|
Synopsis:
After listening to a radio report of yet another mutilation murder in
the area, a girl tries to relax in the bath with a copy of the book,
Ancient Weird Religious Rites. Suddenly, a figure looms up beside
her…. As the girl screams helplessly, her attacker stabs her in the eye,
then proceeds to hack off her leg, which he carries away with him…. At
the Homicide Bureau, the Chief of Detectives (Scott H. Hall) and
Detective Pete Thornton (William Kerwin) discuss the horrifying wave of
murders, which has seen seven girls killed in two weeks, each of them
having a body part removed. Meanwhile, Mrs Dorothy Fremont (Lyn Bolton)
visits the catering service of Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold), telling him
that she is planning a dinner party for her daughter, Suzette (Connie
Mason), and wants something truly unusual and different. Ramses suggests
an Egyptian feast, one not served for over five thousand years. Mrs
Fremont agrees enthusiastically, explaining that Suzette is a student of
Egyptian culture. When Mrs Fremont has left, Ramses slips into a secret
room at the back of his store. There, amongst cooking pots and body
parts and other evidence of Ramses’ grim activities, is an effigy of the
Egyptian goddess, Ishtar. Ramses prays to the figure, telling her that
the time is near…. At headquarters, Pete fills the Chief in on the
little they have learned about the bathtub victim: that she was a quiet
girl with no boyfriend, but well liked and active in her book club. That
night, a couple necking on the beach falls victim to Ramses: the boy,
Tony (Gene Courtier), is knocked unconscious and the girl, Marcy (Ashlyn
Martin), killed. Her skull is hacked open and the brain removed…. After
the body is discovered, Pete and the Chief try to interview Tony, but he
is hysterical. The girl’s parents are little more help. Her father
explains that Marcy and Tony had been going steady for over a year; that
she had a lot of friends; and, while not belonging to any one group, was
a member of a book club. Pete is about to follow up on this when a fresh
outburst of uncontrollable grief from Marcy’s mother distracts him.
Across town, a drunken couple staggers upstairs to the woman’s rooms,
unaware that they are being watched. When the man has left, Fuad Ramses
forces his way inside, wrestles the woman down onto the bed, and rips
out her tongue with his bare hands…. At the Fremont residence, Suzette
tries to get excited about the upcoming dinner party, but tells her
mother that with all the murders, it is hard to enjoy anything. She then
departs for her weekly lecture on ancient history, a course which Pete,
her boyfriend, attends with her. This week, the lecture is on the cult
of the goddess Ishtar, which marked the coming of spring with an orgy
that culminated in the “blood feast”, wherein the priestesses of Ishtar
were butchered and their flesh consumed, in order to bring about the
re-birth of the goddess herself….
Comments:
Government censorship. An unfree press printing deliberate lies for
political ends. The jailing and fining of individuals for acts
retroactively deemed “illegal” by the courts. The suppression of
dissenting voices and opinions.
Welcome to the Evil
Empire.
No, not any of the
so-called “Evil Empires” that we’re used to hearing about these days. On
the contrary, this time we’re talking about one of the supposed Good
Guys – Great Britain, no less, circa 1985; the era of the “Video
Nasties”.
It all began innocuously enough, early
in 1982, with a tacky advertisement for an even tackier film –
Sergio Garrone’s S.S. Experiment Camp –
falling foul of the Advertising Standards Authority. A few months later,
a landmark newspaper article was published: “How High Street Horror Is
Invading The Home” warned that the lack of regulation within video
industry, and the absence of any age restriction in the hiring of videos
(films on video not then requiring classification), was allowing
children access to horror movies of the most extreme kind. This article
was printed in an essentially “respectable” paper, the Sunday Times; but
before long, the tabloids would seize upon the issue of these “Video
Nasties”, as they were dubbed, and for over a decade wage against them a
war of misinformation, misdirection, and outright deceit.
The details of that war are both horrifying and
hilarious. For years, barely a violent crime of any description could be
committed in Britain without the tabloids finding some film, any
film, to blame it on – in the process, blithely absolving the actual
criminals from any responsibility for their actions. Thus we read about
– ulp! – a series of sexual results upon ponies, which were deemed to be
due to the influence of “Video Nasties or a new moon”. The perpetrator
of an assault at a garage is described as “wearing Freddy Krueger
blades” (he was carrying martial arts weapons); two teenagers who murder
a third and bury his body in the woods are “copying The Evil Dead”;
a rape-murder is supposedly incited by John Carpenter’s version of
The Thing (!!); while, best of all (excuse my warped perspective), a
gay bondage murder is somehow blamed upon a viewing of – Zombie!?
