Connie Mason in Blood Feast (1963)

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David Friedman and Herschell Gordon Lewis had a traveling movie making company. Lewis was a financial and marketing genius, and Friedman knew how to make a movie with nearly no budget and distribute it at a profit. They were in Florida in 1963 to make a commissioned film, and stayed on to make one of their own. They got the idea from watching a gangster film on TV. When someone was shot dozens of times in the stomach, it occurred to them that there should have been lots of blood. They decided then and there to make a film with lots of blood and gore. Note that this had never been done before. The closest before that was Hitchcock's Psycho.

The facade for their motel (Suez Motel in Miami Beach), which had an Egyptian motif, gave them the basic idea for a plot (and the backdrop for the title page and credits). The plot, quickly, is about a fanatic follower of an ancient Egyptian cult who runs a catering service, and decides to create an "Egyptian Feast," which is made from body parts of young women, to awaken his Goddess Ishtar. As he harvests body parts, the police take a dim view of the grisly murders. Incidentally, their view wasn't the only dim thing about these policemen.

This is a terrible film. There are more plot holes than plot, the acting is virtually non-existent, people couldn't remember their lines (one actress is actually reading them off the back of her hand) and the dialogue is totally inane. Why did I bother with it? It is the first slasher/gore film. It is rather tame compared with what came after, but was truly ground-breaking. Censorship boards at the time had standards for nudity, sex and language, but had no regulations regarding violence or gore. This film caused an entire new set of rules. There is no nudity at all in the theatrical release of this film. Lewis and Friedman were a little concerned about getting it shown, and figured nudity would give the censors an excuse to ban it. The Unknown nudity is from a set of deleted scenes that Something Weird Video uncovered for the DVD transfer.

To give you an idea how this (and other exploitation films) were made, I will relate some anecdotes from the feature length commentary with both Friedman and Lewis. Lewis wanted an actress with a large mouth to make a scene where her tongue is removed easier to shoot. He sent Friedman to the Playboy club to recruit some talent. Friedman returned with June 1963 Playmate Connie Mason. Connie was a model, and posed every time she was on camera. They also used her in 2,000 Maniacs, but she had no acting ability at all. Lewis directed, scored the film and did the camera work, while Friedman produced, did the sound and special effects and even had a small part to save having to pay another actor. The stage blood of the period looked too purple on film, so they invented a new mixture made mainly of Kaopectate. They did not tell the actress (some of whom had to have it in their mouth) what was in it. The actor hired to play a police chief didn't show, so they used a grip in his place. Fades were done in the camera rather than in a lab, as the lab charged $75.00/fade. No sets were used -- the Suez Motel provided most of the filming sites. The uniformed police and squad cars were real, and appeared for free. A book obviously fell into the bath at some point, but they kept using it. The entire film was shot in 9 days at a total cost of $25,000.00 including the 75 prints that went into distribution.

They opened Blood Feast in Peoria because they weren't sure how the public would accept it. The drive-in was packed every night. Of course, Friedman did have an ambulance waiting at the entrance, just in case the shock was too much for viewers, and handed out barf bags to people as they went in. This sort of showmanship is something he learned in the carny, and helped insure his success in exploitation films. In the commentary, Lewis had this to say about the success of Blood Feast. He called it "The Schlock that Wouldn't Die." For me, the film was bad enough to be funny, and the DVD was well-made and packed with special features.

Written by: Scoopy...Scoopy.net