Blood Feast

Amid a series of brutal murders, a young woman is killed in her Miami Beach apartment by a gray-haired, wild-eyed man. He stabs her eye out with a knife and hacks her leg off above the knee with a machete, bagging the leg before he leaves. A copy of a book titled Ancient Weird Religious Rites is seen near the body.

At the police station the next morning, detective Pete Thornton consults with the chief of the homicide bureau about the killings. The chief says that seven victims have already fallen prey to the unknown killer, who follows a pattern of mutilating the bodies by removing limbs and organs but otherwise leaves no clues.

Elsewhere in town, wealthy socialite Dorothy Fremont hires an exotic caterer named Fuad Ramses to arrange a dinner party for her daughter, Suzette. Ramses – revealed to the viewer as being the killer from the opening scene – agrees to cater the affair and tells Mrs. Fremont that he will prepare an ancient Egyptian feast, the likes of which have not been served for five thousand years. Mrs. Fremont is delighted by this, as Suzette has a keen interest in Egyptology. She orders the catering to be done in two weeks, and Ramses assures her that he will have enough time to procure the necessary ingredients. After Mrs. Fremont leaves Ramses' store, he goes to the back room, where he has enshrined a large, golden statue of the Egyptian goddess Ishtar. Ramses is preparing a "blood feast" – a stew made from his victims' blood and body parts intended for Ishtar's reincarnation.

Later that day, Thornton again meets with the homicide bureau chief after the newspapers sensationalize the death of the latest victim, who has just been discovered in her apartment with her leg missing. Exasperated, the chief asks Thornton if he was able to turn up any clues this time. Thornton says he interviewed the victim's acquaintances, but the only important clue he could get was that she was a book club member.

That evening, two teenagers named Tony and Marcy make out on a nearby beach. They are assaulted by Ramses, who knocks Tony unconscious, hacks off the top of Marcy's skull, and removes her brain. Thornton arrives on the scene shortly thereafter with the chief, but they are unable to get any useful information from Tony, who by this time is in hysterics. Back at the station, Thornton and the chief question Marcy's parents, who tell them that she also belonged to a book club.

Sometime later, Ramses stakes out a local motel and sees a drunken man drop a woman off at her room. Ramses knocks on the woman's door and attacks her when she answers, ripping her tongue out of her mouth and leaving her to bleed to death.

Meanwhile, at the Fremont house, Suzette tells her mother how distraught she is by the reports of the killings. Mrs. Fremont tries to cheer her up by reminding her of their upcoming dinner party. Later, Suzette attends her weekly Egyptian studies lecture at a local university with her boyfriend, who happens to be Detective Thornton. The lecturer, Dr. Flanders, tells them about the pharaohs Ramses I and Ramses II and the cult of Ishtar that thrived during their rule five thousand years ago. Dr. Flanders goes on to describe the blood festival of Ishtar, in which virgin women were sacrificed to the goddess on an altar, their remains prepared as dishes to be served in the feast, and Ishtar was said to be reborn at the climax of the festival. (A flashback to ancient Egypt is shown at this point in the film, depicting a young woman on a stone altar being stabbed in the chest and having her heart removed from her body.)

After the lecture, Thornton takes Suzette out for an evening drive, and Suzette tells him that she is worried about the recent murders when he suggests that they park for a while. Their date is cut short when a radio news bulletin announces that an as yet unidentified victim has been found near death and taken to a nearby hospital. Thornton drives Suzette home and hurries to the police station, where the chief informs him that this victim was found on the outskirts of town with the side of her face hacked off. They rush to the hospital and question the woman, who identifies herself as Janet Blake. She tells them that the man who attacked her was old, had wild eyes and that he said it was for "Etar" as she collapses and dies. The detectives ponder the significance of "Etar" and Thornton cannot shake the feeling that the word sounds familiar.

