Blood Feast (1963) may well be the original slasher film. It was one of the first to show people die with their eyes open.
I like horror films, whether they’re scary or funny. I watched one of Hershell Gordon Lewis’s other films, 2000 Maniacs in the early-'80s and thought it was a hoot. Blood Feast was next up, but either we ran out of time or else I just fell asleep. Now I’m giving it another go.
Wow. It reminds me a bit of Mutilation Maniacs, a short super-8 film my friends and I made right after high school. The acting is bad, the dialogue is laughable, the story plods, and the cinematography sucks. But that’s not the point, is it? No, it’s all about the scantily-clad young women and the blood and gore. The latter is pretty good for its time. But man, it’s a chore to watch!
Things I’m picking up on are the sets and locations. They are an ode to the mundane. There seems to be little effort to make them artistic. Where modern films tend to be meticulous in their details, these are what they are. I think part of it is the era’s penchant for manicured lawns and keeping everything ‘neat’. Edward Scissorhands neighbourhoods without the irony. Having been a child not long after the fashion seemed to start to dwindle, it’s a bit of a touchstone. Get away from the story and the acting and look at the background, and it’s like a little time capsule. You can say this of any old film, but it seems more noticeable in low-budget ones.
I think the best line comes from the mother after she is informed about the feast that is about to be served: ‘Oh, dear. I guess the guests will have to eat hamburgers tonight!’
Will I be watching it again anytime soon? Probably not. Cult classic as it is, it’s pretty stinko. But for fans of stinko films, it’s good to have seen it.