Color Me Blood Red.

Review #2278: Color Me Blood Red.

Cast: 

Gordon Oas-Heim (Adam Sorg), Candi Conder (April Carter), Iris Marshall (Mrs. Carter), Elyn Warner (Gigi), Scott H. Hall (Mr. Farnsworth), William Harris (Gregorovich), Jerome Eden (Rolf), Pat Finn-Lee (Sydney), and Jim Jaekel (Jack) Written and Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis (#752 - Blood Feast, #756 - Monster A-Go-Go, #2122 - Two Thousand Maniacs!)

Review: 

 “Oh, just wild imagination. We had no artistic master, maybe the Grand Guignol in Paris. The notion was simply something that we felt might outrage without being obscene. That’s a very narrow line to walk. Even today, try to think of something that will outrage without being obscene. It’s difficult. So, gore was the natural solution to that.”

If you remember correctly, Herschell Gordon Lewis had directed his first two horror films with Blood Feast (1963) and Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) with plenty of splatter to go around. With this film, it represented a change in seasons. Up until this point, he had made films in collaboration with producer David F. Friedman for his first twelve films as a filmmaker. However, it would be their last together due to issues involving their business partnership (apparently, at some point in time they were in a deal with Sid Reich and Stan Kohlberg that resulted in acrimony involving money). Some have apparently labeled the aforementioned Feast and Maniacs as part of a trilogy when it comes to blood and gore and the Friedman-Lewis partnership, and it should be noted that inklings of doing another film of "super blood and gore" were scrapped on the grounds that it might oversaturate the market. Friedman would continue to produce with exploitation films (most notably Ilsa: She wolf of the SS [1975]) for many years; he died in 2011 at the age of 87. Lewis kept going in his own brand of aiming for whatever market he felt like doing, which could involve taking time to "finish" incomplete crap like Monster a Go-Go (1965), children's movies like Jimmy, the Boy Wonder (1966) and a handful of further horror films with A Taste of Blood (1967), Something Weird (1967), The Gruesome Twosome (1967), The Wizard of Gore (1970), and The Gore Gore Girls (1972) before his first retirement. 

Really, just watch A Bucket of Blood (1959) when it comes to artist-infused murder. I did not have high hopes for this film, but even watching this ended up with very middling results. You get the same type of characteristics in watching a movie that looks and feels like something that came out of Florida in cheap and allegedly grimy aims that you did with Lewis and his last two movies. The body-count isn't nearly as considerable as one might expect (three, and only two blood paintings get 'done"), and it just isn't as amusing to watch even when one has that sinking feeling of being in a mediocre movie for 79 minutes. Oas-Heim apparently wasn't the most tolerable of actors to work with Lewis, who apparently was in just this and Moonshine Mountain. His attempt at the tortured artist is somehow the highlight when it comes to acting, probably because God only knows how one of us (you, the reader, or heaven help us, me) would do in acting. You might wonder how this ranks lower than his Maniacs film, a feature that had a song about the South rising again. Well, that movie actually had a strange chaotic element that felt in touch with actually making one interested in just what the hell was going to happen next in basically "hicksploitation". You don't really get that here, since even asking why one can't get the proper red for a canvas seems like trying to insult a baby for not shutting up. Hell, the movie sets up an art critic who sets the score of just what our lead character is in terms of bad art and decides, yes, maybe he really is just an artistic imposter that might as well go for selling out. The actual death scenes aren't even that good either, with one scene being on a paddle-boat because if you're going to shill something, shill the idea that folks will get killed with boats. You have to remember that Lewis was the kind of filmmaker that aimed to make do with his budget (so no rehearsals and shoot as much as possible), complete with seeing filmmaking as a business, not art. As such, what you get is a mishmash of stuff that could either have fit right in with home movies (just take a look at those fresh beach shots) or, well, stuff made fast. It doesn't even feel worth calling a piece of crap, really, because the movie is basically the equivalent of someone going up to you to show a dead animal. What does one even say to such a weird thing? Calling him a poor man's Roger Corman might as well be the case. As a whole, if you really like to see a middle of the road "blood movie" that happens to approach its 60th anniversary soon and you just need to scratch that itch, well, don't say I didn't warn you.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Two Thousand Maniacs!