Given the prevailing climate, who can blame Britain’s defence
lawyers for jumping on the scapegoating bandwagon? – although as it
turned out, they were no more knowledgeable about horror films than your
average tabloid hack. Consider the case of Robert Sartin, who claimed
during his trial that he was “driven” to carry out a fatal shooting
spree, by “hearing the voice of Michael Myers”. I assume that I don’t
have to point out to any visitor to this website the slight flaw in
that argument.
(One study of the “Video Nasties” era, See No Evil,
suggests that the “Michael” in question was actually Michael Ryan,
who only weeks before Sartin’s own shooting spree shot dead sixteen
people, and then himself, at Hungerford. Authors David Kerekes and David
Slater go on to build a persuasive argument that the biggest influence
on such mass shootings is not violent film, but media coverage of
similar incidents. Needless to say, this is not a view that commends
itself to the press.)
Hindsight being, as they say, 20/20, the
real agenda behind this bizarre media campaign is now all too obvious.
That home video and the Thatcher government should arrive in Britain
almost simultaneously is one of this sorry saga’s great ironies. The
early years of the new Tory administration were marked by skyrocketing
unemployment, an equal rise in the crime rate, and by mid-1981, riots in
the streets; all very embarrassing for a party that prided itself on its
hard-nosed “law and order” stance. Unable to admit that the
implementation of its economic policies might be in any way responsible
for this sad state of affairs, the administration looked around for a
scapegoat, a target; preferably an inanimate target, one that
wouldn’t react to the next set of Government policies by looting,
assaulting policemen, and lobbing Molotov cocktails; and best of all, a
target that could be attacked with impunity, one that hardly anyone
would bother defending.
And it found one. Boy, did it find
one. With the Rupert Murdoch-controlled section of the media firmly in
its back pocket, the government set out to prove – or at least, to
convince – that the nation was suffering from something far other
than failed economic theory. Within weeks of that initial, comparatively
levelheaded, look at the state of home video in Britain, the tabloids
were howling about “this tide of degenerate filth”; about “violent,
sadistic and perverted videos”, films that were “soul-soiling”, that
“deaden decency and encourage depravity”. Meanwhile, the Home Office was
swiftly clearing the way for the prosecution of films under the Obscene
Publications Act (this being the document containing that notorious
“definition” of obscene, having a tendency to deprave and corrupt).
These “Video Nasties”, the public was told repeatedly, were so sick and
vile that they could turn ordinary, law-abiding citizens into rapists
and murders; while children exposed to them would have “their minds
raped”, inevitably growing up “disturbed and dangerous”, a “time-bomb of
violence which will explode on the streets of Britain”.
As a matter of fact – or so the argument
went – to show a child such a video was to be a child abuser; to
make or distribute or sell a Nasty was to be one, too; and, for that
matter, you were a child abuser if you argued against censorship,
expressed doubts that horror movies were really to blame for violent
crimes, or even suggested that we all just slow down for a minute and
think about this…. (“No-one has the right to be upset at a brutal
sex crime or a sadistic attack on a child or mindless thuggery on a
pensioner, if he is not prepared to drive sadistic videos out of our
high streets,” intoned David Mellor, then Minister of State at the Home
Office.) Sadly but perhaps not surprisingly, in July of 1984, the Video
Recordings Act was passed, in theory a form of “film classification”, in
reality – state censorship.
Now –
let’s take a look at one of these depraving and
corrupting “Video Nasties”; in fact, the granddaddy of ’em all….
***********************************
Some, or at least
one, of my fellow B-Masters might not agree, but in my opinion this
is one Roundtable where we were definitely spoilt for choice
After a little of the
usual amicable wrangling, and my not entirely unregretful surrender of
Night Of The Bloody Apes, I finally settled upon the oldest of
all the Nasties as my choice for this Roundtable. Herschell Gordon
Lewis’s Blood Feast was originally released in 1963, a full
twenty-one years before the Video Recordings Act was passed in order to
control “this new evil”. Blood Feast is generally regarded as
“the first gore movie”; and although the film’s claim to this dubious
honour has been disputed in some quarters, in the most basic sense it is
probably true. While in Asia and in Europe directors were beginning to
push the boundaries of explicit screen violence, there is a fundamental
difference between the work of, say, Georges Franju and Mario Bava, and
that of Herschell Gordon Lewis (and no, I don’t just mean that that
Franju and Bava made very good films, while Lewis made a very
bad film!). In films such as Eyes Without A Face and The
Mask Of The Demon, the violence, while shocking even to this day, is
integrated into the work as a whole. In Blood Feast, the
so-called “story” exists purely to provide an excuse for the violence.
