[yasr_overall_rating]
An Egyptian caterer kills various women in suburban Miami to use their body parts to bring to life a dormant Egyptian goddess, while an inept police detective tries to track him down.
It’s hard not to talk about “Blood Feast” without lapsing into praise for the film’s director, Herschell Gordon Lewis. I became familiar with Lewis from John Waters, who interviewed Lewis in the consummate book ‘Shock Value’ and featured a “Blood Feast” poster in “Serial Mom.” John Waters is not the only film lover I know who thinks Lewis is the bee’s knees. Many of my friends, who are much better versed on horror films from the 1960s and 1970s, love Lewis too. “Blood Feast” is the first film of Lewis’ that I ever saw and having now seen the film, I can say that I safely understand why Lewis has been so highly praised.
Directed in 1962, “Blood Feast” is the most premonitory film that I’ve ever seen. It plays like something that could have been made ten or fifteen years later. What makes the film such a revelation? It was the first film that was considered a “splatter” film and is groundbreaking in how it depicts gore and violence. While he made movies in a different genre, “Blood Feast” was before even Sam Peckinpah who is more popularly recognized as one of the directors who revolutionized gore.
The film is about a violent food caterer who kills women so that he can use their body parts in his meals and make sacrifices to the goddess, Ishtar. By today’s standards, it sounds like a ridiculous and ham-balled plot. By 1962’s standards, this is something remarkably strange and worth remembering. The closest comparison I could make is watching “High Noon,” which was a revolutionary film at the time but has since been very heavily parodied. It should also be noted that it’s very strange to watch a film about Ishtar now that the word has become forever associated with the terrible 1980’s flop of a film written by Elaine May and starring Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty. It should also mention the delirious glow of bright colors that emanate from several of the scenes in the film.
I watched the film with Arrow’s commentary tracking about the production of the movie. Because anyone who watches this film in this version is likely to be interested in the film’s history, I’d recommend watching it with this invaluable track. The commentary track emphasizes the shoddy production that created the picture. Made on a budget of $24,500 and shot in six days at a Miami Beach motel, the film’s production history does not suggest anything about its historical importance or the lasting value of the film in the world of horror.
“Blood Feast” went on to inspire nearly all important visionaries of the next generation including John Carpenter, Tom Savini, and John Waters. The film’s value is not that it explores a human condition in profound depth but that Lewis made a film that was graceless and dirty and full of flash. The role of “Blood Feast” in the history of horror films simply cannot be overstated.
Available on a Special Edition 2-Disc Blu-ray October 24th from Arrow Video