Review #2122: Two Thousand Maniacs!

Cast: 

William Kerwin (Tom White), Connie Mason (Terry Adams), Taalkeus Blank (Mayor Buckman), Ben Moore (Lester MacDonald), Gary Bakeman (Rufus Tate), Jerome Eden (John Miller), Shelby Livingston (Bea Miller), Michael Korb (David Wells), and Yvonne Gilbert (Beverly Wells) Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis (#752 - Blood Feast and #756 - Monster A-Go-Go)

Review: 

Okay, so it might seem weird that a filmmaker from Pittsburgh ended up making an exploitation film involving the South that might as well seem like a precursor to future southern-fried horror films in the next decade. Born in Pittsburgh but raised mostly in Chicago, Herschell Gordon Lewis actually had studied in journalism at Northwestern University before teaching communications at Mississippi State University. Of course, he was lured into working radio managing and subsequently in advertising. In the late 1950s, he worked as director on a couple of advertisements and eventually bought a share with the company he was making them for. He became a director in 1961 with exploitation feature Living Venus, which would lead to expanded fare of what some call "nude cuties". By 1963, Lewis and producing partner David F. Friedman wanted to tap into a market that was not declining like the nude market, and they landed upon blood and splatter with what became Blood Feast (1963), Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965) are considered a trilogy of sorts when it comes to the splatter film pioneers. He made a variety of films using his funds he made in advertising that covered a few topics for exploitation, such as birth control, or, well comedy splatter. After retiring for three decades in 1972, Lewis returned for two more films in the new millennium before his death in 2016 at age 90.

The Pleasant Valley Boys make an appearance in the film, because no film could make sense unless you have a banjo playing group here to give you a song that seems quite literal when they mean "The South Shall Rise Again". The plot was apparently influenced by the musical Brigadoon, which seems insane enough to make rational sense. If you've seen any film that plays on the stereotypes of traveling in the Deep South, well, here's one that leans in on bits of gore and goofy sadistic weirdos for the pile. Set in 1965 as a centennial "celebration" of a small Georgia town (remember what happened in 1865) is this odd little film. I actually kind of liked this film, probably because I found it amusing when it came to such a half-baked plot of revenge that could only come from the idea of having targets that aren't even that more sympathetic than the oddballs that show a variation of the loser flag (read: Confederate flag, and I say that as a Texan). It plays on prejudices with a useful underdog and, well, effects that had their standing point of credibility if one allows it for 1964. One might have a weird time figuring what is the best of the attempts at gore when it comes to unsettling thoughts about being wrapped up for death, and that probably falls to the one where a person is tied down while a dunk tank modified with a giant rock is right by them. Probably the standout is a man named Taalkeus "Talky" Blank, an Illinois stage actor who went by "Jeffrey Allen" in the features he made with Lewis because his lack of membership in the Screen Actors Guild. Lewis liked his Southern impersonation enough to use him for a handful of films. It's good ol' boy conniving stuff that works to the film's advantage, although Kerwin and Mason (familiar in a few other Lewis films) do just fine as the resident Northern underdogs. It's a strange film that goes on the cliché of weird dwellers that might just have a prejudice or bitterness up their sleeve to go with a favoring of gore that might have a familiarity with the viewer more than they like to admit. In that sense, Lewis has made a curious gory winner that attracts my approval to my pleasurable surprise.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Next: Anaconda.

Monster A Go-Go.