It is the first film where graphic effects are the entire raison
d’être.
In 1963, things were
getting tough for Herschell Gordon Lewis and his partner, David
Friedman. For a few years the two had made a comfortable living turning
out “nudie-cuties”, exploitation films that without actual sex scenes,
nevertheless showed as much naked flesh – usually female, but not
exclusively – as they could get away with. But in Hollywood, things were
also starting to loosen up in that regard. Recognising that there was no
way they could compete with the majors, and recognising also that “there
are only so many ways you can show girls playing volley-ball”, Herschell
and Dave looked around for some unoccupied territory….
Years later, Frank
Henenlotter would recall one particularly traumatic night from his
misspent youth: “We heard rumours that there was a film at this drive-in
that showed breasts. That’s the only reason we went, watching this girl
undress, hoping we’d see a flash of her breast, and all of a sudden this
guy comes in and cuts off her leg! We just panicked and ran!”
One imagines that the
young Frank was not the only one scarred by an unprepared encounter with
Blood Feast. Literally, nothing like it had been seen before on
American cinema screens – and it was in colour! Determined to get
the absolute most out of his extremely limited resources – the film was
made for only $24,500 – Lewis decided upon what he later called
intensive gore. The girl in the opening scene does not only have her
leg cut off: she is first stabbed in the eye. Another girl has her head
smashed open. A leg is baked in an oven; a heart is cut out; a girl is
flayed by whipping; and most notorious of all, a tongue is pulled
out….roots and all.
There is a
contradictory quality about the gore scenes in Blood Feast. In
the technical sense, they are entirely unconvincing….but “unconvincing”
is not the same things as “ineffective”. There is a rare intensity about
these scenes, a determination to really rub the viewer’s nose in it. It
is true that there are no impact shots – Lewis had neither the budget
nor the expertise for that – but in their place are lingering
“aftermath” shots not easily forgotten: a bloody stump, complete with
bone, sticking up out of the suds in a bathtub; brains spread across the
sands of a beach; an empty mouth….
Blood Feast
is in many ways a piece of anti-cinema: the shots are static; most
“compositions” consist of two people sitting in a room; the actors (with
one exception – we’ll get to him later) can be seen reading their lines
from cue cards, off notes lying on a table, and in one case, even off
his own hand; but it is never so distant from what we regard as
“the rules” of cinema than when the camera, with what Stephen King once
called (talking about Maniac, from memory) “a dead-eyed leer”,
simply stares unmoved at the carnage before it. There is such a complete
lack of artistry about it all that, perversely, it ends up
lending an unnerving verisimilitude to the proceedings. In fairness,
however, there are also a few details that are too authentic for
comfort: the blood from the first girl’s stab wound pooling in her ear,
for instance, and the horrid goo welling up within the mouth cavity of
the “tongue” victim. These are touches that we rarely see in more
“realistic” scenes of violence, and they add a disquieting credibility
to the essentially crude effects.
Take the gore scenes
out of Blood Feast, however, and what we have left is a Komedy
Klassic.
Blood Feast
boasts some wonderful usage of the Plot Point-Specific Radio©,
that friend to unskilled screenwriters everywhere. The opening seconds
of the film introduce us – however briefly – to an attractive young
woman whose first act upon entering her home is to switch on her PPSR©,
which (in the dulcet tones of HGL) instantly informs her, and us, of
“another murder”, a girl found “dead, badly mutilated”. Our young
woman registers some shock and concern, but it could as well be in
reaction to the suggestion that she not leave her house unaccompanied as
a way of expressing sorrow for the victim. The PPSR© goes on
to advise all women to Lock their doors! Alas for our new
acquaintance, she has an extremely literal mind; or perhaps – as will
prove to be true of all the other characters in Blood Feast – she
simply has the attention span of a guppy. In any case, having locked her
door on the way in, she wanders off without – dum, dum, dummm –
locking her window….
