I quit. I’m giving my two weeks’ notice, and I’m rolling out the mu-fuckin’ door. Go ahead, try and stop me. Shicklacky! And you know what that means for you? It means reviews, because I’m not quitting this site. For those who were excited about that, I’m sorry to disappoint you.
(Extra and most heartfelt apologies go out to the multiple persons I’ve inexplicably devastated with my negative review of Exorcism: the Possession of Gale Bowers, and let us not forget that one really pissed off crusader who took up the cross and lashed back against me in the name of all the unjustly insulted Peaked in High School University graduates who were wronged by my review of The Greenskeeper. I’m sure you’re all right: they’re awesome movies and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’m sure you’re the most disappointed of all, and I’m super, super sorry.)
Let me explain. I’m quitting both my jobs and trading them in for a long-awaited return to the academic life. I’m hoping life as a full-time student will open up a little more review time, as there’s lots of crap being made out there and not enough people kicking against the pricks that make it. Are you aware that certain unconscionable organizations are remaking Last House on the Left, Rosemary’s Baby, The Birds; oh, and A Nightmare on Elm Street … reportedly, without Robert Englund? (Care to venture a guess as to who’s pulling the strings on those latter two travesties?)
But here’s the tricky part about quitting: I still (choose to, technically) have two weeks left at my day job, and I have absolutely nothing to do. See, I work at a college, where I do P.R. work, mostly. Graduation was last Saturday. In other words, I’m a reporter with no students or teachers to report on. I’m basically going to have to sit in my office and kill 40 hours a week until I’m done. What better way to kill time and collect a paycheck than watch movies? So here’s the deal, friends: I’m hosting a personal mini-marathon of reviews I’m calling “Lame Ducks”. Every workday until I’m finally free, I’m reviewing one movie while on the clock. (One-per-day guarantee void if I decide to call in sick because I can’t bear another soul-sucking day.) I win, you win, the college wins (I might start wandering around and stealing stuff, otherwise), America wins.
The first Lame Duck movie isn’t lame by any means, but it’s kind of a tricky review. It’s Blood Feast, the first of H.G. Lewis’ irrepressibly awesome Blood Trilogy. Why start with such a well-known, frequently reviewed movie? I have it in my office and I haven’t had time to run to the video store to pick up something lamer. Deal with it, pink boy; I am. Also, when I haven’t reviewed anything in a while, I love kissing the ring of the Godfather because his movies are such delights to watch, even if they’ve been reviewed so many times there’s not much new to say about them. I actually haven’t seen Blood Feast in several years, so this was a real treat for me to watch, even if there’s not a lot for a review here. Pull up a chair and join the feast of Ishtar, won’t you?
What can you say about the beginning of this movie? At face value, we’ve got Fuad Ramses, a villain who bears a disturbing resemblance to Benny Hinn and shares his remarkable talent for preying on the feeble and stupid, attacking a woman in her bathtub, cutting out her eye, leg and heart with a butcher knife. Awesome on its own, but it’s so much more. With that little attack, the Splatter era of film depravity began. I say historical because, of course, Blood Feast is widely considered to be the first splatter movie, and Lewis and producer buddy David Friedman seem genuinely proud of it after all these years, which is a big part of why I love these guys so much. Can you imagine sitting in a grindhouse theatre in 1963, seeing that for the first time? Can you imagine sitting there, surrounded by your friends, and thinking to yourself, “Wow, we just witnessed history being made. The cinematic landscape will never be the same after what I just saw”? I’ve always dreamed about being part of a moment like that, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Pirates of the Caribbean or Brokeback Mountain.
I’m certainly not the first person to review Blood Feast, so I won’t waste much time on plot — plus, the longer you think about the plot, the more you realize it’s kind of stupid. Our man Fuad, a creepy caterer and closet worshipper of the goddess Ishtar, is putting together a blood feast of human organs for his favorite goddess. To do that, he must run around town, murdering young girls for various body parts. This semblance of a plot is only present because society demands it; it’s all an excuse to leer at unprecedented violence.
