Blood Feast is arugably the first gore film ever. I say arguably because when I say "it is the first gore film" some egghead usually knows of some other movie made in someplace like Japan which is "really the first" and we get into a big argument and I wonder why I am having a fight over a low budget gore movie when I could be watching it instead of fighting over it and I get depressed and my day is ruined.....
Anyway, Blood Feast is director Herschell Gordon Lewis' first gore film (Ha! Can't disagree with me there!). It's crazy, very funny (mostly unintentional but I'm sure Lewis had his tongue in his cheek for many of the scenes) and very very bloody. Some of the SFX are bad but at least Lewis delivers what the ads promised!
It's one of my favorite movies of all time but it's not for everyone....It's usually called part one of his "Blood Trilogy" which continued with 2000 MANIACS and COLOR ME BLOOD RED.
Oh yeah...and then there's this:
THE BLOOD TRILOGY- Something Weird-1996-WARNING: The video you are about to see is for BLOOD FEAST completists only! If you are a fan of H.G. Lewis' first gore film (I am), then you may find this little oddity interesting. It’s made up almost entirely of outtakes and unused footage from FEAST as well as COLOR ME BLOOD RED and TWO THOUSAND MANIACS.
It begins with the well-known BLOOD FEAST trailer. Then segues into the all silent and not as entertaining as it sounds scenes although there are some highlights. You get to see BF star Thomas Wood/William Kerwin working as one of the crew and lots of lingering close-ups of Mal Arnold/ Fuhad Ramses’ handiwork. The girl in the bubble bath who has her eye gouged out is more revealing in her outtakes than in the actual finished scene! And there’s really no rhyme or reason to the whole thing. It’s just a big ball of raw footage that sometimes plays like a bad nightmare!
Added to this at the end of the main footage is a bizarre short called The Art Of Carving starring Wood/Kerwin and Harvey Korman (who had been in Lewis’ LUCKY PIERRE) in an educational lesson on the proper way to carve a turkey and other meat! I’m not sure if Lewis had anything to do with this but it certainly is a mind boggler coming right after all those gory outtakes! The tape ends with a Kerwin trailer warning (in b & w) for THE GRUESOME TWO, followed by the original trailer and Mal Arnold’s weird warning for THE WIZARD OF GORE, also followed by the trailer. It’s an interesting artifact but as I said before this is definitely for completists only.
I believe this was only offered on VHS by Something Video and is now included in their DVD set of Lewis' BLOOD movies.
Thanks for reading!
1 comment:
I'm mixed on what I've seen from HG Lewis so far. I can recognize Blood Feast's place in history but actually sitting through it was a whole different story. Parts were hilarious but parts were also a bit dull for me. On the other hand I absolutely loved 2000 Maniacs and The Gore Gore Girls. Color Me Blood Red and She Devils on Wheels were kind of fun. My least favorite has to be Wizard of Gore, which grated on my last nerve.
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