1960s Herschell Gordon Lewis Part Two

BLOOD FEAST

(1963)

Overall: MEH

 

While not his first film, Blood Feast marks ground zero for Herschell Gordon Lewis' legacy as a splatter pioneer.  The former teacher-turned-no-budget-filmmaker had already made a good handful of exploitative nudie flicks, but like many lesser talented people have, he took inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and wondered what it would be like if the murders did not shy away from excessive gore.  This is as fine of a jumping-off point as any and considering that the 1960s were a transgressive decade that marked a turning point for various artistic mediums, somebody had to come along and up the crimson blood splatter and tastelessness in order to push cinema further away from its more censored form.  This is all that a movie like Blood Feast deserves, which in every technical aspect is a moronic and dull bit of celluloid that resembles countless other Z-grade cheapies from its era.  Still, there is a tacky sleaze-ball charm to all of the dreadful cinematography, acting, set design, music, and the story itself which features an eccentric caterer who is obsessed with murder and cannibalism in the name of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar.

 

TWO THOUSAND MANIACS!

(1964)

Overall: MEH

 

Easily the least egregious entry in Herschell Gordon Lewis' wretched filmography, Two Thousand Maniacs! boasts a larger enough budget to afford some semblance of professionalism, be it of the low-grade drive-in variety of course.  An early example of hicksploitation that sensationalizes redneck stereotypes, the fear of backwoods communities, and the cultural divide that still exists somewhat between the North and the South even a century after the end of the Civil War, it has a bizarre and darkly comedic tone.  Incessant and boisterous cackling on the part of the hillbilly bumpkin characters grows insufferably annoying, but it is also in place to exaggerate what is a nightmarish story on paper; namely a disturbing centennial celebration where the South rises up for revenge and lays on the charm while manipulating some Yankees who cross their paths.  The set pieces are nasty enough to appease gore fans and Lewis makes sure to show some severed limbs and unrealistic bloodshed whenever appropriate.  The movie is still too amateurish to be properly unsettling, but the balancing of goofiness, sleaze, and sadism occasionally works to its advantage and this would spearhead a slew of similar exploitation films over the decades, for better and worse.

THE GRUESOME TWOSOME

(1967)

Overall: WOOF

A rambling, amateur-hour piece of shit, The Gruesome Twosome finds craptacular filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis in his usual form.  As unwatchably nonsensical and boring as it is, credit must be given to the opening scene which finds two crude dummy heads engaging in mindless, southern-accented chit-chat with each other, before one of them gets stabbed and starts oozing blood.  Whether this intro was meant to set a comedic tone or was just the result of Lewis' cinematic ineptitude, (or drug use?), is inconsequential since the rest of the movie needs to be avoided at all costs.  It concerns an old lady and her dim-witted son who run a wig shop that specializes in human hair.  One can guess what that means and yes, women get murdered by the mommy/son duo in order to get scalped, but moments of such nasty bloodshed are alarmingly sparse.  Do not worry though, Lewis makes sure to pad out the run time with college girls in their underwear making endless small talk, a couple of boys also talking, various other characters talking, and a few excruciating musical numbers just to make sure that the whole thing reaches an acceptable full-length running time.  Easily the worst movie with a horror angle in Lewis' heyday unless one counts Monster a Go-Go, (which nobody should ever count), this is just garbage, pure and simple.

1970s Herschell Gordon Lewis

THE WIZARD OF GORE
(1970)
Overall: WOOF

Starting out the 1970s with one of the worst movies you could possibly make, (and it would only get worse), Herschell Gordon Lewis's The Wizard of Gore is powerless against its technical obstacles and almost mind-numbingly boring and asinine plot.  It of course would not be a HGL production without abysmal cinematography and acting, (both of which are leisurely present), but this could also be the most poorly edited movie yet made at the time.  The fact that the special effects are especially terrible only makes matters worse, but only from a technical level as you are bound to laugh at how clueless the entire production comes off, nearly pushing it into surreal territory.  The experience would be enhanced if it was just a non-stop mesh of scatterbrain cuts, several seconds of pitch blackness on screen, non-existent set design, unconvincing, bloody guts and dummy heads, every character repeating the exact same information in every scene that they are in, and a drunk cameraman.  Yet the combination of all of the above is an unforgiving chore to endure.  In all fairness, you could skip past the entire movie after the first ten minutes and miss absolutely nothing of importance.  You may not get an occasional chase of the chuckles that way, but at least you will not fall asleep either.