(“Dum, dum, dummm”,
indeed: the sparse score of Blood Feast is notable chiefly for
the dramatic scenes being underlain by the slow, steady beat of a
kettledrum: bom – bom – bom – bom – The score was composed by
that inexhaustible multi-tasker, HGL, and in the case of the kettle
drum, played by him, too; he says, because he forgot to hire a
drummer. I’d be prepared to bet the drummer in question asked for a
dollar or two too many…)
We then get a salutary
reminder of Dave ‘n’ Herschell’s previous occupation: with a
psycho-killer on the loose, our young lady decides it’s time for – what
else? – a bubble bath.
The following brief
scene usually provokes guffaws for a number of reasons, one of them
being the lady’s choice of a book for tub-reading: an imposing tome
entitled Ancient Weird Religious Rites. However---
I might as well play
True Confession here and admit that before I settled down for my viewing
of Blood Feast, I also took a bath – not a bubble bath, just a
bath – into which I took my own choice of, ahem, relaxing reading
material: Killing For Culture: An Illustrated History Of Death Film
From Mondo To Snuff. Consequently, the moment described above
elicited from me, not a giggle, but a squirm of embarrassment.
But I had no trouble
laughing at a couple of other details, such as the revelation that the
young lady is wearing ENORMOUS UNDERPANTS. I guess that in Florida in
the early sixties, attractive young women may very well have worn
ENORMOUS UNDERPANTS….but somehow it isn’t something you expect to find
in an exploitation film; particularly not when the same young lady
immediately obliges us with a flash of her right breast. That taken care
of, she wraps herself in a towel for the arduous two-pace trip to her
bathtub – further obliges us with an always-titillating
towel-drops-to-ground moment – then steps into….a pre-filled tub!? Now
that’s a good trick.
And alas again, we’ve
barely had time to determine whether or not we can see nipples through
the artfully deposited bubbles, when---
“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”
Fuad Ramses suddenly
appears and stabs our poor person’s Janet Leigh through the eye. We
don’t see the stabbing; what we see is the knife raised again – from it
dangling an indeterminate chunk of bloody meat….
Fuad beams as he
contemplates his handiwork; and as Fuad, Mal Arnold, not for the only
time in the film, takes on an unspeakably creepy resemblance to Harpo
Marx. We then get a close-up of his eyes and, good lord, I haven’t seen
eyebrows like that since Faye Dunaway did Joan Crawford! Fuad leans over
his victim, raises the knife again, and hacks – and hacks
– and hacks….and finally turns towards us with a severed leg
in his hands, the stump from which it was detached poking out of the
waters of the tub, the bone clearly visible….
….at which point, we
recall, the young Frank Henenlotter and his cronies bolted into the
night. Had they not, they might have exercised their minds, as I am
doing, with the puzzle of why Ms Bathtub ’63 bled more from her stab
wound than she did from her amputation. Fuad stuffs his trophy and his
knife into a carry bag and departs; while the camera favours us with one
more thoughtful look at the bony stump.
Blood Feast is,
at this moment, all of two-and-a-half minutes old; and we are obliged to
tip our hats to HGL for giving the punters not just what they were
promised, but more than they ever expected. Which, come to think of it,
isn’t such a bad definition of the Nasties in general.
The credits then roll,
and the words Blood Feast form themselves over the image of the
sphinx. Or rather of a sphinx: the one that stood outside the
Suez Motel in Miami, whose vaguely faux-Egyptian decor suggested
to HGL the film’s even more faux-Egyptian back-story. The credits
past---well, folks, it’s time that we braced ourselves. We may have
survived Blood Feast’s opening dismemberment, but now our courage
and our endurance will really be tested, as the film’s
cast….tries to act.
I’ve watched a lot of
bad movies in my time, both bad-entertaining and bad-bad; and I
swear, I cannot for the life of me think of any other film that boasts
such a collection of dreadful, dreadful actors. These guys make the cast
of Plan 9 From Outer Space look---well, I was going to say
“Oscar-calibre”, but that’s no real mark of quality. Anyway, you know
what I mean. Watching, you begin to wonder if these aren’t in fact
skilled actors pulling a sick joke on the audience: it’s that hard to
believe that so many people could be this bad by accident. However, that
said, I’m obliged to cut one of our contributors a little slack: Scott
H. Hall, who plays Chief of Detectives Frank Idontrateasurname, was not,
in fact, an actor; he wasn’t even an “actor”; he was one of the crew,
tagged to fill in when someone didn’t show up. So we can forgive the
conscientious way he recites his dialogue out of the palm of his
hand….and when that runs out of space, off cue cards on the table in
front of him. He may not be any good, but he isn’t any worse than the
alleged professionals around him.