Review #756: Monster A Go-Go

Cast
Phil Morton (Col. Steve Connors), June Travis (Ruth), Peter M. Thompson (Dr. Chris Manning), Lorri Perry (Girl at Dance), and Henry Hite (Frank Douglas/The Monster). Directed by Bill Rebane and Herschell Gordon Lewis (#752 - Blood Feast)

Review
Happy Turkey Day, everyone. What better way to celebrate then with a movie...like this? Once again, I'm covering a movie riffed by MST3K (which will return in the near future), but this movie has an infamous legacy to begin with. Rebane ran out of money to make the film in 1961, but the story doesn't end here. Lewis needed a film to fill a double bill (Naturally, the first film was named Moonshine Mountain), and so he filmed a few extra scenes and dialogue to make the movie "whole". Isn't that a good sign, watching a movie made solely to make money. It's sad how a movie can be so boring, but it's also sad how a movie can look so boring as well. Nothing in this movie is interesting to watch, not even the Monster's makeup is interesting. Having narration (by "Sheldon Seymour", naturally) either means the movie has no foundation of plot on its own, or is a way to pad the movie out. In this case, the narration fulfills both. The first sign of trouble is not the tiny space capsule, nor the audio, nor the laughable song, but the steps in what appear to be a galaxy floor. Seeing those (space-looking) steps try to evoke terror set the tone for what is an awful movie. It's hard to pay attention to this movie largely because of how boring it is. You would have more fun actually looking for a turkey to eat. If this movie had a soundtrack, it would consist largely of pings, which is sadly the only thing in the movie that will stick with you.  I would recommend the MST3K version of this only because that features actual talent. This is a movie that would be an insult to movie making, but that would imply that this was actually meant as a movie to entertain. The ending might be the only thing one will remember from this, because of how awful it is.

If you are wondering, this is the ending.
As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no trail! There was no giant, no monster, no thing called "Douglas" to be followed. There was nothing in the tunnel but the puzzled men of courage, who suddenly found themselves alone with shadows and darkness! 

With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends.  Astronaut Frank Douglas, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some eight thousand miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from his capsule! Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled? Case in point: The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?

Yes, there was no monster. By that logic, there was no review of this movie. I was never here. I may have very well never existed. Movie Night may have been just a dream made by a teenager bored out of his mind during sleep that felt like nearly five years but was in reality just 10 minutes.

Or maybe the movie just stinks.

Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy turkey (or Turducken), cranberry sauce, stuffing (if you like it, anyway), potatoes (sweet or mashed), ham, dinner rolls, and whatever else you enjoy. And thank you for reading this.

Overall, I give it 0 out of 10 stars.

Blood Feast.

Review #752: Blood Feast.

Cast
William Kerwin (Detective Pete Thornton), Mal Arnold (Fuad Ramses), Connie Mason (Suzette Fremont), Scott H. Hall (Frank, Police Captain), Lyn Bolton (Mrs. Dorothy Fremont), and Toni Calvert (Trudy Sanders) Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Review
Well, there's a lot of blood in the movie, that's for sure. Often considered the first splatter film, Blood Feast was directed on a low budget and filmed in less than a month in Miami. The movie notably used gimmicks such as barf-bags and filing injunctions in counties to attract attention, which succeeded given that the movie reportedly made around four million dollars. Lewis said this about his film: "I've often referred to Blood Feast as a Walt Whitman poem. It's no good, but it was the first of its type." While I can't say much about Whitman, his description of the movie is mostly accurate. The acting and characterization are pretty much nonexistent, but I came to expect that from a movie that sure loves to showcase blood. The movie moves along quickly in the sense that you get to know who is the killer and why they are doing this in a short period of time. For me, the movie wasn't too disturbing, and I did appreciate the effort it took to make the movie look so...convincing, if you will. In one scene, they used a sheep tongue in one of the scenes as...you get the idea. Is the movie for everyone? Of course not. We may all have blood, but not all of us like seeing it, though for my money the movie is just fine. If you want something that's easy to find on the internet, or something to irk your friends (as opposed to how you usually irk your friends), this might be for you. I can't say it was a good movie due to the flaws, but I at least can recognize the movie for what it is and how it opened the gates for more movies with lots of blood. Happy Halloween.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.