Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold) is an Egyptian housed in suburban Miami who, in addition to being stationed at the catering business for some chain restaurants, is also a devotee of an ancient ritual related to the mythology of the goddess Ishtar. Rameses, influenced by some ancient texts, is convinced that he can resurrect the latter through the fulfillment of a body made up of human fragments.
His victims are young girls, destined to immolate part of their body (or their internal organs) to the "collage" consisting of multiple parts: arms, legs, torso and ... head.
Rameses, once the body is composed, is ready to perform the ceremony and uses the last (under hypnosis) sacrificial victim, destined to donate the most important part of the body: the skull ...
So he makes use of the fest, held in honor of the beautiful Suzette Freemont (playmate Connie Mason), to put his delusional plan into motion.
But persistent police investigations lead, despite their catastrophic outcome, to an unexpected ending: when Ramses is forced to flee to hide inside a garbage can....
Until the early 1960s, cinema had never dared to address, openly, violence in its graphic and explicit representation.
David F. Friedman, a producer already the creator of some prurient "nudies," in cahoots with a professor (such H.G.Lewis) of English literature, employed at an American state university (University of Mississippi) sets up a story that relies essentially on the depiction of explicit and crude sequences of blood: basting it all with an essential and almost ridiculous plot.
At the time, censorship operated, solely, on sequences of sex and offensive language and did not contemplate explicit violence: so much so that Blood Feast was released without a ban, serving as a warning to the regulatory body, which was already expanding its scope with Lewis's next film...
Friedman and Lewis, gratified by the film's resounding box office (shot with only $24,000 and in the space of 10 days according to the director himself!) teamed up, founding an independent production company with which they made another handful of splatter...
To give an idea of the paucity of the film, it will suffice to say that the definition given by a journalist -of the time- outraged by the viewing of the film ("amateur's night in a butcher store") is, as appropriate as ever: since in the film (for the first time) there is a huge deployment of effects and effectacle made (by the director himself) by the use of blood and various organs (belonging to animals, of course)...
Shot in a manner that to call sloppy is magnanimous, and acted in a manner -maybe- less than pedestrian, Lewis's film would be taken as a model by film critic John MacCarthy and referred to as the starting point for a horror genre codified--from the onomatopoeic to splat--as Splatter (the neologism appears, for the first time, in MacCarthy's book: Splatter Movies--1981)...
In conclusion, the very importance of Blood Feast, consists in having set the course for a new type of horror cinema, which will be taken up (often with more established budgets) by better-known auteurs, thus influencing the collective imagination that, over the course of the following decade, will see the splatter formula consolidated...
It should be added that the director's intentions were, completely, outside of an artistic sense or a "heartfelt" affection for the genre: as is evident from some of his recent statements. The purposes of Blood Feast (and sequels) were purely economic; so much so that having achieved a certain amount of wealth, Lewis would refrain-from the early 1970s, until 2002-from making another film: Blood Feast 2, made more out of pressure from fans than out of true authorial motivations...
In the early 1970s, while the director remains involved in making some commercials, partner Friedman aims to produce some porn films...
In Blood Feast, Friedman himself (as a drunken husband, one would think) also makes a good appearance (due to shortages), while Lewis lends his voice to a radio announcer....
In the mid-1980s, at the hands of director Jakie Kong, Lewis's film was the focus of a (very free) reinterpretation-Blood Diner-also coming out in our theaters under the title of The Restaurant on the Corner: in which the splatter component is obnubilated, however, by a plot that is far too ironic, so much so that it immediately passed (also due to the cut home video editions) into the limbo of forgotten films...
Because of its visceral component, Blood Feast was banned in parts of Germany and the United Kingdom (from 1984 until 2001)...
In Italy, of course, it never had a circulation: except at a "submerged" level in the mid-1980s, circulating in pitiful and obnoxious VHS editions/copies in the original language; then on DVD (import) at almost exorbitant costs. Until a pay TV station decided to air a version (cut) with subtitles, in our language, after the mid-1990s...
Review by Undying1
