Blood Feast

For the 1972 film, seeBlood Feast (1972 film).For the American band, seeBlood Feast (band).

Blood Feast
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Herschell Gordon Lewis
Screenplay by	Allison Louise Downe
Story by	David F. Friedman Herschell Gordon Lewis
Produced by	David F. Friedman
Starring	Mal Arnold William Kerwin Connie Mason Lyn Bolton Scott H. Hall
Cinematography	Herschell Gordon Lewis
Edited by	Robert Sinise Frank Romolo
Music by	Herschell Gordon Lewis
Distributed by	Box Office Spectaculars
Release date	July 6, 1963(1963-07-06)
Running time	67 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$24,500
Box office	$4 million

Blood Feastis a 1963 Americansplatter film.It was composed, shot, and directed byHerschell Gordon Lewis,written by Allison Louise Downe from an idea by Lewis and David F. Freidman, and stars Mal Arnold,William Kerwin,Connie Mason,and Lyn Bolton. The plot focuses on a psychopathic food caterer named Fuad Ramses (Arnold) who kills women so that he can include their body parts in his meals and perform sacrifices to his "Egyptiangoddess "Ishtar.

Blood Feastis considered the first splatter film, a sub-genre of horror noted for its graphic depictions of on-screen gore. It was highly successful, grossing $4 million against its minuscule $24,500 budget, while receiving poor reviews from critics, who criticized it as amateurish and vulgar. The film was followed by a belated sequel,Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat,in 2002.

Plot

A woman comes home to herMiami Beachapartment and hears of a recent murder in Rogers Park. She herself is then murdered while taking a bath. Before leaving, the killer hacks off her leg above the knee with amacheteand bags it. A copy of a book titledAncient Weird Religious Ritesis seen near the body.

At the police station the next morning, Detective Pete Thornton consults with the chief of the homicide bureau about the killings, who says that the killer follows a pattern of mutilating his victims by removing their limbs and organs. Elsewhere in town, Dorothy Fremont hires a caterer named Fuad Ramses to arrange a dinner party for her daughter, Suzette. Ramses – who is the serial murderer – tells Mrs. Fremont he will prepare an ancient Egyptian feast for the affair. Mrs. Fremont is delighted, as Suzette is interested inEgyptology.After Mrs. Fremont leaves Ramses' store, he goes to a back room, where he has enshrined a statue of the goddessIshtar.Ramses is preparing a "blood feast" – a stew made from his victims' blood and body parts intended to resurrect Ishtar.

Later that day, Thornton tells the chief he interviewed the latest victim's acquaintances and that she was a book club member. That evening, teenagers Tony and Marcy are on a nearby beach. Ramses arrives, knocks Tony unconscious, and removes Marcy's brain from her skull. Thornton and the chief arrive on the scene but cannot get any useful information from a hysterical Tony. They later question Marcy's mother, who tells them Marcy belonged to a book club. Sometime later, Ramses stakes out a motel. He knocks on a woman's door and attacks her when she answers, ripping her tongue out as another ingredient to his "blood feast".

Suzette attends an Egyptian studies lecture at the local university with her boyfriend, Detective Thornton. The lecturer, Dr. Flanders, tells them about thepharaohsRamses IandRamses IIand the cult of Ishtar that thrived duringtheir rulefive thousand years prior. He describes a ritual in which women were sacrificed to the goddess on an altar, their body parts prepared and served as dishes in the feast; this was said to cause Ishtar to be reborn. After the lecture, Suzette and Thornton learn that a victim has been found near death and taken to a hospital. Thornton drives Suzette home and rushes to the hospital. The victim, identified as Janet Blake, recounts her attacker saying something that sounded like "Etar" and dies.

Ramses receives a letter from Suzette's friend Trudy Sanders, requesting a copy ofAncient Weird Religious Riteshe advertised in the newspaper; he kidnaps Trudy that evening. The next day, Trudy awakens in Ramses's back room. Ramses lashes Trudy with ascourge,collecting her blood in a silver chalice. Suzette informs Thornton that Fuad Ramses will be catering her dinner party and serving an authentic Egyptian feast in honor of Ishtar. Noting the similarity between the name Ishtar and the word "Etar", Thornton calls Dr. Flanders and learns that Ramses is the author ofAncient Weird Religious Rites.Deducing Ramses to be the killer, Thornton and the police race to Ramses' store, where they discover the Ishtar shrine, Trudy's body, and other human remains. The police head to the Fremont house to arrest Ramses and stop the guests from partaking in the feast.

