Hello Game Journal readers. I want to apologize for not writing any reviews or articles since before the Turkey Day holiday break. I have been rather lazy lately and, to be honest, I haven’t been watching too many films that I think you would be interested in reading about, although I have been watching plenty of movies. Heck, that’s all I do most days. Alas, I have finally seen a few things that some of you may be interested in but others will undoubtedly find disgusting or just darn dull. Yes, dear readers, I have been watching some gore film favorites.
Now, I do realize not all geeks like gore as not all geeks are horror fans. For that matter, not all horror fans are gore fans either, but you sure are missing a lot of great films if you cut out the gory ones. I’ve always been drawn to the ooey-gooey side of horror. What is a good horror movie without some darn good special effects? And not those silly CGI gore effects that have been used recently in films like Midnight Meat Train, to name one sinner. I want traditional special effects make-up gore of the kind that looks so real a surgeon would cringe! CGI has its place as an addendum to some effects shots, but nothing can replace that visceral kick from a good severed head or seeping wound quite like actual make-up effects.
The film I want to discuss in this article is a grand daddy of all horror films employing grizzly make-up effects. Blood Feast (1963) directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis is a classic in the field of special effects gore and violence in cinema history. In fact, it is considered by many as the film that began the “splatter gore” sub-genre in horror films and at the least left a significant mark on the work of later horror films of all stripes. I first encountered the work of Lewis when I was in tenth grade and met a fellow horror fan interested in films I hadn’t even dreamed existed. It was this young fellow fan that introduced me to The Wizard of Gore (1970), my first viewing of a Lewis film, and turned me onto a whole new area of interest. As a side note, The Wizard of Gore is referenced in the film Juno and fans of that movie, and I am one of them, may recognize the title.
Blood Feast is not a good movie, mind you, but it deserves your attention if you are a fan of gore, horror film history, B movies, and related areas of interest. The film follows the antics of one Fuad Ramses, a caterer by day and killer by night. Ramses is a devotee of the Egyptian Goddess Ishtar (who happens to be Babylonian in reality) and is bent on bringing her back from the dead. In order to achieve his goal of reviving his goddess, Ramses must kill many young, nubile women and brew and stew their parts into a meal fit for a queen, or goddess as the case may be. Throughout the film, several clumsy police detectives try not very hard to solve the case of the missing parts killer, as Ramses leaves his victims lie about in bloody splendor once he has taken his choice morsel from them. Finally, in honor of Ishtar, Ramses will complete his macabre religious rites by sacrificing a pretty young maiden whose mother has conveniently hired the caterer to prepare a sumptuous Egyptian feast. Will Ramses succeed? Or will the police piece together the few but obvious clues to finding a killer? I dare not say.
What are the merits of this film, you might ask? Well, there really are not many, unless you are a fan of B movies and just as big a fan of splatter films. From a historical perspective, the use of full-color blood and guts in this film, and there are plenty of them to share, is rather interesting. I often think about what it might have been like to see certain films for the first time and I can imagine the shock and awe of the theater-goers who first laid eyes on this little gem. Mind you, Blood Feast ran mostly in drive-in movie theaters, so the blood splashed across the screen would have been big and bold. This is quite a date movie, yes?
The film itself is slow and plodding, despite having a run time of only 67 minutes. The story is simplistic and the plot is as light and fluffy as a down pillow, that is a down pillow dipped in blood. Blood is the only real reason to watch this film. Oozing, goozing gory blood. Blood so red that it makes real blood look sad and fake. In fact, it looks like the blood in this film was left over from a barn painting session. The bits and bobs of meat and bodily ephemera used to flesh out the gory sequences were most likely leftovers from some one’s liver and onion dinner the night before, but in this very dated film they still are used to good effect.
Overall, Blood Feast’s death scenes and gory shots still hold up under scrutiny today. In fact, aside from some much more convincing blood and more realistic corpses, I think Lewis’s work would look as good today as it did in 1963 if he decided to go back to seriously low-budget cinema. Indeed, Herschell Gordon Lewis has come out of retirement lately to make a few films, including Blood Feast 2, but I haven’t seen them yet to judge them. At the least, scores of horror film directors and a legion of fans owe him homage for being an innovator in special effects make-up and splatter. Where would we be without him and his cheap, blood-filled features? In a sad and sterile place I suppose.
(as a side note, the DVD of Blood Feast also contains an amusing little short film called Carving Magic. This industrial film, on the art of meat carving, will be entertaining for all MST3K fans, as will Blood Feast itself, and co-stars William Kerwin, co-star of Blood Feast, and a young Harvey Korman. It may just be more grisly than the feature film. I give the producers of the DVD lots of praise for including it!)
