2 Jul 2011

Blood Feast - Lisa's Review


*** CONTAINS SPOILERS ***

There's not all that much that I can say about 'Blood Feast' other than it is total drivel.

I had a little read about the movie when I watched it, as I usually do and it seems the writer didn't actually mean it to be taken seriously and even acknowledges himself its crap, which is just as well really. He was quoted as saying "It's no good, but it was the first of its type". In fact the early year of this movie (1963) is probably its only redeeming feature, in that it will interest true horror / gore fans to see one of the original 'Nasties'.

This movie is set around the idea that a very weird and aptly named Mr Ramses, who runs his own catering business and seems to have an Egyptian obsession, sacrifices female (as always) victims to a female eygptian god and put various parts in his dishes... lovely!


Mr Ramses is a very odd character coming across as a mix of pervert, asylum escapee and ideal 'Just for men' model. The white powder (or whatever it is on his head) that they applied to make his obvious dark hair appear greying just irritated me the whole way through. It looked like someone had taken to it with copious amounts of dry shampoo and hadn't got around to getting rid of it. I wanted to take to it with a bloody big brush...

Sooo back to the movie. The first murder set the standard as to what we could expect. A hacking by way of a very big knife (or was it a machete Will?) in the bath and the cutting off of a couple of limbs. Firstly there was absolutely no blood spatter (sorry Dexter) whilst all this hacking was going on and secondly after the dismemberment there was no blood in the water in the bath!! Just a little trickle down the outside. Hmmmmm. Blood Feast? I think not!

What is amusing however is in a later scene, a newspaper is turned akwardly towards the camera by 2 different readers with the emblazoned 'Legs Cut Off' headline - You don't say! Journalism in those days was obviously not much better than it is today then, lol.

Again my soundtrack fixation rears its ugly head. This probably has the worst soundtrack of all the movies so far. A mundane constant double drum beat interspersed with the beloved bontempi organ. What it also had however was instruments which it seemed were deliberately played out of tune (A dying tumpet which turned into a police siren and a very badly played violin being 2 I could mention).

Amongst the various bad killings we cut to a bland, bare, very echoey police station and 2 very typical police investigators who surely must have struggled to take their script seriously. The set never moves and every time we cut to them, we see exactly the same scene with them sat in exactly the same place basically going over everything thats happened, just in case the viewer didn't quite understand. Nothing left for you to work out here.. I do think these guys were put in for the comedy element though and if so, it did work ok in places. I found the obvious pretense of writing of 'Wild Eyes' on a notepad when recording the description of the murderer from a dying victim amusing at least.

The second killing was just as banal as the first and was on a beach were a young couple were having a moment. Obviously only the woman dies (again very poor) and the acting which follows when the police show up from her bereft boyfriend Tony is well worth a raspberry award. A scene which warrants a mention for amusement is a random snake which shows up on the beach for dramatic effect lying beside the remains of the victims head (poor poor makeup - dont get excited)... being dragged off camera. Made me chuckle! This scene also gives us a very bad church organ being played and the trumpet running out of batteries and turning into a police siren.

I won't really go into any further detail about the movie as it doesn't get any better. Some points I will quickly jot down though....

Having your tongue pulled out means you die with your eyes crossed. Apparently this is the first movie which showed deaths with open eyes.

About 10 whips is suficient to kill you... best be careful there then!

Don't pick the back of a bin lorry as your hiding place - you can guess what happened here and even though this is a 'nasty' nothing was shown during or even after this death.

Scooby Do may well have got their famous 'summing up' from this movie judging by our policeman at the end helpfully summing it all up for us lest we didn't understand.

In all, don't waste your time unless like us you just want to say you've seen them all. Gore was rubbish, acting was atrocious, bad guy was laughable, deaths were a wee bit funny, soundtrack made me want to watch the whole thing on mute.

Gore: 2/10
Acting:2/10
Overall Score: 2/10




Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the "Reader Reviews" post for this movie.

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