“You're damaged merchandise and this is a fire sale!"

 

(imdb)

SCUM OF THE EARTH!-1963-Photographer Harmon Johnson (Thomas Wood aka Harry Kerwin) deals in porn. He watches dispassionately while his dumb assistant Ajax (Craig Maudslay Jr.) abuses model Sandy (Sandra Sinclair). The head of the ring is a slimy guy named Lang (Lawrence J. Aberwood) who forces Sandy to “recruit” new girls. She gets innocent college hopeful Kim (Louise Downe) to pose for Johnson. After a few shots, suddenly she's posing naked and being abused by Larry (Mal Arnold; Fuad Ramses in BLOOD FEAST), another of Lang's sleaze bag henchman. Later, Lang gives Kim a lecture where the camera has a close up of his mouth while he spats insults. At another shoot, Ajax attacks Kim and Johnson beats him to death with a baseball bat. Sandy stands in for Kim (who they sent away) and stands by Johnson, providing him with a witness that it was self-defense. The cops are alerted and Lang shoots Larry. The police chase Lang to a beach where Lang hits the water. Now trapped, Lang shoots himself. After Kim and Johnson say their goodbyes, the voice of director Herschel Gordon Lewis is heard warning against the scum of the earth. 

This black and white exploitation film was made just a few weeks after Lewis' infamous BLOOD FEAST (which lead actress Downe wrote the screenplay for). It's pretty cheap looking and reminded me of an Ed Wood movie (Wood made THE SINISTER URGE about a porn racket in 1960).

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Trio!

 

 (imdb)

LETHAL VIRUS-2021-Terrible, laughable nonsense about a virus that turns people into cannibalistic zombies ala 28 DAYS LATER and THE CRAZIES. The acting is terrible and the sfx are garbage. Director Daniel Hernandez Torrado should stop...Now!

 themoviedb.org)

ROBOT APOCALYPSE-2021-A bunch of stupid hackers wind up trying to stop a sentient AI that's gained control of the US army's drones. Former mixed martial artist Tito Ortiz is one of the stars, so don't say I didn't warn you. Low budget Sci Fi junk from director Marcus Friendlander.

 (Mubi)

THE MOVIES OF HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS AND THE ORIGINS OF SPLATTER-2022-Great short to the point documentary about Herschell Gordon Lewis and the rise of the gore or splatter films and the movies he made that help start it. It gives a good basic look at his "blood trilogy" and the horror movies that followed. It's a YouTube video created by Ben Simpson on his channel.

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2000 Maniacs

2000 MANIACS-1964-Herschel Gordon Lewis' second installment of his infamous "blood trilogy" after BLOOD FEAST is a bit of a letdown. It's a kind of gory version of BRIGADOON without singing. Maybe Lewis blew it. He could have created the first gore musical! 


Anyway, the ghost town of Pleasant Valley (I wonder if this all happened on a Sunday..??) appears 100 years after the beginning of the Civil War. It's full of a bunch of redneck hicks who also happen to be cannibal murderers out for revenge for the slaughter of their village during the war. They kidnap/trick 6 couples (including BF leads Thomas Wood/Rooney Kerwin and former Playboy centerfold Connie Mason) from the North and plan to use them in their centennial. Four are killed in various HG Lewis fashion. One woman has her arm chopped off. A guy is pulled apart by horses. Another guy is put in a barrel with nails and rolled down a hill. Another woman is crushed by a boulder. That's about it. Mostly it's yokels laughing and saying "yankee" a lot. 


2000 MANIACS was filmed in Florida, where previously BLOOD FEAST was also made but while BF had extreme gore and humor (some of it unintentional) at least it was entertaining and moved along at a good pace. This drags and the hillbilly ranting becomes annoying. 


Ben Moore (who's also in Lewis' MOONSHINE MOUNTAIN) plays an ax toting lunatic.  I love the cool theme song (written and sung by HG) though called "The South's Gonna Rise Again". 


It was remade in 2005 as 2001 MANIACS with Robert Englund in the lead. 


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Bloody Stuff

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.

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Going Going Gone..

MONSTER A GO-GO-1965-Herschel Gordon Lewis needed a second feature to go with his latest production. (I think it was MOONSHINE MOUNTAIN) He bought an unfinished movie (“Terror At Halfday”) from the soon to be infamous Bill Rebane and added a narrator and some scenes with a seven foot tall guy named Henry Hite (in very lumpy facial make-up) and tries to tell the mysterious story of what happened to the astronaut of a space capsule that crash landed while returning from space.

It’s right up there with THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS, THE CREEPING TERROR and others of that ilk.

The plot (?) makes no sense and most of it is just the characters talking, explaining or arguing. None of them ever interact with the monster and the storyline just inexplicably changes to suit the footage. The sound is bad and the night scenes are really dark! To justify the title one scene features some teens dancing at a club.

The not too bad rock music is by The Other The. MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 once used this on an episode where many people first saw it.

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HG Lewis

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; it’s one of my favorites!), 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 TWOSOME, 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.



THE GORE GORE GIRLS-For his last movie Herschel Gordon Lewis returned to the gore genre (after making two “hillbilly” movies). It’s his most brutal and sick and features Henny Youngman as a strip club owner who’s dancers are murdered in various horrible (but of course phony looking) ways. The killer plucks out eyes, mutilates a face, shoves a head into boiling oil and pounds one stripper’s buttocks with a tenderizing mallet!

A cocky private detective (Frank Kress who looks like Alan Arbus) investigates and occasionally talks to the camera. He’s assisted by a female reporter(Amy Farrell)who gets drunk several times and winds up winning a strip contest. One suspect sits at a bar and mashes melons with a hammer. Most of the jokes fall flat but there are some good unintentional laughs. The story is interspersed with some tame strip teases but some of the victims die topless. Ray Sager, the star of Lewis’ previous gore film THE WIZARD OF GORE is in there someplace too. Screenwriter Alan Dactman never seemed to work again! Producer/director Lewis (who also composed the jazz score) stopped making movies after this and got into other businesses. However in 2002 he directed a sequel to BLOOD FEAST entitled BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL YOU CAN EAT!! Thanks H.G.!!!!

Thanks for reading!