Blood Feast Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.0

Blood Feast Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 24, 2016

Note: This film is available as part of The Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast.

Mention the initials “H.G.” to most people, and my hunch is virtually everyone will default to thinking about H.G. Wells, the legendary author whose science fiction masterpieces resulted in such memorable films as The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau and War of the Worlds. Certain fans who have a slightly different definition of what constitutes a memorable film might have a variant reaction to those same initials, however, positing one Herschell Gordon Lewis instead of Mr. Wells. Lewis has long been known by the sobriquet “Godfather of Gore,” and his early exploitation pictures were, for their day, amazingly overt in their depiction of what ultimately came to be called “splatter”. Lewis, who only just fairly recently died at the age of 90, had an interesting if not especially distinguished career, though it’s notable that Lewis maintained a more than abundant sense of humor about his films and his contributions to the supposed art of cinema. Lewis’ filmography (it’s a bit of a stretch to actually call it an oeuvre) hasn’t been especially well served in the Blu-ray era, though there have been at least a few releases of his work, including The Blood Trilogy, The Wizard of Gore / The Gore Gore Girls and The Lost Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Now, in what amounts to an elegy of sorts for Lewis, Arrow Video has assembled what will certainly go down in the annals of the Blu-ray era as one of the most lavish deluxe sets produced, at least within the confines of what can only be accurately described as “cult cinema”. Along with a collection of fourteen films (nine making their Blu-ray debut), Arrow also includes a glut of bonus content (some with Lewis’ involvement), as well as impressive packaging and non disc supplements.

Blood Feast is one of the Lewis films which has already seen a release on Blu-ray, as part of The Blood Trilogy. As my colleague Casey Broadwater mentioned his review of that set, “Lewis basically applied a porno aesthetic and work ethic to the drive-in horror film, spattering it all with crayon-red viscera. Even Lewis readily acknowledges the shoddy craftsmanship: ‘I've often referred to Blood Feast as a Walt Whitman poem. It's no good, but it was the first of its type.’” Blood Feast opens with a scene which clearly draws upon Lewis’ previous work in so-called “cutie nudie” offerings, with a young woman disrobing as she listens to a radio report of a serial killer marauding through her community. In just one of this film’s unexplained but kind of hilarious segues, she settles into her bathtub with some unusual reading matter, a huge tome entitled Ancient Weird Religious Rites.

Within seconds there is in fact a marauder attacking the hapless woman, and she’s soon dispatched in a pretty gruesome manner. It’s perhaps instructive (if again kind of funny) to compare this sequence with another famous murder scene taking place in a bathroom, the iconic shower sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Hitchcock famously story boarded this entire sequence to within an inch of its life, timing cuts (no pun intended) and constructing the sequence to intentionally build an almost unbearable amount of angst and terror. Lewis? — well, not so much. The attacker is just suddenly there, plunging his dagger into the woman’s eye and then sawing off her leg. It’s manic and shocking, but it isn’t really all that scary, at least to modern day audiences used to less in your face (again, not to pun horribly) theatrics.

Also in contrast to Psycho, the identity of the assailant is not any big mystery. He’s a peculiar little man named Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold), a caterer (stop laughing) who in a subsequent sequence is hired by hoity toity socialite Dorothy Fremont (Lyn Bolton) to provide the food for the upcoming wedding reception for her daughter Suzette (Connie Mason, erstwhile Playboy centerfold). Fuad mentions he can provide an Egyptian feast that hasn’t been tasted in several millennia. Guess what the ingredients are? In just one sign of the patently ludicrous (not to mention historically inaccurate) plot, it turns out Fuad is madly killing women and cooking them up in a “blood feast” in order to resurrect the “Egyptian” goddess Ishtar. Evidently scenarist Allison Louise Downe never read her own copy of Ancient Weird Religious Rites or else she would have known Ishtar was in fact a Babylonian goddess. But I digress.

The mad killer aspect of Blood Feast is at least serviceable, but unfortunately the film also wants to be a police procedural, at least insofar as Lewis is able to depict the inner workings of the local constabulary trying to figure out what's going on (replete with a "personal" connection to Suzette, of course). It’s here that the film becomes almost interminable at times, with stultifying interstitials that are long on supposed exposition even if they continue the film’s almost willfully hilarious lack of logic.

