B is For:

Today's post is brought to you by the letter "B." As in Blood Feast. Herschell Gordon Lewis was an independent filmmaker during the early 1960's with a dilemma on his hands. He had a script for a scary movie, and yet had hardly any money to film it with. He knew the production value was going to suffer because of his lack of funds, so he had to dream up a way to get audience's interested. Lewis eventually decided to give the audience something they had never seen before: the full monty of gore.

Blood Feast became the first gore movie, setting the stage for nearly all horror films to follow. The plot is fairly simple: a killer stalks the streets of the city. He preys upon young women and chops them into pieces; removing limbs and organs for an unknown purpose. The police are baffled, and the town in a panic. Meanwhile, a rich woman decides to throw an extravagant dinner for her daughter's birthday. Little does she know, the mother hires the killer to cater the event. Guess what all those body parts were for?

There is little about this film that is actually very good. The acting is wooden, the cinematography consists of a stationary camera and one bright light. The sound recording is pretty crappy, too. At the time of its release, however, Blood Feast caused quite a controversy. In three short years, audiences had come from being spared the grisly images of Psycho through black and white film (and chocolate syrup) to watching a woman's tongue being ripped out in glorious technicolor.

The film earned five times its budget and established Lewis as the premiere shock director for a number of years. To this day, Lewis' name is still synonymous with graphic imagery.

Posted in: Blood Feast,Herschell Gordon Lewis,Horror,Horror A To Z