Ramses arrives at the dinner party and asks Suzette to help him make the feast "more authentic." He has Suzette lie on a kitchen countertop and tells her to close her eyes and offer a prayer to Ishtar. As he raises his machete to decapitate her, Mrs. Fremont enters the kitchen, and he flees. The police chase Ramses through a dump, and he climbs into the back of a garbage truck. The unaware truck driver turns on the trash compactor, crushing Ramses. Thornton explains to the chief how he deduced the killer's identity and says Ramses must have kept a list of people who requested his book as potential victims. The detectives return to their headquarters to file a report; elsewhere, the statue of Ishtar sheds tears of blood.

Cast

• William Kerwinas Detective Pete Thornton (credited as Thomas Wood)
• Mal Arnold as Fuad Ramses
• Connie Masonas Suzette Fremont
• Lyn Bolton as Mrs. Dorothy Fremont
• Scott H. Hall as Police Chief Frank
• Christy Foushee as Trudy Sanders (credited as Toni Calvert)
• Ashlyn Martinas Marcy Franklin
• Astrid Olson as Motel Victim
• Sandra Sinclair as Pat Tracey
• Gene Courtier as Tony
• Louise Kamp as Janet Blake/Sacrificial Victim
• Hal Rich as Hospital Doctor
• Al Golden as Dr. Flanders

Production

Development

The concept forBlood Feastarose in the early 1960s, three years after the release of directorAlfred Hitchcock’s horror filmPsycho.Lewis, previously a teacher atMississippi State College,had quit his job in order to enter the film business, and directed several "nudie cutie" films in the early 1960s, produced byDavid F. Friedman(who would later produceBlood Feastand several other splatter films that Lewis would direct). Lewis had seenPsychoand felt that the film had cheated by showing the results of the murders in the film but not the action, because Hitchcock could not risk getting turned down by theaters. The main idea behindBlood Feastwas that bathtubs of blood would be spilled in an effort to portray an Egyptian meal cooked with the bodies of virgins and the tongue of a woman being ripped out of a woman's mouth.

Filming

Filming took place inMiami,Florida over a period of four days, with a budget of $24,000.Director Lewis wanted a realistic prop for the scene where a woman gets her tongue ripped out; in order to accommodate this, a sheep's tongue was imported fromTampa Bayand used in the scene. All other limbs and organs used during production were imported locally. Lewis filmedBlood Feastin color in order to show the red blood used in the film.

Release

Distributed byBox Office Spectaculars,the film was released July 6, 1963 at the Bellevue Drive-In in Bellevue (now Peoria) Illinois.The film was advertised asEgyptian Blood Feastatdrive-insin New York.

Producer Friedman came up with some publicity stunts for the film, such as giving theater-goers "vomit bags" and intentionally taking out aninjunctionagainst the film inSarasota,Florida,in order to gain publicity. Both were very effective and generated more interest in the film,which became highly successful, grossing $4 million against its minuscule $24,500 budget.

Censorship

In the United Kingdom, the film faced censorship issues, eventually being banned and added to the infamous "video nasty"list.It was given a DVD release in 2001 with 23 seconds of cuts. In 2005, the film was finally released uncut with an18 certificateafter more than 40 years of being banned.

Home media

Blood Feastwas first released onVHShome video by Continental Video in the 1980s. It also received VHS and DVD releases bySomething Weird Videoin the late 1990s.

In 2017,Arrow Videoreleased the film in a DVD andBlu-raydouble pack.

Critical reception

Blood Feastreceived generally negative reviews.Varietydeclared the film to be a "totally inept shocker", "incredibly crude and unprofessional from start to finish" and "an insult even to the most puerile and salacious of audiences".The review labeled the entire production a "fiasco", calling the screenplay (credited to Louise Downe) "senseless", and the acting "amateurish". Of Lewis' direction, camerawork, and musical composition, the review judged that he had "failed dismally on all three counts".TheLos Angeles TimesdescribedBlood Feastas "a blot on the American film industry."Stephen Kinghas said that it is "the worst horror movie" he has ever seen.

