Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

dworldeater As far as I know, HG Lewis's Blood Feast is the first gore film. The film left its mark and is a very influential and very entertaining micro budget horror flick that would become a cult classic. HG Lewis may not have been the most talented film maker, nor did he have an abundance of resources to make his movies. But the man has style and knew how to entertain and build an audience. Having said that, Blood Feast is good for what it is. It is campy fun that obliterated the taboo of blood, gore and violent content in film. For the time,(1964)this kind of material was unheard of ,shocking and totally extreme. HG Lewis had balls for making this and thankfully pulled the chain on "good taste" and "moral fiber" by flushing them down the toilet for good. Blood Feast, was way ahead of its time and did well in the drive in circuit shocking audiences with chunks of blood red carnage splattering across the screen. Our hero, Fuad Ramses is on a mission from God.(the Egyptian God's actually) He is to prepare a feast in honor of Goddess Istar from the body parts of several female victims to insure that she will live again. No such thing has been attempted in five thousand years, so caterer and devotee of the ancient religion has to give it a go. Blood Feast indeed delivers and holds up as a great piece of campy entertainment. There also is creepiness and dark humor to accompany the gore. While I am indeed a fan of HG Lewis's work and he made a lot of similar films, there is something special about Blood Feast. This film, as well as many of Hershell's other films are very influential to many film makers and have entertained generations of horror fans. I would regard Blood Feast as essential viewing for horror fans, especially to those into more extreme or underground films.

tomgillespie2002 Back in the early 1960's, when drive-in theaters were still all the rage and the place to go for some haunted house and alien invasion B-movie thrills, producers were completely oblivious to a colossal gap in the market. That is until 1963, when producer David F. Friedman and director Herschell Gordon Lewis came up with a 'script' called Egyptian Blood Feast, a film that would be designed to not only show gratuitous violence, but to have the explicit gore as its main selling point. So Friedman hyped up publicity by handing out 'vomit bags' at screenings, and going as far as taking out an injunction on its own film so kick up a fuss. The film was pants, but the legacy is history, and so was born gore cinema, a sub-genre that horny teenagers still flock to in order to get their cheap thrills.The film follows the exploits of Muad Ramses (Mal Arnold), an exotic caterer and author of 'Ancient Weird Religious Rights'. Socialite Dorothy Freemont (Lyn Bolton) enters his store and asks Ramses to create a party to remember for her daughter Suzette (Connie Mason), to which Ramses obliges, hoping to create an Egyptian feast that will re-awaken his god Ishtar. The town is beset by gruesome murders, with bodies being butchered and dismembered, puzzling Detective Pete Thornton (William Kerwin), who is co-incidentally studying Egyptian history with, co- incidentally (there's a pattern emerging!) Suzette. Will the detectives be able to unravel the mystery? Will Ramses create his feast, causing the re-birth of Ishtar? Will anyone point out how ridiculous Ramses' fake eyebrows are?It is easy to make fun of this film - this is H.G. Lewis after all. Yet while every conceivable factor of Blood Feast's production is of the lowest standard, you can't argue with the film's importance. Ramses is an instantly forgettable madman, but he is the original machete-wielding maniac, paving the way for countless slasher imitators, from Michael Myers to Jason Voorhees. Lewis himself said it best - "I've often referred to Blood Feast as a Walt Whitman poem. It's no good, but it was the first of its type." Shockingly, this is arguably Lewis' most gruesome, with the gore factors dropping noticeably with follow-ups Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965) (now dubbed The Gore Trilogy). At only 67 minutes, this still tries the patience, and has more plot holes than I care to mention (maybe to stop the killings, someone should have told Ramses that Ishtar is a Babylonian goddess!), but its historical significance has cemented it's place in horror history.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

GrislyBloodfeast I initially saw this movie because I have been a HUGE fan of The Misfits since I was 14 and immediately sought out every movie they had based a song upon if I had yet to see it. I feel the need to preface this by saying I actually do like Mr. Gordon Lewis and quite a few of his films. I got to meet him once at a horror punk show where he did an odd little Q&A with the audience and was quite funny. However, this movie is LAUGHABLY bad. The lyric in the 'fits song goes "and that blood is so real, cause you just can't fake it"; which I'm convinced Glenn thought was hilarious since the 'blood' in the film ( and others) is ACTUAL red paint. It's a sub-standard and pretty awful z grade film, but this movie alone isn't what earned him the moniker of the godfather of gore; and you have to understand that no one back in those days even attempted to show anything that represented guts. I suggest you see some of his other works before judging the man on this film alone. And listen to the Misfits song if you haven't already. Mr. Lewis - I salute you.

BA_Harrison Blood Feast stars Mal Arnold as mad, murderous maniac Fuad Ramses, a man who is clearly evil from the ridiculous size of his eyebrows, his lame leg, his menacing glower, and the completely malevolent manner in which he rubs his hands together. But although he's the last guy in the world you or I would trust as a caterer, Mrs. Dorothy Fremont (Lyn Bolton) is only too happy to let him prepare the food for her daughter Suzette's dinner party, and seems genuinely surprised when she discovers that the crazy Egyptian's ancient feast consists of human body parts, and that poor Suzette (Connie Mason) is intended to be the final ingredient.As the first ever 'splatter' movie, H. G. Lewis's Blood Feast is an undeniably important entry in the annals of horror cinema, ushering in a new, much bloodier era for the genre; but although it is certainly a taboo shattering and highly influential film, the fact remains that it is also a dreadfully amateurish and rather tiresome effort—one that even the director himself admits was far from great: 'It was no damn good', he has said of the film, 'but it was the first of its kind'.Not only does the film feature some of the crappiest acting in movie history (Lyn Bolton deservedly receives flak for her awful performance, but I reckon Gene Courtier, as a victim's distraught boyfriend, is even worse: he looks like he's laughing!), but the direction is also extremely dull (with constant use of overlong static shots), and the music is abysmal. Even the film's major selling point—the ground-breaking gore—fails to impress, consisting of an unconvincing collection of mannequin limbs coated with red paint and liberally scattered with offal.On top of all that, we also get a supposed ancient Egyptian female sacrifice bearing bikini tan marks, an Egyptian themed dinner party for which no one dresses appropriately and which features absolutely no decoration, and a laughable finale in which Fuad, pursued by Suzette's policeman boyfriend Pete Thornton (William Kerwin), climbs into the back of a garbage truck and is immediately crushed to death.Since 1963, Lewis's admittedly intriguing premise has been dealt with several times: in the enjoyable trashy horror flick Mardi Gras Massacre (1978), awful unofficial sequel Blood Diner (1987), and most recently, in Lewis' own follow up, Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002).