(And yes, I did
say there was one exception; and yes, I will get to him….)
We cut to the Homicide
Bureau – one room containing one desk, two chairs, a pot-plant, and an
ashtray the size and shape – and colour – of a zucchini – wherein sit
Our Heroes, the aforementioned Frank and Detective Pete Thornton. In
lieu of a Plot Point-Specific Radio©, the film here helpfully
serves up a Plot Point-Specific Chief of Detectives, as Frank fills us
in on what’s been going on.
(A word about Scott H.
Hall’s delivery: HGL apparently advised him to try and disguise the fact
that he didn’t know what he was doing by shouting. A little shy,
perhaps, Hall initially went instead for a kind of Shatner-esque
delivery, giving us his lines with a rollercoaster cadence; thus---)
“….SEVEN killings in
two weeks….YOUNG GIRLS….each killing more BRUTAL than the other….”
Pete, more phlegmatic
than his Chief, more or less agrees that it’s a bummer. Frank goes on to
bemoan the fact that through all of this, they haven’t found one clue –
not one. You might want to keep that statement in mind, folks, as
the case unfolds before us. PPSCOD Frank further informs us that all of
the victims have been mutilated, that “certain limbs and organs have
been removed”. Pessimistic Pete chimes in here with a complaint about
the D.A.’s office, which is “getting hot. The newspapers are really
playing this one up, too,” he gripes. What, just because there have been
seven BRUTAL killings of YOUNG GIRLS in two weeks? The bastards!
Pete – aka
“Thomas Wood” aka William Kerwin – then goes on to earn himself a
slice of immortality, by delivering a line that would, shall we say, be
far more at home in one of Herschell’s “nudie” films (particularly
considering Kerwin’s nudge-nudge reading of it!), and which Something
Weird have gleefully reproduced in as much of their advertising and
promotional material as possible:
“Well, Frank,” quoth
Pete, “this looks like one of those lo-oo-onnng, hard ones!”
(“I know what you
mean,” responds Frank, for one alarming moment suggesting that we’re
wandering into exploitation territory that even HGL never dared touch.)
Frank then orders Pete
to see that the TV and the radio repeat their emergency broadcast every
thirty minutes – which I guess, to be fair, might explain the PPSR©.
And now folks, as far
as bad acting is concerned, it’s time for the clash of the titans! In
the red corner: Mal Arnold as Fuad Ramses (which, by the way, is
pronounced “Foo-ard”). We’ve met Mal already, of course, but then he
just had to leer into the camera and wave a knife around. Now he
has dialogue to deliver. If you wanted to be polite, you could call his
style “measured”; or you could just cut to the chase and say that he
sounds like Bela Lugosi on Quaaludes. Best of all, he accompanies his
lines with a series of grimaces and facial tics that suggest either
severe unrequited love or an equally severe intestinal upset. I’m not
sure it’s entirely accurate to describe what Mal Arnold does in this
film as “acting”, but it sure is entertaining.
And in the blue corner,
Lyn Bolton as Mrs Dorothy Fremont. The best thing I can say about her,
um, performance is that she overtly reads her lines from cue cards
slightly less frequently than almost everyone else. If you can imagine a
maniacally hyperactive melding of Mrs Oliver Wendell Douglas and Mrs
Thurston Howell III, you’ll have some notion of Ms Bolton’s effort at
acting like “a socialite”. She does refrain from attempting an
accent, however – thank heaven for small mercies – and perhaps it was a
consequent feeling that her performance was a bit lacking that
led her to compensate by choosing for herself the single most appalling
hat I’ve seen since….well, since I ragged on the entire cast of
Atlantis, The Lost Continent for the same transgression.
Let the battle begin!
