'Blood Feast' Review
Aug. 22nd, 2004 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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darkling_talesLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hellbound_heart)
Behind the cut to save all non-gore film fans the time and trouble!
Blood Feast (1963)
For all gore fans, this film is the equivalent of the germ of the species. Most of the hack, slash and squish films we know and love trace their genesis to the work of supremo oddball director - and peddler of the rather psychotic organ music heard in the film - Herschell Gordon Lewis. 'Blood Feast', later followed by 'Two Thousand Maniacs!' and 'Color Me Blood Red' form the hallowed 'Blood Trilogy' which as been high on the BBFC's hitlist until the recent advent of the DVD and the subsequent liberation of hard-to-get horrors on various cult collections.
The basic outline of 'Blood Feast' is relatively simple: lunatic doctor Ramses, already nursing a predilection for uncommonly large eyebrows and hacking body parts from bathing blondes, is approached by an eccentric old dear who wants him to organise a themed party for her daughter. However, the selected theme does happen to involve an ancient Egyptian ritual designed to reincarnate the bloody goddess Ishtar (whom I thought was a Babylonian deity, but I digress...) through murder and cannibalism. With a motive for murder, the mad doctor goes on a significant harvest of appropriate body parts. But will he be stopped before he disembowels the birthday girl herself?
Whilst the gore effects are admirably, erm, executed, they will seem pretty tame to a generation of people used to the frenetic hacking of Braindead/Dead Alive or the foetus-eating of Anthropophagus the Beast. However, this was made in the 1960s and it has to be remembered that this really did mark a change in cinema. This to me is the film's real value: out of the lurid psychadelia of 1960s cinematography, that at times seems about to degenerate completely into something akin to Carry on Cannibal, pours an unprecedented amount of blood! This forms an odd juxtaposition at times with the obvious campery and over-acting that HGL uses in all his films, but 'Blood Feast' is still a must-see, and part of our horror heritage!
hellbound_heart)Behind the cut to save all non-gore film fans the time and trouble!
Blood Feast (1963)
For all gore fans, this film is the equivalent of the germ of the species. Most of the hack, slash and squish films we know and love trace their genesis to the work of supremo oddball director - and peddler of the rather psychotic organ music heard in the film - Herschell Gordon Lewis. 'Blood Feast', later followed by 'Two Thousand Maniacs!' and 'Color Me Blood Red' form the hallowed 'Blood Trilogy' which as been high on the BBFC's hitlist until the recent advent of the DVD and the subsequent liberation of hard-to-get horrors on various cult collections.
The basic outline of 'Blood Feast' is relatively simple: lunatic doctor Ramses, already nursing a predilection for uncommonly large eyebrows and hacking body parts from bathing blondes, is approached by an eccentric old dear who wants him to organise a themed party for her daughter. However, the selected theme does happen to involve an ancient Egyptian ritual designed to reincarnate the bloody goddess Ishtar (whom I thought was a Babylonian deity, but I digress...) through murder and cannibalism. With a motive for murder, the mad doctor goes on a significant harvest of appropriate body parts. But will he be stopped before he disembowels the birthday girl herself?
Whilst the gore effects are admirably, erm, executed, they will seem pretty tame to a generation of people used to the frenetic hacking of Braindead/Dead Alive or the foetus-eating of Anthropophagus the Beast. However, this was made in the 1960s and it has to be remembered that this really did mark a change in cinema. This to me is the film's real value: out of the lurid psychadelia of 1960s cinematography, that at times seems about to degenerate completely into something akin to Carry on Cannibal, pours an unprecedented amount of blood! This forms an odd juxtaposition at times with the obvious campery and over-acting that HGL uses in all his films, but 'Blood Feast' is still a must-see, and part of our horror heritage!