On the day before the dinner party, Ramses receives a letter from a young woman named Trudy Sanders, requesting a copy of Ancient Weird Religious Rites that he had advertised in the newspaper. Ramses looks up Trudy's phone number in the white pages, calls her house, and finds out that she's visiting Suzette Fremont. At the Fremont residence, Suzette is having a pool party with some friends, where she tells Trudy that she thinks her mother is planning an Egyptian feast for her party. Unbeknownst to Suzette and the others, Ramses goes to the Fremont's, waits outside, and kidnaps Trudy as she leaves that evening.

The next day, Thornton and the chief investigate Trudy's disappearance. Thornton phones Suzette to tell her that he will be late for the party, as the police still have no word on Trudy's whereabouts. Suzette tells Thornton she learned from her mother that a Fuad Ramses will be catering the party and serving an authentic Egyptian feast in honor of Ishtar. Thornton quips that he hopes this feast won't be exactly like the one described by Dr. Flanders.

Meanwhile, in Ramses' storage room, Trudy wakes up to find herself chained to the wall next to the Ishtar shrine. Ramses pauses from his cooking for a moment and takes a leather scourge from the wall. Demanding that she give herself up to the goddess, he lashes her to death, collecting her blood in a silver chalice.

After hanging up with Suzette, Thornton mulls over the name Ishtar and its similarity to the word "Etar" that Janet Blake said in the hospital, and also recalls the recent lecture on the Ramses pharaohs. Thornton calls Dr. Flanders, gets more information on the blood feast of Ishtar, and learns that Fuad Ramses is the author of Ancient Weird Religious Rites. Finally piecing it all together, Thornton calls the chief and tells him to meet at Ramses Exotic Catering.

Back at Ramses' storage room, Ramses cooks one more ingredient for his feast: the leg of the first victim seen in the film, which he chars in a pizza oven.

The police race to Ramses' store and find Ramses gone but discover the shrine of Ishtar and Trudy's body on a table in the back room, with various other human remains strewn about. The chief orders a squad car to the Fremont house to arrest Ramses and stop the guests from partaking in his grisly meal. However, they are unable to call the Fremonts and warn them as their phone line is down.

Ramses arrives at the dinner party and asks Suzette to come into the kitchen and help him commence the feast by blessing it to make the experience "more authentic." He has Suzette lie on a counter as a makeshift altar, then tells her to close her eyes and offer a prayer to Ishtar. As he raises his machete to decapitate her as a final offering to his goddess, Mrs. Fremont suddenly enters the kitchen and causes him to flee. The police arrive, and Thornton tells Suzette that Ramses was the serial killer they'd been looking for and that Trudy was his latest victim. Thornton joins the chief and the other officers as they chase Ramses through a nearby dump, where he attempts to escape by climbing into the back of a garbage truck. Unaware of this, the truck driver turns on the trash compactor, slowly crushing Ramses.

The police arrive too late to prevent his death, and the chief remarks to Thornton that Ramses "died a fitting death, like the garbage he was." Thornton then explains to the chief how he deduced the killer's identity, from the last words of Janet Blake to the book found at the scenes of some of the murders, and Thornton says that Ramses must have kept a list of people who requested the book as potential victims. As they wonder whether others still worship Ishtar, the detectives morosely light their cigarettes and return to their headquarters to file a report. Elsewhere, the statue of Ishtar sheds tears of blood.

• William Kerwin as Detective Pete Thornton
• Mal Arnold as Fuad Ramses
• Connie Mason as Suzette Fremont
• Scott H. Hall as Captain Frank
• Lyn Bolton as Mrs. Dorothy Fremont
• Toni Calvert as Trudy Sanders
• Ashlyn Martin as Marcy, Girl On Beach
• Sandra Sinclair as Pat Tracey
• Astrid Olson as The Motel Victim
• Herschell Gordon Lewis as Radio Announcer (uncredited)

Distributed by Box Office Spectaculars, the film was released July 6, 1963 at the Bellevue Drive-In in Bellevue (now Peoria) Illinois.[2] The film was advertised as Egyptian Blood Feast at drive-ins in New York.[3]

Producer Friedman came up with some publicity stunts for the film, such as giving theater-goers "vomit bags" and intentionally taking out an injunction against the film in Sarasota, Florida, in order to gain publicity. Both were very effective and generated more interest in the film,[3] which became highly successful, grossing $4 million against its minuscule $24,500 budget.[4]