Somewhere in Miami, we
learn, there is a store called “Fuad Ramses Exotic Catering”, and into
that store wanders Mrs Dorothy Fremont. Mrs Fremont introduces herself,
and instantly Fuad leans across the counter and delivers a leer that
stops her in her tracks. (This moment always feels incomplete: there
really should have been a “A-yyyyyessssss???” accompanying that
leer.) It would be too much to say that Mrs Fremont has a one-track
mind, because that would imply that she had a mind in the first place;
but in any case, there certainly isn’t room for more than one vague idea
inside her head at a time; and so, undeterred by having an unspeakably
creepy little Harpo Marx impersonator leering at her, she presses on.
She is planning a dinner party for her daughter, and wants something
“unusual”, something “totally different”. Fuad suavely agrees that he
does cater to….unusual affairs (offering a line reading the likes
of which the world has not heard since dear old Bela was wishing
everyone “Good-bye!” in The Devil Bat); and with a leer
that makes the previous one look like a friendly smile, utters the
immortal line, “Have you ever had….an EGYPTIAN FEAST!?”
With nary a moment’s
hesitation – or any inquiry into what, exactly, an EGYPTIAN FEAST is
– Mrs Fremont pounces on this suggestion, explaining that her daughter,
Suzette, is “a student of Egyptian culture!” (If you think this sounds
unlikely at the outset, just wait until you’ve met Suzette!) Fuad offers
another lean and another leer – and, fulfilling my heart’s desire, a “Yyyessss”
– as he promises an authentic EGYPTIAN FEAST, one that hasn’t
been served for “Five. TThhhousand. Years.” An exceedingly odd
bit follows, as we get yet another Lugosi-like moment, a close-up of
Fuad’s eyes. Presumably this is to imply that he’s putting some kind of
hypnotic whammy on Mrs Fremont, but she’s already agreed to the EGYPTIAN
FEAST, so what the hell? But least we get another good look at Mal
Arnold’s eyebrows. A second or two later, Mrs Fremont comes to – well,
as “to” as she ever does. Fuad goes on to say lots more “meaningful”
things about how “unusual” the party will be – mwoo-ha-ha! He
also calls it “the feast of the goddess”, reiterates that whole “Five.
TThhhousand. Years.” business, and adds that “things have been
ready for a long time. A long time.” All this puzzles the
uni-neuroned Mrs Fremont, but Fuad covers his slip with an airy gesture
intended to imply that he’s just an absent-minded old exotic caterer,
given to remarks about goddesses and long-standing preparations that
have no particular significance. The party is set for “two weeks from
Saturday”, and Mrs Fremont departs. Watching her go, Fuad – bless him! –
actually does the traditional villainous hand-rub – mwoo-ha-ha-ha-HA!
– a gesture that I believe has not in fact been used by any
villain for Five. TThhhousand. Years. We also learn at this point
that Fuad – oh, bless him, bless him! – has a limp. He’s
just the complete package, isn’t he?
Left to his own devices
(and with the kettledrums reaching a crescendo on the soundtrack), Fuad
enters a secret room at the back of the store. Evidence of his
extra-curricular activities abounds – a cooking-pot, an oven, bloody
bits and pieces; while in the far corner stands….oh, dear. Oh, dear,
oh, dear….
What it’s meant
to be, is an effigy of the Goddess Ishtar. What it is, is a
department store mannequin, spray painted gold. I’ve seen some tacky
idols over the course of my cinematic wanderings, but I think the
Goddess Ishtar might just take the prize. But at least we understand: (i)
why Ishtar is so pissed off (well….that, and someone told her she
just had to see that film with her name in the title); and (ii)
why she really, really wants to get reincarnated. Fuad spouts a
lot of gobbledygook, none of which is very clearly enunciated, but we
get that he’s her slave and she’s his lady, his goddess.
(Things as they should be, right?) We also get a close-up of Ishtar.
That was probably a mistake.
Then it’s time to meet
Our Heroine, although we don’t at this stage know she is Our Heroine, as
we are not formally introduced. She’s just a blonde with a newspaper.
(Nothing dates Blood Feast so much as that when Suzette buys her
paper, she just drops a coin into an open canister attached to
the unguarded paper stand.) The headline of the paper screams
LEGS CUT OFF! – when we know perfectly well that only one was.
You’d think that with SEVEN (or now EIGHT) killings in two weeks….YOUNG
GIRLS….each killing more BRUTAL than the other, there’d be no reason for
a paper to exaggerate things, would you? – but I guess the tabloid
instinct dies hard (as indeed we’ve already discovered in the course of
this Roundtable).