Looking back over 40 years ago, it’s astounding how high Lewis and Friedman set the bar on bloodshed. The murders are incredibly brutal and feel like blood-soaked money shots. Fuad, always sporting the same coat, tie and eyebrow grease, brings us several all-time gruesome highlights: he removes one girl’s brain on the beach (still horrific by today’s bloated standards), steals another’s tongue and whips another to a bloody pile. Considering Lewis’ previous pedigree was in nudie cuties, it’s no surprise that parts of this movie feel like gore porn — like you’re supposed to whip out your wiener and start hacking away right alongside the guy with the machete. But, in a coup that illustrates the exploitive genius of Lewis and Friedman, the movie coasted past the censors by completely lacking nudity and curse words. Well played, gents. In the hands of two lesser men, the movie might never have made it to the screen.
Despite all the guts and Kaopectate blood being tossed around, the defining characteristics of Blood Feast are its ludicrous plot and horrifically bad performances. Of course, you can’t talk about bad actresses without bringing up Connie Mason, the former Playboy Playmate who ostensibly stars as Suzette, whose birthday party Fuad has planned as the venue for his sacrifice to Ishtar. She shines throughout in showcasing all three of the classic pre-Ripley female protagonist characteristics: confusion about herself (“I was reading about those murders. It kind of takes the joy out of everything”), confusion about others (“Hey, you wouldn’t sacrifice me on this altar, would you?”) and sexual arousal for their unlikable male counterpart (“Easy, Mr. Officer. You’re supposed to keep law and order, not break it”).
But don’t take my word that she sucks; listen to Lewis (ever so politely) describe her himself in a quote from the DVD commentary: “Connie was really a good sport, but she was not really a thespian; she was a model, and the problem with Connie really was that she insisted on modeling each scene instead of getting into it.” That pretty much sums up her horrid mugging and wooden line delivery, but he does it in a really nice way that you’d expect from a gentleman. Inexplicably, and over the (surely gentlemanly) objections of Lewis, Mason would be back to star in Two Thousand Maniacs!
But Mason’s not the only “good problem” this movie has in the acting department. There’s Suzette’s brain-dead mother, who helps set the tone early with a hilarious exchange with Fuad. There’s also our wind-up cop hero Pete, whose May-December romance with Suzette made me squirm as much as the tongue-ripping scene. But Pete’s a dual-role performer; he also helps flesh out the movie with several stupefying “two cops sitting around talking” scenes that Ed Wood revolutionized back in the 50’s. And Arnold, well, he’s delightful, particularly in the final scene when he tries to escape the police. Still carrying his machete, he runs with a limp that was barely foreshadowed (I didn’t even notice it before watching the commentary track) and never explained. For his final desperate act, Fuad seeks refuge in the back of a moving garbage truck, and, well, it pretty much goes as you’d expect hiding in the back of a garbage truck would go.
For the record, my favorite scene doesn’t have any gore or much bad acting at all. It comes a little after one of the attack scenes, when Pete the cop goes to the hospital to try to get an ID on the killer from a barely living victim whom I honestly don’t remember. She contributes the broken message “Ee-Ta,” which Pete later pieces together to identify Fuad as the killer, so it’s a fairly important scene. But the soundtrack (as usual, done by Lewis himself) steals the show by chipping in a fart noise at the moment she dies and her head falls onto the pillow. Then, it instantly switches back to the General Hospital organ music as if there had been no fart sound. It might be the most subtle, triumphant fart noise in cinema history.
Though it’s been reviewed a million times, I don’t think any of them (certainly not this one) can really do this film justice. Despite its exploitation background, I consider it more of an experience than a product to be consumed. I mean, I can say the acting is bad, but it’s the authentic campy kind, not the horrid Cary Elwes kind. I can say it’s gory, but so are lots of movies that suck ass and may or may not feature Cary Elwes. People can call it the godfather of splatter movies, but it doesn’t feel like there’s any direct lineage to today’s awful fare. Here’s what Blood Feast is: It’s bloody, fun and revolutionary; perfect for a get-together with friends if you’ve never had the pleasure of gangbanging it. It’s not my favorite Lewis movie, but it’s the most important one and stands as a landmark in horror history. And, if there is one absolute truth about Blood Feast, it’s a damn fine way to spend a superfluous workday. Excelsior!
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