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The Blood Trilogy

The Blood Trilogy

List Price: $39.99
Your Price: $35.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: BLOOD FEAST Is A Great DVD From Something Weird Video
Review: "Blood Feast" is the most famous work of exploitation auteur Herschell Gordon Lewis. Released in 1963, it is considered the first slasher film, the one that spawned all of the imitators: "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Friday the 13th", etc. Despite (or because of) its questionable acting and really fake blood, it is a classic.

Something Weird Video has given "Blood Feast" a great tribute with its DVD version. A beautiful print of the film was used, all of the garish colors are presented in their full glory. It contains one of the most interesting audio commentaries on a DVD that I have ever listened to. Director Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David F. Friedman provide insights into everything you've ever wanted to know about "Blood Feast" - the casting, the special effects, the creation of Lewis' signiature music score, and much more. There are so many great anecdotes shared on the commentary: how Pine Sol was used to get rid of the smell of the sheep tongue (used for the infamous tongue removal scene) since it was being stored in a refrigerator and the power went out, how they had to spend money on a freeze frame at the optical effects lab because an actress pretending to be dead couldn't hold her breath (you can see her failed attempts in the collection of nearly 50-minutes of outtakes included on the DVD), a pizza parlor was used for the scene where the maniacal Fuad Ramses cooks a human leg in an oven, and how they first realized the film was going to be a phenomenon when they got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to its Peoria, Illinois drive-in premiere. P.S. - Bonus for trivia buffs: Robert Sinise, the editor of "Blood Feast", is the father of actor Gary Sinise.

The DVD of "Blood Feast" is a must own for fans of the film and film buffs thanks to the great quality of the film to DVD transfer and the extras included by Something Weird Video.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A BLOODY MESS....
Review: "Nothing so appalling in the annals of horror....". Appalling is right. I know Herschel Gordon Lewis made this little epic on a budget of nothing, but it stll looks like a demented 4th grader's school project that landed him in a psych hospital.
It goes like this: a dingbat society matron hires a sleazy looking caterer with pointed eyebrows to cater a party she's giving for her daughter. The "caterer" is obsessed with Egyptian themes and hisses at the woman, "Have you ever had an Egyptian FEASSSST?" Now, would you let that fool cater a party for your nubile daughter? Sure you would. And so does the matron. The wacko wants to resurrect an ancient Egyptian goddess and to do so he has to perform the ritual "Blood Feast" which will contain the hacked up body parts of other nubile young women. So he gets to work straight away. Every available young woman in eyeshot (and somehow they're everywhere) gets butchered all over the place. The gore is mostly "posed" by models covered in fake blood and guts. There are no production values and even less acting. The heroine is played by one-time Playboy model Connie Mason who actually worked with Lewis AGAIN(!) in "Two-Thousand Maniacs". Apparently once was not enough----go figure. "Blood Feast" is so bad it isn't even funny. Utterly, utterly awful on every conceivable level. Only for the curious.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: BLOOD FEAST Is A Great DVD From Something Weird Video
Review: "Blood Feast" is the most famous work of exploitation auteur Herschell Gordon Lewis. Released in 1963, it is considered the first slasher film, the one that spawned all of the imitators: "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Friday the 13th", etc. Despite (or because of) its questionable acting and really fake blood, it is a classic.

Something Weird Video has given "Blood Feast" a great tribute with its DVD version. A beautiful print of the film was used, all of the garish colors are presented in their full glory. It contains one of the most interesting audio commentaries on a DVD that I have ever listened to. Director Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David F. Friedman provide insights into everything you've ever wanted to know about "Blood Feast" - the casting, the special effects, the creation of Lewis' signiature music score, and much more. There are so many great anecdotes shared on the commentary: how Pine Sol was used to get rid of the smell of the sheep tongue (used for the infamous tongue removal scene) since it was being stored in a refrigerator and the power went out, how they had to spend money on a freeze frame at the optical effects lab because an actress pretending to be dead couldn't hold her breath (you can see her failed attempts in the collection of nearly 50-minutes of outtakes included on the DVD), a pizza parlor was used for the scene where the maniacal Fuad Ramses cooks a human leg in an oven, and how they first realized the film was going to be a phenomenon when they got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to its Peoria, Illinois drive-in premiere. P.S. - Bonus for trivia buffs: Robert Sinise, the editor of "Blood Feast", is the father of actor Gary Sinise.

