Edgar Allan Poe once said, "The best subject for a story is a beautiful woman, cut into little pieces, and pieces of her cooked for dinner." Okay, that's not quite the quote...but it was something like that. Herschell Gordon Lewis may have said something like that when he made 1963's "Blood Feast," our feature today. In this film, there will be a lot of sultry actresses, losing their innards as they are served up in a...well...blood feast.
Ramses (Mal Arnold) is a reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian diety...now he runs a catering business in Miami. He seeks to bring back the goddess Ishtar, his lover. To do that he needs to put on the Feast of Ishtar. This feast must be made up of the innards of beautiful young women. Pat (Sandra Sinclair), after stripping out of her clothes and getting into a bath (there's a lot of this type of stuff in this film), is cut up by Ramses...and her leg is stolen. The cops are onto it as the nubile Pat is the seventh such victim. Uh oh, Mrs. Fremont (Lyn Bolton) hires Ramses to cater a dinner for her sultry daughter Suzette (Connie Mason). Ramses gets busy finding nubile babes in states of undress and rips their tongues out...their brains out...their eyes...okay, you get the picture.
As sultry and tanned babes fall to Ramses machete, he brings their parts back to his secret sacrificial chamber. Uh oh, he kidnaps Suzette's BF, Trudy (Christy Foushee). This beauty will be stripped and whipped to death in front of an idol of Ramses' beloved goddess. As the night of Suzette's celebration dinner approaches and more beauties are ripped apart, the slow moving Detective Pete Thornton (William Kerwin) finally begins to put clues together. As the doll Suzette gets even more dolled up, Ramses has special plans for her...and Detective Pete falls in love with her. A bloody ending awaits and body parts will be strewn all over the screen.
Will the ravishing Suzette maintain all her internal organs and limbs? Will Ramses find his final sacrifice in order to bring Ishtar back to life? Is this what Edgar Allan Poe had in mind in his quote about babes? The gore flies right at you in this Herschell Gordon Lewis classic. For some of the best looking actresses ever assembled for a film (albeit, they'll die horribly), see "Blood Feast."
It's got more blood than abortion clinic, lovely Poe quote!!
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