Scene from Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1963 “Blood Feast”
This September horror and exploitation film fans mourned the death of the “Godfather of Gore,” Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Lewis, originally known as a producer of “nudie” pictures in the early ‘60s, became a horror trailblazer with 1963’s Blood Feast, considered to be the first “gore” film. That film about an Egyptian caterer who prepares a feast of human body parts became a drive-in sensation and was quickly followed up by the hillbilly splatter epic Two Thousand Maniacs and Color Me Blood Red, the story of an artist who paints in human blood.
Lewis continued to direct outrageous low-budget films into the early ‘70s, including the splatter classics The Wizard of Gore and The Gruesome Twosome as well as other types of non-gore exploitation fare such as the biker girl-gang flick She Devils On Wheels and the juvenile delinquency opus Just For the Hell of It.
Lewis’ Blood Feast was completely ground-breaking for its time, bringing the Grand Guignol tradition of blood and guts to the screen, and setting the stage for the new era of splatter horror which didn’t really come into its own until the late ‘70s. The film’s villain, Fuad Ramses, was the original machete-wielding maniac.
An unbelievably jam-packed box set of Lewis’ films was announced by Arrow Video last July in a limited edition of 500 copies and despite the hefty price tag, I found myself pre-ordering the thing right away. I was planning to review the set upon release, not knowing that Lewis would die a couple of months later and that the set would actually completely sell out before I got my copy.
The full Shock and Gore set is truly a wonder to behold and I don’t really want to rub it in to our readers just how cool this out-of-print beast is. Though anyone who reads about this and just HAS TO HAVE ONE, can probably find one on the second-hand market. Be warned, they are selling for about double the original cost (as of this writing, there are copies on eBay for around $500).
The box is bigger than a human head.
There IS, however, a lighter version of the set, without the books and barf bags and poster reproductions, and fake eyeball, that just contains the fourteen films. It’s called The Feast and is still currently available for under $160.
I’ll tell you right now, the price tag is TOTALLY worth it if you are a fan. The fourteen films, Blood Feast, Scum of the Earth, Two Thousand Maniacs, Moonshine Mountain, Color Me Blood Red, Something Weird, The Gruesome Twosome, A Taste of Blood, She Devils on Wheels, Just For the Hell of It, How to Make a Doll, The Wizard of Gore, This Stuff’ll Kill Ya, and The Gore Gore Girls are all presented in the best transfers available with an insane amount of extra features including loads of bonus interviews and documentaries on Lewis’ career.
The death of Lewis in September makes this release all the more important, and one hopes that he died knowing so much love was going into a retrospective collection of his life’s works. I’ve only waded about a quarter of the way into these discs, but so far I’m extremely impressed with the quality of the transfers on some of these films which have always looked bad on video releases. Granted, some of the original prints are messed up beyond repair (lots of scratches on The Gruesome Twosome print, for instance), but on a film like She Devils on Wheels there’s a night-and-day difference between what I’d previously seen and the new transfer. I’ve watched that film a dozen times from a dub I had of the original VHS release. I always assumed the film had kind of a sepia look to it. No sir, this thing is in blazing Eastmancolor in all of it’s magnificently over-saturated glory. Watching that film on this set was like seeing an entirely different movie.
The Feast box is limited to 2,500 copies and hasn’t sold out yet, but I seriously wouldn’t sleep on this if you are a fan.
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