The DVD of "Blood Feast" is a must own for fans of the film and film buffs thanks to the great quality of the film to DVD transfer and the extras included by Something Weird Video.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Boring...with bright red paint, that is susposed to blood
Review: Alright to start out this review I wanna add that I respect this movie becuase of the year, it was probally the sickest movie in that time period, but now in 2004 it seems that movie has an attempt to try to gross out its audiences. It didn't work for me becuase I felt that the killing scenes we dull and boring. Not to metion the fact the color of the blood was so bright red, paint red, and the acting was terribal. so terribal it seemed like the acters were reading their scipts while being filmed, it was so bad. The main acter, killer guy looked like Kramer from seinfeild.
Now...... I can't give this movie all bad reasons, there were some things that were alright, and that was the storyline, But the main psycho guy, did a terribal job acting like he believed in egpytion Gods. So thats it...... Just the storyline that was alright. The rest was absolutly, positively, boring.
..................Lot of Love, John............

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: CLASSIC LOW BUDGET TRASH
Review: Back in the dark days of the 1980's, Margaret Thatcher's stern and puritanical government decided that badly made low-budget horror movies were interfering with the British public's ability to maintain a stiff upper lip, and promptly banned them all. They became popularly known as "video nasties" and VHS copies of the best (or worst) of them became much sought after in the UK.

This is one of the oldest and most notorious of the nasties, directed (if that's the right word) by HG Lewis, who pretty much started the whole gore/splatter movie genre single handed, way back in 1963. I love this film even though it has to be said that most people would probably walk several miles to avoid seeing it. "Bloodfeast" is definitely in the "so bad it's good" category as well as being in seriously poor taste. It's basically an exploitation movie aimed at the teenage drive-in audience of the time, with the added ingredients of serial killing/mutilation, countless gallons of fake blood, and one very large tongue....

It was obviously made on a shoestring budget: the camerawork, "special effects" and "musical" soundtrack are all extremely poor, and as if that wasn't bad enough, the plot and dialogue are (to put it mildly) also very weak and the "acting" is absolutely hopeless.

The movie stars Playboy playmate Connie Mason as a student called Suzette who has a fascination for ancient Egypt. It begins with a radio news item about murders of young women in Suzette's small American town, and we soon discover the weird looking culprit - a deranged Egyptian cultist who also owns an "exotic" catering company and goes by the unlikely name of Fuad Ramses. Suzette's mother decides to hire Fuad to serve up an Egyptian meal for her daughter's upcoming 21st birthday and that's when the fun begins....

Fuad has been preparing an ancient Egyptian "blood feast", whose main aim is to resurrect the goddess Ishtar and whose main ingredients are various body parts of young women (hence the killings). In preparation for Suzette's birthday surprise he not only intensifies his murderfest (and clearly enjoys his work!) but aims to make Suzette his final victim. The resulting gore looks fairly mild by today's standards and is about as unrealistic as it's possible to get, but it comes thick and fast while the tomato ketchup keeps flowing very freely indeed. Fuad's plans are eventually foiled, but not before one completely over the top scene in which a victim has her tongue ripped out, and the fact that the tongue is so huge that it's obviously not human in origin only enhances one of "Bloodfeast's" many moments of accidental greatness.

The movie has been very well transferred to dvd, and this edition also features some great extras: masses of outtakes, commentary from Lewis and producer David Friedman (full of hilarious anecdotes about this and other movies), a quaint film about the joys of carving meat and more....

Encouraged by the success of "Bloodfeast", Lewis soon followed it up with the equally tasteless "2000 Maniacs" and "Colour me blood red" (the three films became known as the "blood trilogy") and if you like "Bloodfeast" you'll enjoy them all. You should check out the "The gore gore girls" too.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The film that gave birth to the genre of gory movies
Review: Blood Feast, the brain child of goremeister Herschell Gordon Lewis is one of the most important horrible movies ever made. Without question, the movie really, really stinks in more ways than I would have thought possible, but this, ladies and gentlemen, 1963's Blood Feast, gave birth to the blood and gore genre we know and love today. One man, H.G. Lewis, decided he was going to make a statement; he was going to shock people; he was going to give people gore as they had never seen it before; nothing could stop him, not the atrocious script, not the mind bogglingly bad actors, not his insistence to never shoot a scene more than three times no matter how awful it came out, and not the lack of any funds whatsoever; as long as Lewis could afford barrels of Karo syrup, he was happy. Looking back now, it's pretty hard to believe that this level of gore actually shocked people in the early 1960s, but history tells us that it did. Believe me, we've come a long way since then, but it was H.G. Lewis who blazed the trail we tread today.

