There are films that influence horror, films that shape horror, and then there’s Blood Feast, which doesn’t so much “shape” anything as it kicks down the door of the American cinematic psyche wearing a butcher’s apron and a grin that says, “You paid 75 cents for this, sucker.”
This is the movie that invented the splatter film by accident, on purpose, and with the manic energy of a man who realized he could shoot a feature in a weekend if he didn’t bother with things like “acting,” “lighting,” or “dialogue that sounds like humans.” And bless him for it.
A deranged Egyptian caterer named Fuad Ramses—a man who looks like he was sculpted out of beef jerky and desperation—decides to resurrect the goddess Ishtar by murdering Miami co‑eds and tossing their limbs into what can only be described as a crockpot of doom. The police, played by two men who seem to have wandered in from a community theater production of Dragnet, attempt to stop him using the power of earnest confusion.
That’s it. That’s the movie. And yet it is glorious.
Calling it “acting” is generous. It’s more like regional dinner theater performed by mannequins who’ve recently achieved sentience, but the cast commits so hard you can’t help but salute them.
Mal Arnold leads the charge as Fuad Ramses, the world’s sweatiest, most overcaffeinated Egyptian caterer. Arnold doesn’t play Ramses so much as vibrate through the role — eyes bulging, limbs jerking, delivering lines like he’s trying to hypnotize the audience into forgiving the budget. He’s a one‑man fever dream, a human warning label, a man who looks like he hasn’t slept since Truman was president.
Connie Mason, Playboy Playmate turned ingénue, floats through the film as Suzette Fremont, the birthday girl destined for a party platter of doom. She brings a kind of wide‑eyed, sun‑drenched innocence that feels beamed in from a toothpaste commercial, which only makes the carnage around her more surreal.
Lyn Bolton plays Mrs. Dorothy Fremont, a woman who decides — with the confidence of a suburban monarch — that the best way to celebrate her daughter’s birthday is to hire a caterer who looks like he crawled out of a sarcophagus behind a pawn shop. Bolton’s line readings are so earnest they achieve a kind of cosmic comedy.
And then there are the cops:
William Kerwin (credited as Thomas Wood) as Detective Pete Thornton, and Scott H. Hall as Detective Frank, two men who solve crimes with the combined energy of a pair of substitute teachers trying to break up a hallway fight. Their scenes feel like a PSA about the dangers of underfunded police departments.
Imagine a world where color film stock is a new toy and Herschell Gordon Lewis is a toddler hopped up on Pixy Stix. Every frame is a lurid, sun‑bleached postcard from a universe where blood is the consistency of Campbell’s tomato soup and splashes like someone dropped a bowling ball into a kiddie pool.
The gore isn’t realistic. It isn’t meant to be. It’s carnival‑barker gore, the kind that winks at you while screaming. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a sideshow performer yelling, “STEP RIGHT UP AND WATCH ME RIP OUT THIS WOMAN’S TONGUE WITH A PAIR OF BARBECUE TONGS.”
And you do. And you clap.
Because Blood Feast is pure, unfiltered cinematic id. No studio notes. No committees. No shame. Just a man with a camera, a bucket of fake blood, and the audacity to say, “What if we just SHOW the gore?”
It’s punk rock before punk rock.
It’s grindhouse before grindhouse.
It’s the first time American audiences collectively said, “Wait… are we allowed to do that?”
And Herschell Gordon Lewis said, “Oh, we’re just getting started.”
Home Video Distributor: Arrow Films
Available on Blu-ray - November 10, 2020
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English
Video: 1080p
Audio: LPCM Mono
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; seven-disc-set
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A
When Arrow resurrected the Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast Blu‑ray box set, it wasn’t just a re‑release — it was a full‑scale archaeological dig conducted by maniacs who love cinema too much to let its weirdest artifacts rot in the swamp. This set arrives like a grindhouse holy text, a lavish, oversized altar to the Godfather of Gore, packed with restorations so crisp you can practically count the brushstrokes on the latex intestines. Arrow treats Blood Feast and its deranged siblings with the reverence usually reserved for Bergman or Kurosawa, which is exactly the kind of cosmic joke H.G. Lewis would appreciate. The packaging is a riot of lurid artwork, the extras are deep‑cut academic fever dreams, and the whole thing feels like a lovingly curated museum exhibit dedicated to the moment American cinema shrugged off good taste and said, “Let’s see what happens if we show EVERYTHING.” It’s not just a box set — it’s a blood‑drenched celebration of outsider filmmaking at its most gloriously unhinged.
Video
In Arrow’s Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast box set, Blood Feast sits like a sacred relic—the Rosetta Stone of red‑dyed mayhem. Restored in high definition, the film’s colors pop like a fever dream painted on a motel wall. You can practically smell the Florida humidity and the latex organs. The restoration doesn’t “fix” the film. It immortalizes it. Every rough edge, every clumsy cut, every moment where an actor forgets their line and stares into the void—it’s all preserved like a prehistoric mosquito in amber. This is cinema archaeology at its most delirious.
Audio
Arrow’s restoration of Blood Feast doesn’t just clean up the picture — it resurrects the film’s gloriously primitive audio with a PCM 1.0 mono track that feels like it was piped directly from a 1963 Miami grindhouse through a time‑warped speaker cone. This is Herschell Gordon Lewis sound design in its purest form: dialogue that occasionally sounds like it was recorded inside a broom closet, music cues that crash in like a marching band falling down a staircase, and the wet, sloshing “gore” effects that hit your ears with the fidelity of a man stirring a bucket of chili off‑mic. Arrow doesn’t try to modernize or sterilize it — they preserve every hiss, pop, and analog imperfection like sacred relics of exploitation cinema’s birth. It’s raw, it’s unvarnished, and it’s exactly how Blood Feast should sound: like the audio track is daring you to complain while it revs a chainsaw made of static.
Supplements:
The special features play like a midnight‑movie séance where scholars, weirdos, and exploitation lifers gather to praise the Godfather of Gore. You get archival interviews with Herschell Gordon Lewis himself, where he cheerfully explains how he invented an entire subgenre with pocket change and a pathological disregard for the MPAA. There’s a commentary track featuring Lewis and producer David F. Friedman riffing like two carnival barkers reminiscing about the time they conned America into watching a man hack off limbs with a machete from a hardware store. Arrow also loads the disc with featurettes on the film’s production, the birth of splatter cinema, and the cultural shockwaves that followed. You get outtakes, trailers, radio spots, and the kind of behind‑the‑scenes ephemera that feels like it was rescued from a Florida storage unit moments before the roof caved in. It’s a treasure trove of grindhouse archaeology — a lovingly curated museum of mayhem for anyone who wants to understand how a no‑budget gore flick became a cornerstone of cult cinema.
Commentary:
- See special features
Special Features:
- DISC ONE: BLOOD FEAST (1963) & SCUM OF THE EARTH (1963)
- * Introduction to the films by director Herschell Gordon Lewis
- * Audio Commentary on Blood Feast with Lewis and producer David F. Friedman
- * Blood Feast Outtakes
- * Blood Perceptions filmmakers Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact) and Rodney Ascher (Room 237) offer their insight on Blood Feast and the importance of Herschell Gordon Lewis
- * Herschell s History archival interview in which Lewis discusses his entry into the film industry including Scum of the Earth
- * How Herschell Found His Niche Lewis discusses more of his early work in nudie cuties and the making of The Adventures of Lucky Pierre
- * Archival interview with Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman from 1987
- * Carving Magic (1959) vintage short featuring Blood Feast s Bill Kerwin
- * Blood Feast Radio Spot and Trailer
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