How am I just seeing
Blood Feast for the first time? I've read about this movie since I was a kid, I've heard John Waters rave about it in interviews, I love the
Blood Feast homage
Blood Diner, and I've seen a few other Lewis movies (
Two Thousand Maniacs,
She-Devils on Wheels). What kept me away from
Blood Feast? I think I expected it to be an unpleasant torture-fest when instead it's a campy, silly, entertainingly oddball piece of both accidental and purposeful art. It's a cool-looking movie, and the bad acting is hilariously expressive and weird instead of stiff. I love weird bad acting probably more than I love good acting.
Commonly considered the first ever gore film,
Blood Feast takes place in the Miami suburbs. The city is in fear because of a wave of horrible murders of young women, and the police (or at least the two detectives and their chief who seem to be the only cops in the city) have no clues. Meanwhile, Mrs. Dorothy Fremont and her insanely large hat are planning a party for her daughter Suzette, a student of Egyptian culture, and she hires Egyptian caterer Fuad Ramses to prepare a feast for the party. Besides his weirdo catering company, Ramses has a side gig as the author of the fantastically titled book
Ancient Weird Religious Rites. Is Ramses connected to the murders? (Of course he is.) Do the murders have something to do with the ancient cult of Ishtar? (Of course they do.) Watch and find out.
This is one of those movies that breaks every conventional rule of filmmaking and gets the job done in less than 70 minutes, and I salute it. There are some crazy images and performances in
Blood Feast that would never be found in most other films. Mal Arnold is hysterical as Ramses, and I loved Lewis' closeups of his
crazy eyes. William Kerwin as homicide detective Pete Thornton is the
only natural actor in the bunch, and the movie would have been a dud if
everyone were as competent as him. The movie is clearly the work of
amateurs, but every scene has a strong visual punch and real
personality. It's not a generic slasher flick.
The world is a slightly better place because of weirdos like Lewis, who died in 2016 at the age of 90, and who had successful careers in advertising, copywriting, and university teaching in English literature and mass communications in addition to his career as a director of bizarre, low-budget movies.
Blood Feast is rad. Why did I wait so long to see it?
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