Saturday, October 25, 2014

Movie Review: "Blood Feast" (1963)

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Movie"Blood Feast"
Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Year: 1963
Rating: UR
Running Time: 1 hour, 7 minutes

A string a young women are murdered by a crazy caterer name Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold). He is using the murdered women's body parts to prepare a special feast for an Egyptian goddess he worships and hopes to bring her back to life.

One thing for sure is that the acting in this film is rather terrible without exception. Those who do attempt to emote do so over dramatically and those who don't are so wooden that it's like they are reading their lines right off the page with the enthusiasms of a high school student being forced to read aloud in class. Because of the poor acting, the movie is unintentionally funny. There are also a lot of Bela Lugosi-type close-ups of Mal Arnold's eyes and his bushy eyebrows, which are also more comical than serious. The audio is off a lot of the time throughout the film and it is quite clear that filmmakers didn't have enough of a budget for proper sound equipment. Despite all of this, for a 1963 horror movie, it manages to have a lot of decent and graphic death shots. While we're sure this was groundbreaking at the time, by today's standards of gore, it doesn't hold a candle to the current state of horror. However, the gore factor does go above what we would expect from a movie from the early 1960's. Though there are not a lot of on-screen killings and most of the murdering itself is cut away from the camera, the aftermath of these deaths can be gruesome. The concept for the film is pretty cool, and we would love to see a remake of this movie today knowing what kinds of capabilities we now have in cinema. With just a few slight changes to the script, it could be quite interesting to see remade if it is done well. The concept is good enough to make a compelling film with the right writer and director behind it. Unfortunately, the gnarly death scenes aren't enough to make this movie that enthralling, or even that good.

My Rating: 5/10
BigJ's Rating: 5/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 36%
Do we recommend this movie: Meh.
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One year ago, we were watching"Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight"

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