On the face of it, Blood Feast would seem to have some good things going for it: a catered feast secretly prepared with human blood and body parts, the influence of an ancient Egyptian religious rite, a number of dead bodies, and even a Playboy playmate in the form of Connie Mason (Miss June 1963). Despite all this, though, the movie drops an H bomb from the very first moment. Plot-wise, you have a series of gruesome murders striking fear all over town, with the killer bagging nubile young women at a rate of 3-4 a week. From each victim he takes a different body part (each time it looks like intestines to me, yet it can be an eyeball, an arm, a heart, whatever). The killer needs these "ingredients" so that he can bring the blood-thirsty goddess Ishtar back to life. The police are clueless, and I do mean clueless; they smoke cigarettes and sit at their desks as hard as they possibly can - heck, the chief even bangs his hand on the desk every now and again - but they just can't come up with a single clue (largely because they can't recognize a clue if it falls on top of them like a ton of bricks). Meanwhile, a wealthy woman is planning for her daughter's birthday celebration and, as a special surprise, she hires Fuad Ramses to cater the party. Ramses promises her an authentic Egyptian feast, and this idea goes over like gangbusters because daughter Suzette just so happens to be attending weekly lectures on ancient Egyptian cults. Suzette also happens to be the girl of one of the town's only two detectives, so you see how all of this starts fitting together.

While the gore is pretty unspectacular from our modern viewpoint, Lewis succeeds quite well at times. We don't actually get to see the actual killings, of course, but there are plenty of shots of our killer pulling out parts of human bodies in his blood-soaked hands, mixing up a batch of young woman blood soup, hacking off limbs and such, and of course cooking such delicacies. Lewis makes a point of admiring his gruesome handiwork, oftentimes panning the camera slowly across the whole body of a mutilated, blood-spattered, thoroughly dead victim. There is one scene in particular that impressed me, involving the appearance of a girl who has a sunken cavity in her chest where her heart used to be. By and large, though, the gore is quite campy to us modern-day horror fans, but one should try to appreciate it in its proper context.

I can't conclude without addressing the performances of the actors and actresses involved with this movie. This may well be the worst assembly of hopeless actors I've ever seen. I don't know where Lewis found these people. You can't just take people off the street and have them perform this badly; it takes years of devoted practice to become this bad a performer. Lewis must have had some of these kids in a bad actor's training camp from the time they could talk in order to coax such wooden, ridiculously bad performances out of them. Then there is the terrible music, which continually takes one of three forms: endless repetition of two drum beats, the playing of a kazoo-like instrument, and terrible pipe organ music of the type that worked well alongside silent movies but does not work at all in this film.

Basically, Blood Feast is a horribly campy, low-budget, sub-B horror movie that now serves as hilarious entertainment which can not be taken the least bit seriously. Were it not for its importance as the first true blood and gore film, this would be just another forgettable trek through the dark forest of bad horror movies. Its historic importance to the genre, however, makes it a film every gorehound must watch and pay homage to in some way.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The film that gave birth to the genre of gory movies
Review: Blood Feast, the brain child of goremeister Herschell Gordon Lewis is one of the most important horrible movies ever made. Without question, the movie really, really stinks in more ways than I would have thought possible, but this, ladies and gentlemen, 1963's Blood Feast, gave birth to the blood and gore genre we know and love today. One man, H.G. Lewis, decided he was going to make a statement; he was going to shock people; he was going to give people gore as they had never seen it before; nothing could stop him, not the atrocious script, not the mind bogglingly bad actors, not his insistence to never shoot a scene more than three times no matter how awful it came out, and not the lack of any funds whatsoever; as long as Lewis could afford barrels of Karo syrup, he was happy. Looking back now, it's pretty hard to believe that this level of gore actually shocked people in the early 1960s, but history tells us that it did. Believe me, we've come a long way since then, but it was H.G. Lewis who blazed the trail we tread today.

On the face of it, Blood Feast would seem to have some good things going for it: a catered feast secretly prepared with human blood and body parts, the influence of an ancient Egyptian religious rite, a number of dead bodies, and even a Playboy playmate in the form of Connie Mason (Miss June 1963). Despite all this, though, the movie drops an H bomb from the very first moment. Plot-wise, you have a series of gruesome murders striking fear all over town, with the killer bagging nubile young women at a rate of 3-4 a week. From each victim he takes a different body part (each time it looks like intestines to me, yet it can be an eyeball, an arm, a heart, whatever). The killer needs these "ingredients" so that he can bring the blood-thirsty goddess Ishtar back to life. The police are clueless, and I do mean clueless; they smoke cigarettes and sit at their desks as hard as they possibly can - heck, the chief even bangs his hand on the desk every now and again - but they just can't come up with a single clue (largely because they can't recognize a clue if it falls on top of them like a ton of bricks). Meanwhile, a wealthy woman is planning for her daughter's birthday celebration and, as a special surprise, she hires Fuad Ramses to cater the party. Ramses promises her an authentic Egyptian feast, and this idea goes over like gangbusters because daughter Suzette just so happens to be attending weekly lectures on ancient Egyptian cults. Suzette also happens to be the girl of one of the town's only two detectives, so you see how all of this starts fitting together.

