Color Me Blood Red (1965)

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

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!

This is the final film in the infamous Blood Trilogy from director Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David Friedman. The trilogy also includes superior films "Blood Feast" and "Two Thousand Maniacs". While "Color Me Blood Red" is the most inferior film in the trilogy, it is still worth at least a one time viewing. The film does lack one thing that the other 2 films in the trilogy have and that is an original score. Both of the previous entries include a soundtrack that was scored by Lewis himself but for some odd reason he decided to use "canned" music for this one. The gore effects are also inferior to the other 2 entries...there aren't as many but one effect in particular is especially grotesque (this would be the scene where a woman is shown strung from the ceiling with her intestines dangling out and the villain squeezes the blood out of them in order to finish his painting). All in all this is one of the least entertaining of Lewis' gore films but is definitely worth a peek.

"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.

A sign informs us that we are at 'Farnsworth Galleries'. The owner Mr. Farnsworth (Scott H.Hall) grabs a painting off it's stand, takes it outside, douses it with petrol and sets it alight, damn critics can be harsh! The film then goes into flashback mode to reveal why Mr. Farnsworth has just taken such drastic action. Adam Sorg (Gordon Oas-Heim as Don Gordon) lives with is girlfriend Gigi (Elyn Warner) in a nice house on a Florida beach, and paints for a living. At a showing of Sorg's work, a critic named Gregorovich (William Harris as Bill Harris) dares voice an opinion that he doesn't like Sorg's work, and that his use of color is poor. Insulted by this and the fact that Mr. Farnsworth agrees with Gregorovich, Sorg sets out to paint a masterpiece. He tries but feels he is missing something. But when Gigi pricks her finger on a nail and bleeds over a canvas, Sorg believes he has found the missing ingredient, the color of Gigi's blood is both perfect and unique. Once finished Sorg presents the painting to Farnsworth and Gregorovich who both hail it as his best work, ever. Sorg revels in the praise bestowed upon him and sets out to create another to prove it wasn't just a one-off. However his supply of blood has run dry and no one is safe as Sorg is forced to look elsewhere for the perfect pigment, especially four teenagers, April (Candi Conder) and her boyfriend Rolf (Jerome Eden) plus their two friends Sydney (Pat Lee as Patricia Lee) and Jack (James Jackel as Jim Jackel) who like to have picnics on the beach beside Sorg's house, soon Sorg decides to immortalise April on canvas forever! Written, photographed and directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis this is one awful film. Just about everything feels like padding, boring badly written and badly acted padding, too. Gordon Lewis seems to ignore the over-the-top gore scenes which made some of his other films somewhat watchable on a certain level. There's only one big gore sequence in the whole film when two kids on water bikes get murdered, and even this isn't that great. Pretty much everything about the film is terrible, music, photography, acting, story, editing and you name it, it's terrible. For die hard Herschell Gordon lewis fans only, if such beings actually exist! Everyone else should steer well clear and watch Blood Feast again instead. Definitely not recommended.