Corporeal Catering

It could be argued that there was a sort of fundamental shift in American culture in the early sixties, a kind of subconscious push toward incipient violence that would pave the way for the turbulent years to come.
One could also safely assume that absolutely none of this entered the minds of David F. Friedman and Herschell Gordon Lewis as they crafted the film that would define their careers and stand as the first full color depiction of blood and guts in cinematic history: I speak, of course, of Blood Feast.

At the onset of 1963, Freidman and Lewis were simply a few more undistinguished players in the sexploitation biz. After meeting in Chicago in the early fifties, they trudged their way through the years of the nudie cuties, dipped a toe into the roughies with Scum of the Earth, and even tried their hands at a nudist musical, all with modest returns.
America’s sleazehounds had grown tired of the meager offerings before them: there wasn’t enough sex in the nudies, not enough nudity in the roughies, and with the code still managing to wrap its withered tentacles around any attempts to subvert it, the outlook grew increasingly bleak.
It was clear something had to change. The drive-in needed something new, some heretofore uncharted territory in titillation, something to bring the audiences back, salivating for more. It came in the form of a simple, four letter word: Gore.

The true testament to the legacy of Freidman and Lewis is that insane leap of logic that led them to keep the sex appeal, but lose the promise of sex or even nudity, and replace it with slaughter.
So it was that in the winter of 1963, Hersch and Freidman packed up and left for Florida, where they recruited a few of their old favorites from the nudie years, a scattering of locals who wanted to be in pictures, and Playboy playmate Connie Mason, who, despite having to have the majority of her lines cut from the film (because she couldn’t remember them), looked great on screen, and would go on to star in Two Thousand Maniacs, the second film in what would come to be known as the “Blood Trilogy”.
Fearing a large scale backlash if the film was opened in Chicago, Blood Feast was unleashed on audiences at the Starlite Drive In in Peoria, Illinois. The audience had no idea what they were getting into. And they ate it up. The Starlite sold out every show for weeks. Bolstered by a brilliant marketing campaign (trailers with a stern warning tacked on admonishing viewers with heart conditions or young children present to leave the theater for the next 90 seconds) and a review by Kevin Thomas of the LA Times calling Blood Feast “a blot on the American film industry”, the film left an indelible blood red stain on the face of the country.
Four months later, President Kennedy ate a bullet. Coincidence? Well… yes.
Still, it’s hard to imagine now, in our terminally cynical post-modern age, the impact that Blood Feast had on audiences in 1963. Or the impact it had on a thousand other exploiteers looking for new horizons.

Jesus! Enough pontificating! Enough history! Even I’m getting sick of it.

Suffice it to say, watching Blood Feast now, at the remove of 40 years, is pure, unbridled joy.
The acting is terrible, the plot is ludicrous, the effects are the height of cheese (although, it must be said, for the time, they were pretty innovative, especially on a budget of only $25,000), and I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
Including a plot summary would ruin the experience. You just have to go into this one blind. So all I can say is watch it. Watch it in all it’s leg slicing, brain expunging, tongue ripping, face peeling glory.
You won’t regret it.

Next Week: The South shall rise again! And eat you.