Blood Feast (1963)

  I don’t really remember when I first heard of the film BLOOD FEAST and its notoriety as being the first gore/splatter film but I do remember first renting it on VHS when I was 16 years old. I remember a few key gore scenes but it didn’t seem as a big deal for me then. The movie, especially the story started to grow on me. I loved the story because it was simple and effective. The acting was decent and carried the film along. The directing and score was excellent because I felt as if I was in a gory fairytale.

 Fuad Ramses played by Mal Arnold is clearly the star of the picture. Ramses runs an exotic catering service but his real desire is to perform an ancient Egyptian ritual called the blood feast. In this feast a choice virgin is sacrificed so that the goddess Ishtar will come to life.  So he limps across town killing young women and stealing their body parts to cook in a stew in honor of Ishtar. In the back room of the store he has prepared a life size idol of Ishtar which he worships, cooks stew, and bake body parts for. And oh yeah he also whips a girl chained to the wall.

 As for the gore, well you have to keep in mind that this movie came out in 1963! It was revolutionary for it’s time but even today you can still get chills. I’m thinking of the scene where he opens a girl’s mouth and pulls out her tongue. It’s slowly done, there’s lot’s of blood and the tongue looks great. The scene at the beach looks real as hell. I have seen real pictures of a person with their head smashed (don’t ask) and this looks very real.  I want to mention that I also noticed some light humor in the movie and it adds to the whole feel. A lot of the lines are very funny. Most of the dialogue between the two policemen is ridiculous but very funny. You have to enjoy every part of the film. I just finished watching it for the second time and I wouldn’t mind watching it again. Also Faud Ramses is one of the strangest villains I have ever seen. His eyes and how he takes the whole ritual so seriously is great. If you want to laugh look out for one of the last scenes in the movie where he is trying to get Suzette, the innocent victim onto the table to sacrifice her while her family naively waits in the room next door!

 With BLOOD FEAST directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, the godfather of gore and produced by David Friedman, gore films were born. A gore, or splatter film, as it may also be called is a movie whose chief purpose is to portray gore, blood, and carnage. The story is then wound around that. Lewis and Friedman produced several other gore films including: TWO THOUSAND MANIACS, GORE GORE GIRLS, and WIZARD OF GORE.  All of these and more are available on DVD.

If you love gore films you owe it to yourself to at least rent and see where the whole sub-genre began. We have a classic here!

4 / 5 STARS

The Long Island Cannibal Massacre (1980)

  

 I’d read a little about Nathan Schiff and his movies. He wrote, directed and produced four features: WEASELS RIP MY FLESH, THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE, THEY DON’T CUT THE GRASS ANYMORE and VERMILLION EYES. WEASELS was made on a $400 budget when Schiff was just 16 and I believe all of these films were shot on super 8. All but VERMILLION are available on DVD.

     The plot here is really strange but enjoyable for this movie. You have to understand that this is extremely low budget stuff with no real actors and unpolished gritty footage. If you don’t mind all that then your in for a wild ride. The two main characters are Jim, an ex cop, and Jack a confused guy that’s mixed up in some recent killings. The story is that Jack’s father and four friends went to Africa and returned with a feverish leprosy that invokes in it’s victims an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Now since these men are weakened by their illness and shunned by society it’s up to Jack to provide them with their meals. So Jack hires Bruce, a man that always wears a pillowcase and swimming goggles over his head  and Zed, a young biker to kill victims for the hungry lepers.

 Jim does some snooping around and does get some information from here or there but I think his character is poorly developed through pointless scenes like the one on the yacht with his wife and conversations he has with his cop buddy. Therefore the quick change regarding his character at the end confuses more than shocks me.

 There are some pretty good gore scenes throughout including a lawnmower, a tire iron, a cinder block, a van door and a chainsaw used for gruesomely delightful purposes. Shall I add a fun scene where a delusional Jack has a conversation with a garbage bag full of body parts or when Jack brings food to one of his Dad’s friends crawling in the snow with a face full of what looks like squash yellow vomit.

You all know I rarely divulge much of the good stuff in the end of the film. I am only going to say that Jack revolts against his dad and has a final battle with him. Here are some excellent uses with a chainsaw and an assault rifle. And the very end is creepy and it involves children…Oh my!

3 / 5 STARS

Tumbling Doll of Flesh (1998)

Tamakichi Anaru makes porn films but horror fans probably know him best for his extreme sex/gore trilogy. We have the movie I am reviewing today: NIKU DARUMA aka TUMBLING DOLL OF FLESH, PSYCHO THE SNUFF REELS. Then there is SATSU STASU (AYAME) aka SUICIDE DOLLS. Finally there is WATASHI NO AKAI HARAWATA (HANA) aka HUNGRY MOUTH, WOMEN'S FLESH: MY RED GUTS.

English subtitles for TUMBLING DOLL are nonexistent, so I have pieced together IMDb info with several other reviews I have read online to explain the movie. Two porn directors have just picked a young woman, Kana, and a dude named Kiku to star in their new porn film, which will end up being a snuff film, unbeknownst to Kana. It is unclear whether Kiku is in on it but I believe he was informed on at least part of the truth. The fucking doesn’t just burst out, but the gang talk, joke and relax about the project. Kana buys a snack (which looked to me like fireworks lol)  and they sit around a table and have lunch. I really liked that everyone gets to know each other and prepare for their roles.

The porn couple get on a bed and the show starts. Kiku eats her out, fingers her cunt, and pushes his cock into her. This is your typical porn stuff, except as many of you may already know; many Japanese porn scenes have the genitals blurred out. After a snack, phase two starts. This involves bondage, hot candle wax, and whipping. Kana is a little uncomfortable but she agrees to go along with it. They tie her up fucking real tight with coarse rope. They whip her and for a taste of kink: give her an enema. After this portion of the film is done Kana lets them know that all of this is too much for her and she decides to leave. While doing so, she is whacked on the head with a bat and now the real fun starts.

Kana awakens tied to the bed. Her legs are spread and her pussy is exposed. One of the directors chops her foot off. She will slowly be dismembered. Kiku is instructed to continue fucking the ‘tumbling doll of flesh’. To silence Kana’s screams her tongue is pulled half out of her mouth and grated with a potato peeler! They then cut of an arm and another leg. The gore is so damn realistic! It really resembles what a snuff film may be like. For the coupe de grace, she is partly disemboweled and Kiku is told to fuck her innards. He sticks his cock through the small wound and fucking cums inside of her!! They chop off his dick later for no apparent reason and that’s pretty much it! It is a horrific, depraved fantasy to see this quadruple amputee ‘doll‘ on a bloody bed. The images are shocking and deathly grim!! It takes a lot to shock me or make me feel queasy but this film almost got me there.

Nearly all of the reviews I have read do this film any justice. Anaru gives us the gore, he gives us hardcore porn scenes; but to consider this flick just another shallow Japanese faux snuff shock film is grossly inaccurate. Unlike GP: FLOWER OF FLESH AND BLOOD, TUMBLING DOLL gives us living, breathing characters and an engaging story. The drama is visceral and disturbing. Although there are no English subs you can follow the story quite well. I would give my left nut for a subtitled version of this rare gem. You’d be hard pressed to find another faux snuff film with this level of maturity and violence. 

4 / 5 STARS