Do you have a taste for the exotic delicacies of far off lands? Do you salivate at the thought of old world cuisine? Then let me introduce you to Faud Ramses. Faud runs a small catering business and he is eagerly seeking out new clientele. After you sample his delights you will simply know that you have found the man to cater your birthday, wedding or family get-together. What does Faud charge you may ask? Well it’s not money, he’s working for a higher purpose, although he may need to use you or someone you know in some of his delicious dishes, the fact is you will be back for seconds of Faud’s home-cooked Blood Feast.

Released in 1963 and directed by “The Godfather of Gore” Herschell Gordon Lewis, Blood Feast is a landmark gore-fest that not only changed the face of horror movies, but would inspire countless other filmmakers to enter the world of splatter cinema.

It’s a graphic and gory masterpiece that lives up to it’s cult status and should be seen by any fan of classic or modern horror.

The story is simple and to the point, young caterer Faud Ramses is trying to resurrect the goddess Ishtar. In order to do so he needs various parts from many different scantly clad women, and finally he will need a young woman to allow Ishtar to re-enter the land of the living in a final Egyptian Blood Feast (film’s original title). By manipulating a lady by the name of Dorothy Freemont, Faud intends to take advantage of her, her daughter and her party guests in order to fulfill his sinister agenda.

The acting is terrible and wooden, the character development and interaction is a joke and the dialog is even worse, but hey it was 1963 and this was a low budget B- horror movie shot in nine days and on a shoestring budget of $25,000.

Where this film breaks ground is in the sheer blood and gore that it got by with. I mean tongues are yanked out, brains are pulled out of the skull, eyeballs are popped and flesh is ripped and torn in nearly every frame. Yes, by today’s standards the effects and shock value of this film are sub-standard, but in it‘s day this film was groundbreaking and truly let the red splash across the screen for the first time.

Whether you love it or hate it, it should be seen once for it’s reputation alone, kind of like Faces of Death. Blood Feast broke the ground for nearly every gore-film that has since followed and it and it’s director deserve some due just for that alone. Check this one out bon appetit!

8 of 10

"A Weird, Grisly Ancient Rite Horrendously Brought To Life In Blood Color!"

I seem to be on a roll finding so-bad-it's-good gore fests recently, and Blood Feast is another example. Which shouldn't be surprising, since this is and early effort from Herschell Gordon Lewis. Fuad Ramses, an Egyptian caterer, is collecting ingredients to make canapes for Ishtar. This being an early '60s gore fest, the ingredients are body parts from young, beautiful women. Which I found mildly surprising, because you'd think their industrial strength lift-and-separate undergarments (which you see rather a lot of) would act as body armor.

Blood Feast (not to be confused with the similarly-named, and also wonderfully terrible, Blood Freak) starts off with a bang. We get immediately to the carving up of disrobed lovelies, but the whole thing is so terribly unconvincing, badly acted, and uses such crappy effects that right from the start you are screaming - with laughter.

That being said, the visual style of the film is actually weirdly sophisticated. Silly gore effects aside (and who knows what was convincing in '64), the film actually looks pretty good, and the use of color in the costuming and the sets is really terrific in a very stylized, abstract sort of way. The overall effect is kind of alarming, actually.
Just to take the pre-title-sequence murder (which can't possibly count as a spoiler), you start with a blonde getting it in the bathtub. As soon as she settles in, the killer (whose face you see right off) stabs her in the eye, the gore for which comprises a shot of the knife sticking through what appears to be tripe followed by a shot of the actress lying very carefully so the red paint and gibblets dribbled into her eye socket don't fall out and spoil the effect. The killer then sets to hacking off her leg - a remarkably gore-free activity, there isn't a drop of blood on his machete. Finally, we get a lingering close-up of the severed leg-stump. Amazingly, the only blood is smeared on the leg around the wound, a bit on the side of the tub, and none whatsoever in the water or marring the nice white foam from the girl's bubble bath. It's so bad, it's surreal.

However, it's also gorgeous. The blonde is all platinum hair, white skin and red lips set against a blue dress or bath tiles, and the entire sequence is a sort of beautiful fantasy in robin's egg blue, white and red. There was one costume (orange suit, lemon yellow fur stole and a gigantic tangerine flowered hat) that made me think I was watching John Waters on acid (in a good way). Suspiria is the only thing I've seen that uses color in this kind of crazy way (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is the only other thing that even came to mind, and it didn't come out ahead in the comparison). The colors are so specific and controlled, and the visual sensibility so strong, you wonder how Lewis can't see how terrible the acting is, or how high-school-play bad the killer's "old man" makeup is. The juxtaposition with absolutely incompetent plotting, scripting and acting is really disarming.
Anyhow, the gore is plentiful if primitive, and there are some entertaining shots of the killer playing with what appear to be chicken innards. (Is it just too ghoulish to think of buckets full of brains and guts as "cheap and cheerful"? Well, that's what they are.) Some butcher made a bundle on this. In Fuad's evil chamber of horrors, there is what is obviously the better part of a side of beef on top of a cabinet. (And nevermind that they are 4x too big to be human: what are they doing up there?)

Then there are the cops. Apparently, cops in Miami work by sitting around at the only desk in the "station" saying to each other "So what do you make of these murders anyway, Frank?" ("Well, I guess it's just a sick, psychopathic killer, Pete.") Occasionally they even wander out and ask random non-cops "What do you make of these murders, anyway?"

Also, I learned some things I didn't know about ancient Egypt:
1. Ishtar is apparently an Egyptian goddess.
2. The ancient Egyptians got their goddesses from the used mannekin bin at Kleinman's department store.
3. The ancient Egyptians had tan lines.
4. If you've got a real "Egyptian culture bug", you can learn all about it thru 5 minute long lectures by noted local ... um lecturers.
5. Otherwise, "Ancient Weird Religious Rites" is authoritative, and, even though it was self published by a guy in food services, the author is immediately familiar to all local um lecturers on the subject.
6. Don't eat ethnic food. You never know what's in it!

I see HGL made a sequel (Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat) in 2002, which I am totally going to get. I see that John Waters has a part in it, which I guess brings this review full circle.

1 out of 10 for actual quality, 5 out of 10 for visual interest, 7 out of 10 for hilarity, and 7 out of 10 for gleeful gore. That works out to a 5/10 on average, but that's really understating the pleasures of this film.