In response toVariety's criticism of the film, Friedman said, "Herschell and I have often wondered who told theVarietyscribe we were taking ourselves seriously ".

Jerry Renshaw ofAustin Chronicleliked the film, but criticized the film's poor acting and noticeably low budget. Renshaw concluded his review by calling the film "offensive, nasty, shabby, and revolting, but also great fun, if you can stand the sight of guts". On his websiteFantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings,Dave Sindelar panned the film, criticizing the acting and stating that director Lewis "manages to make his movies look like home movies without giving them that air of verisimilitude that would make them believable".Dennis Schwartz ofOzus' World Movie ReviewsgaveBlood Feasta C grade, stating that it was "one of those really bad films that some take pleasure laughing at and others sneering at and others doing both". Allmovie's Fred Beldin wrote, "The plot is threadbare, the acting is on a par with the clumsiest of high school plays and the direction is static and uninvolving. Nevertheless, this is one of the important releases in film history, ushering in a new acceptance of explicit violence that was obviously just waiting to be exploited".

Onreview aggregatorwebsiteRotten Tomatoes,the film holds an approval rating of 38% based on13 reviews,with aweighted averagerating of 4.48/10.

Significance

Blood Feastimmediately became notorious for its explicit gore and violence. It is often cited erroneously as one of the first films to show people dying with their eyes open (earlier examples includeD. W. Griffith's 1909 filmThe Country Doctor,William A. Wellman's 1931 filmThe Public Enemyand 1960'sPsycho).

Fuad Ramses was described by author Christopher Wayne Curry – in his bookA Taste of Blood: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis– as "the original machete-wielding madman" and the forerunner to similar characters inFriday the 13thandHalloween.Lewis said of the film, "I've often referred toBlood Feastas aWalt Whitmanpoem. It's no good, but it was the first of its type. ""One of the all-time greats," enthusedCrampssinger and horror aficionadoLux Interior."It was the first gore movie… Now, it looks kind of funny, but it's still really sick."

Blood Feastis the first part of what the director's fans call "The Blood Trilogy". Rounding out the trilogy areTwo Thousand Maniacs!(1964) andColor Me Blood Red(1965). After the third, producer Friedman said, "I think that for now we're going to abandon making any more 'super blood and gore' movies, since so many of our contemporaries are launching similar productions, causing a risk that the market will quickly reach a saturation point."

Literature

Lewis wrote anovelizationofBlood Feastto coincide with the release of the film.The novel, which features significantly different versions of central characters Fuad Ramses, Pete Thornton and Suzette Fremont, has a much more humorous tone than the film and is set inChicagorather than Miami. It was reprinted byFantaCo Enterprisesin the 1980s.

A black-and-white two-issue comic book adaptation of the film was published byEternity Comicsin 1991. It was written by Jack Herman, penciled by Stan Timmons and inked by Mike Matthew.

Legacy

Sequels

Blood Feastwas the first part of Lewis' "Blood Trilogy", with the others beingTwo Thousand Maniacs!andColor Me Blood Red.

A sequel,Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat,was released in 2002. It takes place years after the first film, with Fuad's grandson following in his grandfather's footsteps. It marked the first time Lewis and Friedman had worked together on a film in 36 years.

Blood Diner(1987) was produced with the intention of making it a "spiritual sequel" toBlood Feast.

Remake

A remake directed by Marcel Walz and starringRobert Rusleras Fuad Ramses, was given a limited theatrical release on June 23, 2017.

Bibliography

• Palmer, Randy (2000).Herschell Gordon Lewis, Godfather of Gore: The Films.Jefferson,North Carolinaand London: McFarland & Company.ISBN0-7864-0808-1.
• Romer, Jean-Claude; Silver, Alain (2000). "A Bloody New Wave in the United States (July 1964)".Horror Film Reader.New York: Limelight Editions.ISBN0-87910-297-7.

External links

• Blood Feastat theAFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Blood FeastatIMDb
• Blood Feastat theTCM Movie Database