While the gore is pretty unspectacular from our modern viewpoint, Lewis succeeds quite well at times. We don't actually get to see the actual killings, of course, but there are plenty of shots of our killer pulling out parts of human bodies in his blood-soaked hands, mixing up a batch of young woman blood soup, hacking off limbs and such, and of course cooking such delicacies. Lewis makes a point of admiring his gruesome handiwork, oftentimes panning the camera slowly across the whole body of a mutilated, blood-spattered, thoroughly dead victim. There is one scene in particular that impressed me, involving the appearance of a girl who has a sunken cavity in her chest where her heart used to be. By and large, though, the gore is quite campy to us modern-day horror fans, but one should try to appreciate it in its proper context.

I can't conclude without addressing the performances of the actors and actresses involved with this movie. This may well be the worst assembly of hopeless actors I've ever seen. I don't know where Lewis found these people. You can't just take people off the street and have them perform this badly; it takes years of devoted practice to become this bad a performer. Lewis must have had some of these kids in a bad actor's training camp from the time they could talk in order to coax such wooden, ridiculously bad performances out of them. Then there is the terrible music, which continually takes one of three forms: endless repetition of two drum beats, the playing of a kazoo-like instrument, and terrible pipe organ music of the type that worked well alongside silent movies but does not work at all in this film.

Basically, Blood Feast is a horribly campy, low-budget, sub-B horror movie that now serves as hilarious entertainment which can not be taken the least bit seriously. Were it not for its importance as the first true blood and gore film, this would be just another forgettable trek through the dark forest of bad horror movies. Its historic importance to the genre, however, makes it a film every gorehound must watch and pay homage to in some way.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Just plain stupid.
Review: Every now and then you see a movie and you have wonder if anyone out thought this was a good film. This is one of the worst films ever made. A stupid film with bad acting, writing, etc...The lack of action,acting, plot and consistancey is just too much for this film to overcome. Watching this movie is at times really amusing becouse it's just so bad. A lot has been made of this one becouse it was the first ever 'Gore' film ever. With movies like Dawn Of The Dead, Demons, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare On Elm Street it is in some good company, however for every Dawn of the Dead there is a Pieces. So on the fact that it was the first of that era I will give it it's due respect. That however is where it ends. Maber we never would have had Friday 13th if not for this film, I don't know but I must say that the movies got much better in this field....

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not the best but a must see
Review: First off this film is only for those with a love of really bad movies.Not Hollywood pieces of crap,but ultra low buget,"Hey at least the movie got made",kind of way.Ed Wood in color baically. Now having said that,on we go.

Terriblely acted,written,directed,and any other thing that goes into making a movie.But whatever you can say about it,it ain't boring.And it actually delivers what it promises.GORE.Which is the whole piont.

This was the start the Blood Trilogy,and compared with them(2000 Maniacs and Color Me Blood Red)this is the weakest,but any DVD like this with an audio commentary by H.G.Lewis is is worth checking out.There's also a wierd and funny short subject about meat carving with Brian Kerwin(star of Blood Feast)and a young Harvey Korman,who must have really needed the work.He cant possibly be that excited about cuttig meat,but apparently he don't turn down work. All this is facinating stuff for those already interested,and those who will watch anything.You wont be dissapionted.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not the best but a must see
Review: First off this film is only for those with a love of really bad movies.Not Hollywood pieces of crap,but ultra low buget,"Hey at least the movie got made",kind of way.Ed Wood in color baically. Now having said that,on we go.

Terriblely acted,written,directed,and any other thing that goes into making a movie.But whatever you can say about it,it ain't boring.And it actually delivers what it promises.GORE.Which is the whole piont.

This was the start the Blood Trilogy,and compared with them(2000 Maniacs and Color Me Blood Red)this is the weakest,but any DVD like this with an audio commentary by H.G.Lewis is is worth checking out.There's also a wierd and funny short subject about meat carving with Brian Kerwin(star of Blood Feast)and a young Harvey Korman,who must have really needed the work.He cant possibly be that excited about cuttig meat,but apparently he don't turn down work. All this is facinating stuff for those already interested,and those who will watch anything.You wont be dissapionted.


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