(Actually, given the
tightness of Blood Feast’s budget, I’m astonished by the effort
that went into this mock-up paper. I have a particular fondness for the
sub-headline that promises us a story about a Beer Sipping Horse.
Welcome to Florida.)
Okay, maybe it was at
this point that HGL suggested to SHH that he shout his lines.
Frank is re-introduced SLAMMING his newspaper down and BANGING his FIST
on the desk. “A PATHOLOGICAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE AND WE CAN’T FIND ONE
CLUE!!!!” he bellows, with gesticulations to match his decibel range.
“THIS MAN’S UNCANNY!!!! NOT ONE FINGERPRINT!!!! NOTHING!!!!”
Pete, clearly the
calming ying to his Chief’s raging yang, gives a Yeah-whaddya-gunna-do?-type
shrug and nod. He then reports his findings about the bathtub victim:
she was a hostess in a restaurant, no boyfriend, never had any friends
over, belonged to a book club. Ah, well. At least she led a full rich
life. Frank nevertheless orders Pete to “Stay on it.” Yeah, who knows
what you’ll find out? Maybe she owned a pet rock. Frank then comforts
himself with the thought that “the police for 200 miles around are on
this” – too bad all the murders have been in your jurisdiction,
hey, Frank? – and optimistically adds that, “We sure should get him if
he tries it again.”
Which is of course the
cue for another murder.
We cut to a couple
necking on the beach. WRONG!!!! The girl, Marcy, “feels funny” about all
the murders and wants to leave, but her boyfriend, Tony, gives her the
old “what could happen, I’m here” routine and insists on staying.
Marcy reluctantly gives in, and Tony presses his advantage by pushing
her down on their blanket and demanding, “Now – prove you love
me!” Instantly, Fuad limps in, knocks Tony unconscious, and smashes
Marcy’s head open. There ain’t no damn justice in this world!!
(By the way – just to
prove that not all the idiocy in Blood Feast was played out in
front of the camera – Ashlyn Martin, who plays Marcy, prepared for her
big scene by getting her hair done!!)
Sharp as Fuad’s knife
was during the previous murder, that’s how blunt his machete is
here: the contents of Marcy’s skull are left spread out over a
remarkably wide area. We get one of our lingering shots here, as Fuad
drops to his knees, scoops up a portion of brain, and kind of….fondles
it….before putting it into his carry-bag. While Fuad has been
scrupulously thorough to date in his collection of “certain limbs and
organs”, here he collects no more than a token fragment of grey
matter; a fact that probably tells us all we need to know about the
Blood Cult of Ishtar.
As my colleague Nathan
Shumate is fond of saying, sometimes the jokes just write themselves.
(This sequence also
features one of the great inexplicable moments in screen history – or
rather, it used to. In this age of the DVD commentary, nothing is really
a mystery any more; and these days we know why it is that,
sitting on the sand next to Marcy’s macerated cerebellum, there is a
pissed-off boa constrictor: it was David Friedman’s pet, and it got
loose and wandered into shot. Reluctant as always to do a re-take, HGL
reacted by writing the snake into the film.)
The police eventually
show up, and Frank and Pete make a futile attempt to interview Tony, who
is, to put it mildly, a tad put out by the recent turn of events. Okay,
I’ve been making oblique exculpatory comments about one of the cast
members of Blood Feast long enough. The person I am referring to
is billed here as “Thomas Wood”, but is in fact William Kerwin, who
alone amongst this sorry crew manages to give something approximating an
actual performance; and who, fittingly, would go on to have quite
a reasonable career. (That is, if you can describe as “reasonable” a
career that involves not just multiple appearances in films by HGL, but
work also for William Grefé, Bob Clark, and – eep! – Sydney Pollack.)
Kerwin sticks out like a sore thumb in Blood Feast. In the face
of all the mass hysteria passing for acting around him, he’s so low-key
he’s almost invisible. (Perhaps he was hoping that if he stood really
still, no-one would notice he was in the film.) Professional as
he always was, there are nevertheless moments when Kerwin can’t quite
prevent an expression of dismay from crossing his face when confronted
by his fellow Thespians’ attempts at, uh, thesping. This scene on the
beach is one of those times: the pitying glance and sad shake of the
head that Kerwin gives here is less, we feel, “Pete Thornton’s” reaction
to the horror of Marcy’s murder than it is William Kerwin’s reaction to
the horror of Gene Courtier’s attempt at conveying Tony’s hysterical
grief.
