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Blood Feast (1963)

post #1 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:19pm
Thread Starter 
Are all Herschell Gordon Lewis films so goddamned silly? The gore was great (really fucking surprising how graphic this movie is for it's time) and the aesthetic is the kind of glorious low-budget funk that I eat up (the lack of sets, the terrible lighting, the rough editing, waaaaay over-the-top musical cues) but my GOD it was silly.

Also, do I really NEED to see any other of Mr. Lewis's films? Blood Feast is the only one I own and my library doesn't carry any, so I'd have to go out of my way to see them. I don't wanna bother if they're all essentially the same thing.





Still, the gore is incredible. It forces me to put a new perspective on the kind of stuff they could get away with at the time (I used to think Night of the Living Dead was transgressive, but that shit came out in '68!).
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post #2 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:26pm
2,000 Maniacs is his most popular flick, but it's pretty dull and cinematically inept when they're not killing people. FF to the gory parts. Bloodsucking Freaks is as good as Blood Feast. Avoid The Wizard of Gore. More like the Wizard of SNORE if you ask me, knowwhatImean?!
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post #3 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Ripoll
Are all Herschell Gordon Lewis films so goddamned silly?

Also, do I really NEED to see any other of Mr. Lewis's films?
Yes, and yes. Check out Two Thousand Maniacs and Gore Gore Girls for more stupid, gory fun. They are similar, but this is fuckin' gore history, right here.
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post #4 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:33pm
The barrell roll in 2,000 Maniacs is pretty great. I love the dubbed in scream.

You know what? You could probably find all the money shots from Maniacs on YouTube.
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post #5 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:36pm
Thread Starter 
How did he get away with such heavy gore and why did it take so long for anyone else to catch up (or were there more filmmakers back then taking it this far that I'm aware of?)
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post #6 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:41pm
His movies would run in cheap drive-ins and dilapidated theaters late at night. This is around the time that truly underground films were playing markets off the mainstream's radar. And he is popular for being the first to push the envelope so far. Still, his flicks did cause a few uproars, which he promptly capitalized on.
Wasn't he arrested at one point?
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post #7 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:43pm
El Topo has the same kind of bizarre transgressive violence and brutality and that's only about two years older than Night of the Living Dead. There was a massive underground movement in the early sixties to early seventies which spawned a lot of films which pushed a lot of boundaries.

Hell you only have to look at Roger Corman films and Hammer Horror films to see an attempt to push boundaries, it's just that the Corman/Hammer films weren't quite as good at it as Blood Feast. But films like Masque of the Red Death and Pit and the Pendulum could have been legitimately disturbing if not for Corman's disposition to high camp.
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post #8 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:46pm
Blood Feast is considered the first gore movie ever made, though.

Lewis was a porn director before that, but because they stopped being big money makers he shifted focus. It was a different time, Ripoll. You could get movies like that in theaters. He did get a helluva lot of flack, but I don't think he ever got arrested because of them, though.
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post #9 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:52pm
Interesting trivia-
2,000 Maniacs was filmed in a section of Orlando that is now Disney World.
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post #10 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:53pm
Thread Starter 
I thought Night of the Living Dead's violent content was considered shocking when it was released. Was it just shocking for a more mainstream movie (though I'm pretty sure that was a low-budget drive-in favorite, too) or was it the cannibalism that was shocking? Or did I just hear completely wrong about it?
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post #11 of 19
10/15/07 at 3:55pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobClark
Interesting trivia-
2,000 Maniacs was filmed in a section of Orlando that is now Disney World.
Ah, yes, I remember the short-lived "Rapeland".
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post #12 of 19
10/15/07 at 4:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Ripoll
I thought Night of the Living Dead's violent content was considered shocking when it was released. Was it just shocking for a more mainstream movie (though I'm pretty sure that was a low-budget drive-in favorite, too) or was it the cannibalism that was shocking? Or did I just hear completely wrong about it?
I would like to think it made more of an impact because it was just a much more effective movie. Like you said, Lewis' stuff was silly, it was like a carnival sideshow. Night had a better story and a much more nihilistic point of view.
Similarly Texas Chainsaw was considered a hideous gorefest, but that was all in the editing. The film is actually almost bloodless.
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post #13 of 19
10/15/07 at 4:34pm
The 39 year later sequel to his film, Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat, is almost as laughably bad. There's something charming about the original, as it really does look like a porn film gone awry.

Wizard of Gore is probably the closest thing to this film, but is considerably worse.
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post #14 of 19
10/15/07 at 7:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall
El Topo has the same kind of bizarre transgressive violence and brutality and that's only about two years older than Night of the Living Dead. There was a massive underground movement in the early sixties to early seventies which spawned a lot of films which pushed a lot of boundaries.

Hell you only have to look at Roger Corman films and Hammer Horror films to see an attempt to push boundaries, it's just that the Corman/Hammer films weren't quite as good at it as Blood Feast. But films like Masque of the Red Death and Pit and the Pendulum could have been legitimately disturbing if not for Corman's disposition to high camp.
And the final shot of Pit and the Pendulum still has a certain amount going for it.
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post #15 of 19
10/15/07 at 9:05pm
What a hilariously crummy movie, the scene in the kitchen feels almost like a parody it's so over-the-top bad in terms of writing and acting.
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post #16 of 19
10/15/07 at 9:10pm
I highly recommend Joe Bob Briggs' Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed History!, a great book on cult films that has a chapter on this movie.

Awesome fact: Gary Sinise's father was the editor of Blood Feast.
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post #17 of 19
10/15/07 at 9:21pm
His website is not at all what I expected.
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post #18 of 19
10/15/07 at 9:28pm
Oh yeah, Lewis is apparently one of the world's leading experts on direct marketing. Joe Bob's book mentions that too.
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post #19 of 19
3/21/11 at 10:48pm

I categorize movies is various way. For instance, Blood Feast and Ted V. Mikel's Corpse Grinders are my two favorite cornball exploitations flicks. However, Water Power and Goodbye Uncle Tom are where I go when I want to see something really fucked up.

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