Blood Feast (The Last Drive-In)

Film Year:  1963
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Herschel Gordon Lewis
Starring:  Connie Mason, Connie Mason's cue cards, Mal Arnold, William Kerwin, Lyn Bolton, Scott H. Hall, a massive sheep tongue, and lots of fake blood

The Movie

Oh-boy-oh-boy.  I don't know if I found this movie fascinating or if I fucking hated it.

So Blood Feast is considered the granddaddy of gore films.  Long before Jason sliced heads off, Dawn of the Dead featured ingested flesh, and Saw showed us people removing their own limbs, there was this little sixty minute movie about a man who desired to make sacrifices to the Egyptian goddess Ishtar.  He goes around town and kills women, taking certain body parts off of each victim which he intends to turn into a cannibalistic meal for the ritual of his goddess's resurrection.

If you're trying to look deeper into the film to find out what it's really "about," good luck with that because I came up empty.  Granted I'm not the best film critic out there, that's if you consider me a film critic at all (because I don't), but as far as I can tell the movie is "about" the gore.  There is not much plot to speak of except a random string of murders in which we get to see the grisly details of.  It very much feels as if the point of the film is to see these things happen, as if an exorcise in pushing our curiosity for the taboo.  Those who are worried it might be too graphic for them might take some solace in the fact that very little of it looks real, with an over theatricality to the blocking of the film's sequences that feel embellished for the sake of shock.  The idea of the scenes is creepy, though the film's overselling of them is a bit too much.

The actors don't really sell them either.  To put it bluntly, the acting in this movie would make Ed Wood proud.  Most give very flat and lifeless line-reads, and look as if they're waiting for someone off-camera to finish writing their check.  On the other hand, the people who do perform are the exact opposite, performing with so much more gusto to make up for the actors who aren't trying.  It's a very weird effect, especially when the two sides of the coin are acting opposite of each other.

Meanwhile the music tries to give the killer his own theme, like the shark from Jaws.  Unfortunately it's a two-note drum beat that just sounds like a solemn march, and is not terrifying in the slightest.  It's like signifying danger with an airhorn.

MSTies may know director Herschel Gordon Lewis as the man who dusted off Monster A-Go Go, stitched it together, and just tossed it onto a movie screen, though the man had a deeper legacy than that film.  Most people remember him from Blood Feast and the films that he made that resulted from it.  It's clear from these two examples of his body of work that he wasn't much of an artist, but he had something of an interesting career.  Blood Feast in particular is somewhat recommendable on the basis of its legacy, how blunt it is, just how interestingly poor it's actual storytelling and filmmaking is, and because, dammit, it lives up to that title!  It's like that old saying goes, it's like a trainwreck in that you can't take your eyes off of it.

The Drive-In

"Herschel, wherever you are, this one's for you!"  We're halfway through Joe Bob's marathon, and Joe Bob plants this flag by paying tribute to an old friend, exploitation director Herschel Gordon Lewis.  Trivia about Lewis predominates this episode, as Joe Bob has a lot of stories to tell about the man, some of which he got from the horse's mouth himself!  Joe Bob knew the man himself, and even filmed intros for the Lewis's films on VHS (I'd love to get my hands on these tapes, myself).  He has a lot of info on Lewis's diverse career from his "nudie cutie" pics to his gore flicks to a lesbian western shot at the ranch of the Manson family.

Joe Bob early on insist on telling a marketing story in hopes that it makes the audience better appreciate the film, in which the marketing of the film relied on letting the audience know just how gory it was and let it be known that it starred a Playboy playmate.  He recounts Lewis's story of checking out the local theater out of curiosity only to hit a traffic jam on the way there, which turned out to be the line for Blood Feast.  It's a rather sly story that really relates that primal desire for violence that humanity seems to have.

The more interesting tales told of the cast have to do with centerfold-turned-actress Connie Nelson, who apparently couldn't memorize her lines and had to be fed them somehow throughout the film.  There is also a fun story involving the lady who played the victim who gets her tongue ripped out, Astrid Olson, and her boyfriend "The Neanderthal," both of which seemed to be under the impression she had a lead role.

This is an enjoyable episode that features a very giddy Joe Bob, because he clearly has an affection for this film and the people who made it.  It's also the shortest episode of The Last Drive-In so far, running just past a scant hour and forty minutes, which makes it pretty breezy.  The only thing is that the movie is such an oddity that it might turn off viewers who would be hoping for something more subdued.  But I'd have to ask them that if they wanted something subdued, why are they watching Joe Bob?  Blood Feast is just a Joe Bob movie from top to bottom, and really the best way to describe it is from Herschel Gordon Lewis's own words:

"Blood Feast is like a Walt Whitman poem.  It's no good, but it's the very first of its type."

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐

For its place in history.