I have seen many stupid movies in my life. Being a dedicated horror fan means that a certain amount of stupidity is unavoidable. I’ve seen movies with titles such as Rabid Grannies, Satan’s Princess and The Toxic Avenger, but before this week I’d never seen a Herschell Gordon Lewis film.
Herschell Gordon Lewis was a pioneer in the horror movie industry. Possessor of both an M.A. and a PhD (in different fields!), he was an advertising executive who wrote books about junk mail. In the early 60’s he also started making his own movies. His horror movies are amateurishly made affairs featuring awful acting and bad writing. They’re also full of blood and over-the-top gore, which back in the early 60’s was a new thing.
Blood Feast is Herschell Gordon Lewis’ first horror movie – his earlier efforts seem to be mostly nudist camp films. But as we know and Mr. Lewis discovered, red-blooded Americans crave violence far more than sex. Blood Feast was a hit at drive-ins across our great nation!
This movie stars Mal Arnold as Fuad Ramses, exotic caterer, who wants to make an Egyptian feast worthy of the gods. This involves using various sharp implements to harvest body parts from young, nubile women. Yeah, about those young, nubile women – for a guy who cut his teeth directing movies about naked couples playing volleyball, Lewis’ films are hideously unsexy. He makes up for it with some truly over-the-top gore, including a tongue ripping out scene that grossed even me out.
The acting in Blood Feast is awful, but I want to give a special shout-out to Mal Arnold, who sports a bad Bela Lugosi accent and walks around with a limp. All that said, I enjoyed this movie. Blood Feast has a sly sense of humor which I truly didn’t expect. It’s campy as hell, a ‘good’ bad movie, and I liked it more than anything Ed Wood – our country’s other celebrated ‘bad’ director – has ever made.
Abandoned Places 