Blood Feast (1963) It wasn't until 1970 or so when BQ caught up with this legendary landmark in Grindhouse gore.....
Some pals and I, in the dead of a freezing January no less, went to an all night Drive-In triple feature of the the full Herschell Gordon Lewis blood-drenched trilogy...."Blood Feast", "Two Thousand Maniacs" and "Color Me Blood Red".
.....cause that's the kind of stuff you do when you're young and drunk.......
There we sat in the car, thoroughly lubricated with Seagrams 7, with the drive-in's bulky speaker hung from the partially open driver's side window. To supposedly to prevent us from frostbite, the theater's "in car heater" spit out a whispery breeze of lukewarm air.....
I'll cover 'Blood Feast' first, since it's the first primary epic that kicked off the trilogy......
Even for the most rabid gorehounds, this movie falls into the category of "movies way more fun to laugh at the very thought of them, as opposed to sitting down to actually suffer through them..."
And 'suffer' is the operative word here. No getting around it.....'Blood Feast' serves up far more pain and torture for an audience viewing it than to the eviscerated, disemboweled women it proudly displays during its endless 67 minute running time.
Let's begin....and end with the acting. Of which there's none in sight. There's literally not one single individual in "Blood Feast" who doesn't awkwardly shout our their dialogue like it's the first time they ever stepped in front of a camera, or spoke in public.....(which it most likely was.)
For the first few minutes anyway, you'll no doubt laugh yourself silly at the spectacle of these stiffs mouthing one groaner line after another.....(the opening conversation between two cops furnished the subtitle of this post.....)
Then it will dawn on you.....that this will drag on for over an hour......gadzooks.
To keep you from dozing off, at regular intervals, director Lewis liberally splashes blood and guts across the screen, courtesy of the film's resident madman Egyptian caterer Fuad Ramses, He's played with bulging eyes and Groucho eyebrows by the lead non-actor Mal Arnold.....he's a riot.
Though Fuad walks with a severe limp, he has no trouble at all sneaking up on pretty girls and cleaving them to pieces, harvesting limbs, brains, tongues and assorted viscera to spice up his menus. .oh yum, yum, yummy. And the Karo syrup posing as blood freely flows faster and messier than crude oil flowing from the Exxon Valdez.
Not to worry though. Our ace detectives give chase before Fuad can dismember Playboy Playmate Connie Mason, whose performance runs the full range from A to A. The fiend manages to limp his way into the back of a trash truck where the compactor promptly squishes him to smithereens.
But no, Herschell Gordon Lewis isn't quite done torturing us.....even with Fuad trashed to death, so to speak, one of the stalwart cops launches into another few minutes of mind numbing exposition.
And that was only the beginning of a long night dismal acting and crimson innards, as BQ and friends now faced the horrors of "Two Thousand Maniacs" and "Color Me Blood Red".....(more on those two later.)
The popcorn however, was freshly popped and tasty. As opposed to "Blood Feast".....which was anything but.....and fit only for horror completists who simply won't sleep at night until they've sat through it once before they die. Well....if you must. Zero stars (0).
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