BLOOD FEAST

Herschell Gordon Lewis's seminal gore movie, Blood Feast, finally arrives on UK R2 DVD in its uncut form. The BBFC, in their infinite wisdom, have at long last decided that this is okay for home video consumption by the British public. Not bad, it's only taken them 40 years to come to this decision. You can never accuse the BBFC of being behind the times, eh?

But enough of my rating (idiotic BBFC decisions will always be a bug-bear with me, I'm afraid) and let's talk about the DVD. This disc is in the first raft of titles being released in the UK by Something Weird, who have long championed American grindhouse cinema and have put out dozens of delectable and tempting titles out Stateside. Of course, much of their catalogue is definitely an acquired taste, but once you're hooked, that's it - you just can't get enough! Although I imagine that much of their US catalogue will run into censorship problems at the BBFC, due to their high quota of violence and sleaze - the latter element seemingly especially confounding for our moral guardians, terrified that we might all turn into lecherous perverts prone to bouts of sexual violence. A bit late for that, for most of us, I fear…

All joking aside, I have to say that it's nice to see this now available in an uncensored within the UK, and it's refreshing to see the BBFC making sensible decisions (even though Tombs of the Dead is still too shocking to be passed uncut…er…yeah, right…). It's also good to see Something Weird unleashing their weirdness on the British public - and about time too! A good dose of weirdness can only be a good thing.

The story tells of Fuad Ramses, a mad Egyptian who is bent on creating an Egyptian Feast after being hired to cater for a party. However, this Feast is more than just your standard lunchtime buffet; this Feast consists of the preparation and consumption of human flesh. Obviously, in order to prepare this Feast, human body parts are required - and Fuad gets these parts by murdering young women and removing the required pieces. This is all captured on film, by Lewis, in loving and graphic detail; and this is what has gained the movie such notoriety over the years. It's also arguably the first movie to have gore as its central theme. It's doubtful whether we'd have the likes of KNB or Tom Savini were it not for this low-budget independent gore movie. This is what got the ball rolling and paved the way for graphic FX and quite possibly shaped the future of horror movies. For these reasons alone, this is a very important film and has historical significance and is the reason why it holds such fascination for genre fans. It also has to be said that even 40 years on, the violence is still quite jaw-droppingly shocking, which is testament to the raw power of the movie and a credit to Lewis.

Something Weird present the movie in fullframe (1.33.1), which is its proper ratio, so don't panic, and it looks every bit as good as its US counterpart. This is never going to look as good as a modern day blockbuster and it probably never did, but it's a smart-looking transfer nonetheless and the image is sharp and colourful and, I imagine, looks exactly the way it was intended to. The audio is a basic 1.0 mono soundtrack but it's very clear and all dialogue is plainly audible. It really doesn't need anymore than this.

As for extras, unfortunately the UK release loses some of the extras present on the R1 disc, most notably the hour or so of outtakes and deleted footage. What we are left with on the UK disc are two shorts; Carving Magic and Miss Weird short. The former is a strange information film about how to effectively carve a roast turkey, it has links to the main feature by virtue of having the lead of Blood Feast in this as well (he also stars in a bizarre and humourous nudie short that is present on another US Something Weird disc). The second short runs less than a minute and has a woman, who I assume is Miss Weird, menacing a female captive with what looks like jump leads. Utterly pointless, if I'm honest - it's not even titillating enough to appeal to the raincoat brigade. There also two trailers on the disc for The Curious Dr Humpp (which is fantastic, see it if you can) and The Amazing Transplant. But that's your lot, which makes the UK disc substantially shorter on extra features than the R1 disc. But if your preference is for R2 releases, then at least you can own the movie uncut (the previous release from Tartan was censored).

In summary: the movie is full of bad dialogue, atrocious acting, static camerawork (Lewis obvious favours the point-and-shoot approach) - but it also great fun and full of outrageous gore set pieces, even by today's standards. In other words, anyone who has an interest in the horror genre needs to see this movie at least once, as the genre owes a great debt to both Lewis and this movie.

Review by C J Otter