‘You wouldn’t sacrifice me on this altar, would you?‘
Being the first at something might be historically significant but it doesn’t equate to talent. Blood Feast, widely considered the first ‘splatter’ film, is the brainchild of noted b-movie director Herschell Gordon Lewis (otherwise known as the “Godfather of Gore”). While it is significant in terms of pushing the boundaries of what a horror film can be, it is also, I’m sorry to say, very shit…
Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold), an Egyptian caterer in 1960s Miami, hacks women to death in an attempt to revive a dormant Egyptian goddess. Detective Pete Thornton (William Kerwin) must solve the case before Ramses can sacrifice Suzette Fremont (Connie Mason), a budding Egyptologist. It really doesn’t matter.
Gordon Lewis serves as editor, director and composer of Blood Feast and he’s bad at all of it. There are seemingly three or four different static shots that our intrepid director returns to again and again. The editing is rudimentary. The score is dreadful. Aside from the many deficiencies of Gordon Lewis, the cast are also uniformly rubbish. The acting is either horribly melodramatic or completely wooden. Indeed, everything about Blood Feast screams ‘amateur’. The gore itself, really the only reason to watch this film at all, is so cartoonish by today’s standards that is has little impact (although I imagine it looked pretty gnarly back in 1963).
Blood Feast will appeal to horror completists, and the work of Gordon Lewis has developed a cult following, but make no mistake, this is bad cinema. Irredeemably bad.