Blood Feast Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Arrow has included some general verbiage about the transfers in this set:

All film materials sourced for restoration were scanned in 2K resolution on a pin registered 4K Lasergraphics Director Scanner at Deluxe Media, Burbank. Film grading and restoration was completed at Deluxe Restoration, London. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris and light scratches were removed through a combination of digital restoration tools. Overall image stability and density fluctuation was also improved when possible.

The original mono soundtracks were transferred from 35mm prints by Deluxe Audio Services, Los Angeles, and were conformed and restored at Deluxe Restoration, London.

Additional audio conform for How to Make a Doll and Just for the Hell of It by David Mackenzie.

Although the best existing elements were sourced for this project and every attempt was made to present the films in this collection in the highest quality possible, some of the films still exhibit varying degrees of damage that could not be digitally repaired to our satisfaction. The condition of the existing materials for Moonshine Mountain, The Gruesome Twosome, How to Make a Doll and This Stuff'll Kill Ya all contained extreme levels of dirt, scratches and debris as well as many instances of torn or missing frames. They all exhibited heavy degrees of colour fading as well. Likewise, the print sections sourced to complete A Taste of Blood were both faded and heavily scratched. Throughout the restoration workflow process, our priority was to retain the original photochemical look of the films rather than create unwanted digital artefacts by heavy handed picture cleanup. Therefore, many of the films in this collection exhibit "warts and all" appearance, in keeping with their distribution history and physical condition.

Restoration supervised by James White, Arrow Films.

Blood Feast is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. A cursory comparison with some of the screenshots in Casey's The Blood Trilogy Blu-ray review shows this transfer to be slightly warmer looking, and with what I consider to be generally better detail levels. There's a healthy grain field here, one which is admittedly coarse most of the time, but it helps preserve an organic appearance even if it can sometimes mask fine detail levels. Colors are generally nicely suffused, especially the all important reds. There is occasional crush, including during a beach scene, and shadow detail is a little underwhelming in a blue tinted day for night sequence. Elements are in generally very good condition, though there are occasional blemishes like a brief red mark that appears during a hospital scene.

Blood Feast Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Blood Feast's LPCM mono track has its fair share of issues, but it delivers dialogue at least decently. There's an omnipresent boxy, tinny sound throughout the presentation with equally ubiquitous hiss, pops and cracks. Some of the most noticeable distortion comes during cues, especially some of the organ music.

Blood Feast Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Arrow has packaged this set a little unusually, with two films per disc and one set of supplements for both movies available from a main menu. While some of the supplements are obviously geared toward one individual film, others are a bit more general in nature, and so I'm listing the complete supplemental package for each particular disc rather than for each individual film. The supplements for Blood Feast and Scum of the Earth are:

• Blood Perspectives (1080p; 10:54) features Nicholas McCarthy and Rodney Ascher discussing Blood Feast


• Herschel's History (1080p; 5:18) is an archival interview with Lewis from 2007 and features comments about Scum of the Earth.


• Archive Interview with Lewis and Friedman (1080i; 18:28) is a vintage 1987 piece and according to a text card at the beginning the first time they had sat down together in ten years.


• Carving Magic (1080p; 20:31) is an unbelievable short from 1959 directed by Lewis starring (get ready) Harvey Korman and Lewis regular Bill Kerwin.


• Blood Feast Outtakes (1080p; 45:55) are silent but are underscored here with music and dialogue snippets.


• Scum "Clean" Scenes (1080i; 4:36) were sourced from SD video.


• Promo Gallery

  Blood Feast Trailer (1080p; 2:23)

  Blood Feast Radio Spot (1:02)

  Blood Feast Theater Announcement (00:59)

  The Adventures of Lucky Pierre Trailer (1080p; 1:46) markets one of Lewis' "nudie cuties".

  Three Bares Trailer (1080p; 2:15) markets one of Lewis' "nudie cuties".

  Bell, Bare and Beautiful Trailer (1080p; 1:32) markets one of Lewis' "nudie cuties".

• Blood Feast Commentary features Mike Vraney from Something Weird Video hosting Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman.


• Herschell Gordon Lewis Introduction to Blood Feast (1080p; 1:32) is available under the play menu for that film.


• Herschell Gordon Lewis Introduction to Scum of the Earth (1080p; 1:11) is available under the play menu for that film.

Blood Feast Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Blood Feast is almost hilariously inept some (most?) of the time, but isn't that part of what makes Herschell Gordon Lewis movies so memorable? This new edition sports generally good video and acceptable audio and comes with appealing supplements. For Lewis fans and other "discerning cineastes," Recommended.