Blood Feast (1963)

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Writer: A. Louise Downe

Suzette Fremont's birthday party is fast approaching and unbeknownst to her and her mother, the "Egyptian Feast" the strange Mr. Fuad Ramses has planed is anything but delicious.

Before we really get started, let me say that Blood Feast is not the best movie ever made. The plot is simple, the acting is laughable, and the effects are ridiculous but all put together, this 1963 gem is one of the most important horror films ever made. A terrible and terribly important movie in the same breath? Well it's true. Blood Feast is the film that not only paved the way for all the horror on screen today but put up road signs, off-ramps, and roundabouts. Four decades before Hostel (2005), Blood Feast provided as much blood and violence as you and your sick bag (given away at theatres as a gimmick) could handle.

Like Mario Bava, Herschell Gordon Lewis is a filmmaker that is ultimately shafted amongst the ranks of film, and even horror, buffs. However, unlike Bava there's a good reason for it. While Bava is a highly artistic, visually stunning filmmaker, Lewis is after the shock and the buck. Gordon, along with producer David F. Friedman, got their cinematic start not in horror but in a different genre: the nudie-cutie. It's exactly what you think it is. Before the pornography we know today, there were films that presented sex (specifically nudity) in a "sociological" light, usually in the form of nudist camp movies. This style is briefly spoofed in Gremlins 2 (1990). Deciding that they could only make so much money with the nudie-cuties, Lewis and producer Friedman took notice at what was missing in horror films of the day. The four-letter word with which horror fans worldwide became all too familiar: gore. Up to this time in the States, the level of violence and gore in Blood Feast had not been seen on movie screens. As unfathomable as it may sound, without Blood Feast future hits like Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Straw Dogs (1971) would not have come about when they did. Yes, it's that important.

In exchange for the excessive gore and violence and an as yet unheralded place in film story, the sex is kept down to the bare minimum (pun intended) and the "foul language" is non-existent. There is a brief shot in the first scene of an actress' nipple but otherwise, this film contained nothing censorship-worthy but the red stuff. Playing down one or two "taboos" means a filmmaker gets to play up another. Lewis does not go for suspense of the mind but for the reflex of the gut. From the opening scene of an attractive young woman butchered, we know what we're in for: 67 minutes of bits and pieces.

Like the rest of Lewis' oeuvre, Blood Feast takes not just a certain type of viewer, but one with a saint's worth of patience. The film, like all the others I've seen by the director, suffers greatly from its tedious pacing and horrific acting. Blood Feast clocks in at just over an hour but you feel every second of it. It's another of the "six-pack movies" I mentioned æons ago. The kind of movie where you get either a group of buddies together and watch it with some cold ones or just have it on in the background of a Halloween party. Either way, it's good for a laugh. The performances alone provide all the camp one could possibly ask for.

Without Blood Feast, the slasher genre as we know and love it would not be what it is today. Trite? Yes. True? Also yes. For every convention, there is a broken boundary somewhere in the wreckage of history. The level of violence and gore we find in today's horror film is a direct descendant of Blood Feast.

Can't get enough of the Feast? Ready for seconds or maybe even thirds? You're in luck. There's not only a belated sequel (Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat [2002]), but as Lewis fans know, Blood Feast is only the first in a trilogy of films known as "The Blood Trilogy." Antonioni has his nameless art house trilogy (1960-62), Bergman has his debatable Silence of God Trilogy (1961-63), Dario Argento has both the Animal and Three Mothers Trilogies (1970-71 and 1977-07 respectively), and Michael Haneke has the Glacial Trilogy (1989-94), so why shouldn't Lewis have his? Following the success of Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965) soon appeared using similar shock tactics. The Blood Trilogy proved to be more successful than any of the films individually.

Boiled down, it's an hour of your life you can't get back but for the viewer with the right mentality, it's a vaguely rewarding experience. Blood Feast is horror schlock of the highest degree. If, for whatever reason, you happen to like this and the other entries in The Blood Trilogy, check out Lewis' other films. He's nothing but versatile, tackling nearly every campy subgenre known to man.

Blood and Black Lace (1964)

Director: Mario Bava
Writer: Giusseppe Barilla, Marcel Fonda, Marrcello Fondato, Mario Bava

The models at a house of high fashion are stalked and murdered one by one. Can the murderer be discovered before all the girls are dead?

It's sad, really, that as important to the horror genre as Mario Bava is, he's still a grossly underappreciated figure. His films have had such an enormous impact on the horror and thriller forms in film that the absence of his name is really a travesty. Blood and Black Lace stands as one of the high watermarks of a prolific career including nearly forty films. Along with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), Bava nearly invented the giallo in Italy with this film. A breed of intensely violent thrillers so named from the yellow-covered pulp novels that were popular in Italy after the Second World War. And Blood and Black Lace has a very pulp narrative to it. The story revolves around the potential exposure of a drug ring based out of an Italian haute couture house. After the death of a model, her diary surfaces, which may, or may not, contain incriminating evidence that could indict the individuals involved. While this is central to the narrative, the audience is not especially interested in it. Already by the mid-60s horror audiences are more interested in the sheer spectacle of the death scene than the mystery at hand. This type of body-count picture was later fully developed by Bava in his 1971 classic Bay of Blood (a.k.a. Twitch of the Death Nerve). We have a central heroine with whom the audience is most interested but the deaths take precedence over narrative and for the visual beauty of the film, and that’s totally fine.

What stands out the most in this, and many of Bava's later films, are the very cinematic death scenes. Bava films his deaths scenes with an attention to achieving the highest level of artistry and visual pizzazz, an aspect that would be picked up by Dario Argento. Each death is filmed and presented in such a way that the violence is almost supplanted by the aesthetic glory of the shots. Take for example the first death of the film, the one that kicks the narrative into gear. A model in a bright red rain slicker is taking a short cut through the woods (I know, pretty cliché but trust me, it's fantastic) when she's attacked by the killer. The scene, like those that follow it, is lit and colored so well and dramatically that the death takes on a surreal, hallucinatory quality. Despite the fact it's supposed to the middle of the night, the woods are lit to spooky perfection and the model's rain slicker stands out against all the darkness. Violent though the scene is the model and the shots retain a beauty from the previously mentioned lighting and camera set-ups.

My favorite death scene from this film is also the most tragic and shocking. Unlike the others in which we first see the victim then the attack, the death of Tao-Li (Claude Dantes) begins as she's strangled underwater in her bra and panties. By this time in America, the Production Code was only beginning to allow this kind of sexually and violence on theatre screens. But this scene provides such intense imagery that, according to Bava scholar Tim Lucas, that the end of the scene, which sticks out in my mind above all else in the film, was cut for American and home video release and only recently reinserted. As Tao-Li's body sinks under the bathwater, her eyes opened, her wrist is cut to make her death look like a suicide. Bava cuts to a close up of her face under the water and from the bottom of the frame, in sharp contrast to the light blue water and white bra, Tao-Li's blood begins mixing with the water. While this is stock-in-trade for modern horror, Bava's presentation of the shot is disturbing for showing what Lucas refers to as "the angel in the wreckage." While the scene is destructive, the presentation is such that it is equally beautiful.

As I said before, I think it's a crime that Bava is not a more widely celebrated or even discussed director. His influence is seen in the work of such commercially successful directors as Martin Scorsese. Perhaps I have affection for and affinity to critically slighted filmmakers but Blood and Black Lace stands as one of greatest but too little seen horror masterpieces.

Suggested reading material:
Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark by Tim Lucas