In the United Kingdom, the film faced censorship issues, eventually being banned and added to the infamous "video nasty" list.[5] It was given a DVD release in 2001 with 23 seconds of cuts. In 2005, the film was finally released uncut after more than 40 years of being banned.[6][7]

Blood Feast immediately became notorious for its explicit gore and violence. It is often cited erroneously as one of the first films to show people dying with their eyes open (earlier examples include D. W. Griffith's 1909 film The Country Doctor, William A. Wellman's 1931 film The Public Enemy and 1960's Psycho).[9]

Fuad Ramses was described by author Christopher Wayne Curry – in his book A Taste of Blood: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis – as "the original machete-wielding madman" and the forerunner to similar characters in Friday the 13th and Halloween. Lewis said of the film, "I've often referred to Blood Feast as a Walt Whitman poem. It's no good, but it was the first of its type."[10] "One of the all-time greats," enthused Cramps singer and horror aficionado Lux Interior. "It was the first gore movie… Now, it looks kind of funny, but it's still really sick."[11]

Blood Feast is the first part of what the director's fans call "The Blood Trilogy". Rounding out the trilogy are Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965). After the third, producer Friedman said, "I think that for now we're going to abandon making any more 'super blood and gore' movies, since so many of our contemporaries are launching similar productions, causing a risk that the market will quickly reach a saturation point."[12]

Blood Feast received generally negative reviews. Variety declared the film to be a "totally inept shocker", "incredibly crude and unprofessional from start to finish" and "an insult even to the most puerile and salacious of audiences".[13] The review labeled the entire production a "fiasco", calling the screenplay (credited to Louise Downe) "senseless", and the acting "amateurish". Of Lewis' direction, camerawork, and musical composition, the review judged that he had "failed dismally on all three counts".[13] The Los Angeles Times described Blood Feast as "a blot on the American film industry."[14] Stephen King has said that it is "the worst horror movie" he has ever seen[15]

In response to Variety's criticism of the film, Friedman said, "Herschell and I have often wondered who told the Variety scribe we were taking ourselves seriously".[16]

Jerry Renshaw of Austin Chronicle liked the film, but criticized the film's poor acting and noticeably low budget. Renshaw concluded his review by calling the film "offensive, nasty, shabby, and revolting, but also great fun, if you can stand the sight of guts".[17] On his website Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings, Dave Sindelar panned the film, criticizing the acting and stating that director Lewis "manages to make his movies look like home movies without giving them that air of verisimilitude that would make them believable".[18] Dennis Schwartz of Ozus' World Movie Reviews gave Blood Feast a C grade, stating that it was "one of those really bad films that some take pleasure laughing at and others sneering at and others doing both".[19] Allmovie's Fred Beldin wrote, "The plot is threadbare, the acting is on a par with the clumsiest of high school plays and the direction is static and uninvolving. Nevertheless, this is one of the important releases in film history, ushering in a new acceptance of explicit violence that was obviously just waiting to be exploited".[20]

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 38% based on 13 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 4.48/10.[21]

Lewis wrote a novelization of Blood Feast to coincide with the release of the film.[22] The novel, which features significantly different versions of central characters Fuad Ramses, Pete Thornton and Suzette Fremont, has a much more humorous tone than the film and is set in Chicago rather than Miami. It was reprinted by FantaCo Enterprises in the 1980s.

A black-and-white two-issue comic book adaptation of the film was published by Eternity Comics in 1991. It was written by Jack Herman, penciled by Stan Timmons and inked by Mike Matthew.[23]

• Palmer, Randy (2000). Herschell Gordon Lewis, Godfather of Gore: The Films. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-0808-1.
• Romer, Jean-Claude; Silver, Alain (2000). "A Bloody New Wave in the United States (July 1964)". Horror Film Reader. New York: Limelight Editions. ISBN 0-87910-297-7.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Blood Feast

• Blood Feast at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Blood Feast at IMDb
• Blood Feast at the TCM Movie Database