" (1967) and "The Wild Bunch" (1969) did for on-screen violence, what the TV-cartoon show "Rocky and Bullwinkle" (1959-1964) did for entertaining adults as well as children, THIS FILM did for the splatter/gore movie genre. It's the granddaddy of them all, and it is definitely one of those "it's so bad it's good" films and a true must-have for any discerning gore hound's collection.What's with the bluish hair on Fuad Ramses, the crazed killer/slasher/ caterer in this flick? In one scene where he's on the phone, his hair matches the color of the Kleenex boxes in the background! His limp also reminds me of another wacko, the goat-kneed Torgo, the 'assistant to the master', of "Manos, the Hands of Fate" infamy.Yes, this film has atrocious acting and production values, is terribly-dated, and mostly a curiosity now, but for its day it had plenty of impact on unsuspecting American movie audiences in July, 1963, when it was first released. Remember, this is nearly four months prior to the true horror of the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. America would never be the same thereafter, from that event and this film.

This may well be the worst picture ever made.For those of you who don't know, the plot involves a loony Egyptian caterer who must prepare the titular Blood Feast for the goddess Ishtar.Unfortunately for the nubile young women who live in the area, the "Feast" consists of their body parts.He's an enterprising psycho and goes about the town killing, butchering and dismembering the young women.There is not one aspect of this film that is not atrocious (maybe with the exception of the cinematography which is barely adequate.) The script is inane and the actors are the worst I have ever seen.Director Herschell Gordon Lewis makes Ed Wood seem like Cecil B. DeMille in comparison.This film isn't one of the so-bad-it's-good bad films.No, it's just bad, bad, bad.

This is probably up there in the top ten best drive-in classics of all time. It shocked audiences when it premiered because there is a kind of gruesome scene where the villain, Ramses pulls out a beautiful girls tongue. Ramses is trying to bring about some god or something and is killing girls in gruesome ways to cook them up for an Egyptian Feast. The sets literally look like cardboard. All of the characters from the cops to the victims were complete idiots. Even the make-up and costumes are ridiculous. The script was so bad and the acting was so stiff, it's laughable. How can something some bad be so entertaining? I'm not sure if Hershel Gordon Lewis meant for this to be tongue in cheek humor or what. I know he is a schlock auteur in the ranks of Ed Wood and Lloyd Kaufman and was probably working on a shoe-string budget. I do love these type of movies though. They are some much fun to watch and Hershel Gordon Lewis was a crazy genius in his own right.

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