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When I'd first watched Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast, that pioneering splatter film, I'd considered it one of the worst movies I'd ever seen. Over the years, I was willing to grant that my opinion may have been coloured by my lack of exposure to exploitation movies, and when I revisited it a few years ago, I didn't exactly like it but was willing to concede that it had enough interesting qualities to merit a viewing. Soon after, I watched Two Thousand Maniacs!, his skewering of southern hospitality, and while I thought it had been bettered by the films it inspired, I found it mean and energetic enough to enjoy. I had mixed reactions to his subsequent splatter films (enjoying the cheerful sadism of The Gore Gore Girls but finding The Wizard of Gore interminable). I also started getting the sense that Lewis was kind of a hack, so for years I'd held off on watching the third film of the "Blood Trilogy", Color Me Blood Red, about an artist who uses the blood of his victims for his paintings. (If this sounds an awful lot like Roger Corman's A Bucket of Blood, Lewis has copped to the influence.) But hell, while I'm stuck at home with my viewing standards significantly lowered (not sure if you're aware, but there is a pandemic raging right now), I figured I'd finally give this a shot. Worst case scenario, I waste eighty or so minutes.
It's tempting to read something personal into the story of thoroughly unappreciated artist who only gets attention when he starts incorporating extreme violence into his work, but everything I've read about Lewis suggests that his motivations were entirely commercial, and I'm not sure he really sells the main character's arc. (It's also hard to reconcile any notions of Lewis as a serious artist with the wealth of water-bike footage, which reeks of obvious runtime padding and product placement. But hey, check out those sweet water-bikes!) It does help however that the movie matches the belligerence of the thoroughly unappealing protagonist, who spends much of the movie doing the Kubrick face (head lowered, glowering above) so that it's a shock when you realize he in fact has a terrible mustache. (In this respect it also helps that Gordon Oas-Heim, the actor playing him, has none of the likability of Dick Miller, the lead in A Bucket of Blood.) He also garners some empathy as most of his victims are inconsiderate ****s who decide to use his private property for their leisure without asking. How would you feel if somebody started sunbathing in your front yard? Or found your vehicle unattended and took it for a joy ride?
Aside from a handful of moments (a shot of a victim having been disemboweled, another of the maggot-covered face of a rotting corpse), this lacks the relatively imaginative violence of Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs!, although the bold red colour of the blood gives the violence enough visual interest. Audience expectations are further subverted after the movie introduces two thoroughly annoying beatnik types but fails to kill them off or when it repeatedly raises the possibility of T&A only to quash it immediately. (Lewis had stopped directing nudie cuties at this point after the market dried up.) Lewis shoots the proceedings in bright, comic strip colours, so that the movie has a distinct look even when his visual style remains pretty rudimentary. This is a movie that benefits heavily from being seen in a nice transfer (available on Tubi or from Arrow Video) as I imagine the colours didn't pop quite as strongly on the tattered prints it likely played in back in the drive-in days (and probably not on TV either, judging from the time I saw Blood Feast on cable). It does however make it more noticeable when the camera isn't in focus (which happens enough times to affect the movie's overall visual character).
Did I enjoy this? Yeah, more or less. Has Lewis as a director changed in my esteem as a result? Not really.
Color Me Blood Red (Lewis, 1965)
When I'd first watched Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast, that pioneering splatter film, I'd considered it one of the worst movies I'd ever seen. Over the years, I was willing to grant that my opinion may have been coloured by my lack of exposure to exploitation movies, and when I revisited it a few years ago, I didn't exactly like it but was willing to concede that it had enough interesting qualities to merit a viewing. Soon after, I watched Two Thousand Maniacs!, his skewering of southern hospitality, and while I thought it had been bettered by the films it inspired, I found it mean and energetic enough to enjoy. I had mixed reactions to his subsequent splatter films (enjoying the cheerful sadism of The Gore Gore Girls but finding The Wizard of Gore interminable). I also started getting the sense that Lewis was kind of a hack, so for years I'd held off on watching the third film of the "Blood Trilogy", Color Me Blood Red, about an artist who uses the blood of his victims for his paintings. (If this sounds an awful lot like Roger Corman's A Bucket of Blood, Lewis has copped to the influence.) But hell, while I'm stuck at home with my viewing standards significantly lowered (not sure if you're aware, but there is a pandemic raging right now), I figured I'd finally give this a shot. Worst case scenario, I waste eighty or so minutes.
It's tempting to read something personal into the story of thoroughly unappreciated artist who only gets attention when he starts incorporating extreme violence into his work, but everything I've read about Lewis suggests that his motivations were entirely commercial, and I'm not sure he really sells the main character's arc. (It's also hard to reconcile any notions of Lewis as a serious artist with the wealth of water-bike footage, which reeks of obvious runtime padding and product placement. But hey, check out those sweet water-bikes!) It does help however that the movie matches the belligerence of the thoroughly unappealing protagonist, who spends much of the movie doing the Kubrick face (head lowered, glowering above) so that it's a shock when you realize he in fact has a terrible mustache. (In this respect it also helps that Gordon Oas-Heim, the actor playing him, has none of the likability of Dick Miller, the lead in A Bucket of Blood.) He also garners some empathy as most of his victims are inconsiderate ****s who decide to use his private property for their leisure without asking. How would you feel if somebody started sunbathing in your front yard? Or found your vehicle unattended and took it for a joy ride?
Aside from a handful of moments (a shot of a victim having been disemboweled, another of the maggot-covered face of a rotting corpse), this lacks the relatively imaginative violence of Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs!, although the bold red colour of the blood gives the violence enough visual interest. Audience expectations are further subverted after the movie introduces two thoroughly annoying beatnik types but fails to kill them off or when it repeatedly raises the possibility of T&A only to quash it immediately. (Lewis had stopped directing nudie cuties at this point after the market dried up.) Lewis shoots the proceedings in bright, comic strip colours, so that the movie has a distinct look even when his visual style remains pretty rudimentary. This is a movie that benefits heavily from being seen in a nice transfer (available on Tubi or from Arrow Video) as I imagine the colours didn't pop quite as strongly on the tattered prints it likely played in back in the drive-in days (and probably not on TV either, judging from the time I saw Blood Feast on cable). It does however make it more noticeable when the camera isn't in focus (which happens enough times to affect the movie's overall visual character).
Did I enjoy this? Yeah, more or less. Has Lewis as a director changed in my esteem as a result? Not really.