THIS STUFF'LL KILL YA!
(1971)
Overall: WOOF

Poor Tim Holt, (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Magnificent Ambersons), finished off his film career staring in This Stuff'll Kill Ya!, a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie that boldly tries the viewers patience like never before.  With only mere sprinklings of the director's trademark disgusting gore and just a thinly veiled "thriller" plot at best, the rest of the man's many exasperatingly awful cinematic stamps are given free reign to make the movie practically unwatchable.  This of course includes dialog that you can barely understand because no one is miked, the lifeless camera not being able to keep anyone in frame, and the cheapest possible set design.  Jeffery Allen is endlessly cringe-worthy as a con-man preacher who cannot get through a sentence without quoting the bible and at the same time making all his yee-haw squawking minions howl with atrociously fake laughter at his near every utterance.  The story could have made for an interesting one if any other filmmaker was handling the material since Lewis does not inject nearly enough of his charming ineptitude.  Oh it is inept alright, but instead of being in on its own bad joke while being loaded with enough vile, blood and guts drenched visuals to keep you invested, it is wretchedly dull and pointless at best and incredibly obnoxious at worst.

THE GORE GORE GIRLS
(1972)
Overall: WOOF

Herschell Gordon Lewis put a lid on his filmmaking career that would stay shut for thirty years afterwards with The Gore Gore Girls, arguably the most deliberately terrible movie out of his many terrible ones.  Adding to the mix of unattractive actors who are embarrassing themselves with every utterance of atrocious dialog that they are given and of course the hilarious technical incompetence, the "movie" fills up close to half of its ninety-five minute running time with strippers performing with the type of enthusiasm that comatose victims would easily one-up.  Thankfully though, Herschell Gordon Lewis seems to know how terrible of a movie he is making this time and plays it as a comedy first and foremost, with the forth-wall breaking and casting of Henny "Take my wife..please" Youngman being pretty hard to miss.  This is not to say that the film is remotely funny of course, at least in the intentional sense.  If anything, it is just as awkward as any of the Godfather of Gore's other works, but at least the combination of really ghastly violence and a story so shamefully dumb that it is inconsequential makes for a trainwreck of an experience and one that honestly gets so stupid that it is amusing here or there.  Which to begin with, is really the "best" you can hope for when it comes to a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie.

1960s Herschell Gordon Lewis Part One

COLOR ME BLOOD RED
(1965)
Overall: MEH

The third installment in Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David F. Friedman's "Blood Trilogy", Color Me Blood Red was released a year after it was filmed due to the duos falling out, as well as some legal matters that needed to be fixed.  Following up the seminal Blood Feast and 2,000 Maniacs, this one is undoubtedly the weakest of the three.  Bottom barrel acting, lackadaisical pacing, technical aspects such as proper lighting, framing, and miking never being a concern; all of these elements are in virtually every frame.  The story is as silly as any in Lewis' films, this time where a raving asshole of a painter is butt-hurt because a critic does not like him, so he starts killing people to use their blood as the perfect color for his canvases.  Way, way too much screen time though is spent watching inconsequential people gallivanting on beaches and worse yet, there is one incredibly obnoxious board who speaks exclusively in unfunny, "hip" 60s slang and she is not even one of the ones who gets killed.  It is a misfire in every respect, but at least there is some gore in a few select scenes.

MONSTER A GO-GO!

(1965)

Dir - Bill Rebane/Herschell Gordon Lewis

Overall: WOOF

 

A strange, exasperatingly terrible Z-grade piece of garbage, Monster a Go-Go! has everything going against it.  Production originally began in 1961 under director Bill Rebane yet after he ran out of money, Herschell Gordon Lewis bought the rights, filmed some new scenes with mostly different actors, (or the same actors looking completely different), and quickly released it so it could go along with his own Moonshine Mountain as a double feature.  All of the hallmarks of incompetent filmmaking are present; scenes go on uncut for eons, none of the actors are properly miked, the lack of budget is unmistakable, (uniformed cops drive regular cars, scientists and law officials have meetings in restaurants, a ringing telephone sound effect is made by someone's mouth, etc), characters appear and then disappear without a trace, the narration desperately tries and fails to "explain" what is happening, the ending is laughably abrupt, and the story is shockingly incomprehensible.  As is the case with another sure-fire contenders as the worst technical movies ever made, this one is more drab than anything, with its comatose-inducing pace so detrimental that hardly anyone is likely to make it past the first three minutes without tuning out. 

A TASTE OF BLOOD
(1967)
Overall: MEH

Herschell Gordon Lewis' take on the vampire film, (particularly his modern day version of Dracula), is as embarrassing and silly as any.  That said, it still maintains a level of likability even amongst its multitude of shortcomings.  As usual, Lewis' ambitious exceed his meager means.  Without the budget nor competent filmmaking abilities at his disposal, A Taste of Blood is hilariously inept in the usual technical areas involving sound design, editing, and pacing.  The acting is agreeable considering how poor such Z-level movies usually are, though the dialog is made up of all of the dumb cliches that you can think of.  Still, the aforementioned pacing problem is the obstacle to overcome.  At nearly two hours in length, this is insultingly too long and nearly every sequence can be trimmed to keep things moving at even the most borderline engaging stride.  We are in trouble from early on where it takes eons for anything to start happening and in the meantime, Lewis is oblivious to the fact that he does not need to show countless long scenes of his characters walking and talking about things that are unnecessary to the story.  Worse yet, this is sadly one of Lewis' least-gory crud rocks, such blood and guts otherwise at least meriting the very existence of much of his work.