Blood Feast (1963)
Herschell Gordon Lewis made Blood Feast in 1963 and it has the distinction of being the first gore film. In fact, H.G. and producer David F. Friedman will tell you that right at the beginning of the audio commentary. They'll also tell you that films like Halloween and the Nightmare on Elm Street series owe their existence to Blood Feast.
That's great that they were first and that an otherwise forgettable film will be remembered because of it, but that doesn't make it better. Just like I would rather fly in a 747 than in that creaky contraption the Wright Brothers launched at Kitty Hawk 500 years ago, I would rather watch Halloween or the first Nightmare on Elm Street than sit through this amateur hour and seven minutes again.
Blood Feast opens with a young woman coming home. She turns on the radio and hears a special bulletin of the "demented killer on the loose" variety and decides to take a bubble bath and let it all soak in. During the bath, she's attacked by a freak who hacks her leg off. We got a long loving look at the leg, but we also got our first clue in this mystery.
Our bathing beauty was reading a book before her amputation. And not just any book, but one entitled Ancient Weird Egyptian Rites. It's a good book, but I prefer Forbidden Spells To Raise The Dead from Baron Blood. Either though is a worthy addition to your library.
Flash to Fuad Ramses Egyptian Catering. Fuad is supposed to be Egyptian. We know this due to his awful grey hair and gigantic grey eyebrows straight out of an old kung fu movie. He also speaks in a slow and halting manner which also makes him foreign. Or a bad actor.
Despite "every officer doing double duty" on the murder case, only two cops are featured in the film. One of them is a guy who must be in his mid forties and whose hair is somehow brown and black. He was hired after the actor who had the role didn't show up. On the audio commentary, Friedman and H.G. brag that he couldn't act and that they told him to just shout his lines. It's good to know that because I thought he might be foreign.
The only clue the officers have is that the murdered girl belonged to a book club. Now, on the one hand, in real life that is a pretty weak clue. On the other hand, since this is the first slasher movie ever, you know that that is the most important clue and will lead to the case being solved.
Even as there are more killings, old two-toned hair goes to his weekly club meeting about ancient Egyptian culture. He won't have a problem charging the department overtime though because he gets invited to a dinner party catered by Fuad!
Two-toned hair remembers that a dying victim uttered the word "itar" and then remembers last week's lecture about the goddess "Ishtar". He calls up the lecturer and gets the low-down on Ishtar and the Blood Feast and that Fuad Ramses also happens to be the bestselling author of Ancient Weird Egyptian Rites and it all falls together nice and legal like!
Without a search warrant (exigent circumstances - foreigner suspected of nefarious crime!) he and his captain bust into the Egyptian catering store and find the big gross out scene. There's a dead body with guts and blood and body parts laying on a table, but it really isn't that effective. There's no tension and the shot goes on too long to be effective.
Next stop: dinner party. It's broken up and Fuad limps (all little evil people have limps) to the dump to make his escape. He makes his getaway in the back of a garbage truck, but the garbage men in the front just start crunching trash and Fuad gets a first class ticket to Osiris. The captain finishes it off with a crack about Fuad ending up like the garbage he was. Talk about piling on!
Laughable, fairly amateurish, contrived and not very stylish. For historical value only. And you know what that means: skip it.