“A-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HOO!!” blubbers Tony. “It’s
uh-all my fau-hal-hal-hal-alt!! AH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAAHHH!!!!”
(Sad shake of the
head….)
Frank – or possibly
Scott H. Hall – begs, “Take it easy, Tony!” (and considering his
recent offering….); but Tony, apart from muttering something about “a
shadow”, can only weep and wail and wiggle, and is finally carted away.
Frank and Pete do more sad head shaking, before Frank orders the body
taken away, which raises all sorts of gruesome forensic questions about
how go about making sure you’ve got all of…. Oh, never mind.
At the police station,
there’s more weeping and wailing and wiggling as Mr and Mrs Franklin,
Marcy’s parents, come in for an interview. (Although Mrs Franklin, we
notice, is not so hysterical that she forgets to carefully smooth her
dress over her knees upon sitting down. She’s a lady, she is.)
The Franklins are little help to Our Heroes, explaining that Marcy was
“not much of a gadabout”; that she and Tony had been going steady for
over a year; and that she didn’t run with any particular group. Oh – and
she had her name on a book club list.
“Book club list?”
exclaims Pete. “Wait a minute! What do you mean, book club list?”
And for a second – less
than a second – for an infinitesimal fraction of time – there is
almost….light. But the ephemeral incandescence of Pete’s
intelligence burns itself out even as it is born. Mrs Franklin has
another outbreak of grief, and Pete loses his train of thought.
One thing I do have to
take issue with, though: what is with you Floridians!? Are these
really the best epitaphs that you bereaved families and friends can come
up with? Beloved daughter of John and Mary. She belonged to a book
club. Yeesh!
(Oh, yes, I know, I
know: and I’ll get She once wrote a thirty-page review of Blood Feast.
Like I should talk.)
Ooh, someone’s in the
kitchen with Ishtar! Red mood lighting on, Fuad drops – something – into
a cooking pot, which emits a belch of unmistakable dry ice fog. He
chattily informs his Goddess that “all is nearly ready”. And indeed, the
kettledrums instantly kick in again. We cut to the parking area of a
motel, and watch a drunken couple stagger up a flight of stairs to the
woman’s room. The man (played by David H. Friedman himself, I do
believe) at length departs, which is the cue for Fuad to suddenly
appear. He knocks on the woman’s door, forces his way in, wrestles his
new victim down on the bed, jams his fingers into her mouth, and – ulp!
– rips her tongue out with his bare hand. In a pair of shots that
seem to go on forever, we see the tongue, bloody roots and all, dangling
from Fuad’s clutching fingers; and we see….the aftermath.
This sequence is so
disturbing that it seems almost churlish to point out that at no stage
during Fuad’s lengthy assault upon her did the young lady make any
attempt to bite….
After this lengthy
delay, it is finally time for us to be properly introduced to Our
Heroine. Having already had to describe the acting of all the other cast
members of Blood Feast, I’ve very nearly run out of pejoratives;
so how do I go about conveying to you all that viewers of Blood Feast
have to suffer at the hands of Connie Mason? “You read about her in
Playboy!” announced the ads for the film, with respect to Ms Mason;
not, you’ll notice, “You saw her accepting the Sarah Siddons
Award for Distinguished Achievement!” HGL, having had Ms Mason thrust
upon him, so to speak, by his partner, was philosophical about her
capabilities. “She had talents, all right,” he later observed, “but they
didn’t lie in that direction.” For myself, perhaps I can best
express my feelings on the subject by saying that when it comes to
acting ability, Lyn Bolton and Connie Mason are excellently well cast as
mother and daughter.
Still, at least Ms
Bolton can read her cue cards; Ms Mason can’t even do that
properly. Failing to respond to her mother’s remarks about the upcoming
dinner-party with any enthusiasm, Suzette explains that “all those
murders” make it difficult to enjoy anything. “It’s TERRIBLE!” she
finally declares. Wincing at her stilted delivery, we can only agree.
Suzette elaborates, “I just shudder when I think of how that butcher---”
[Pause. Long look at the cue card. Puzzled frown.] “---that maniac.
Butchering all those girls.” [Head turns. Eyes remain fixed.] “I wish
they could find out who did it and put him where he belongs.” Mrs
Fremont tries to convince Suzette that the party will take their minds
off “all this horrible killing.” Suzette obligingly agrees, then
announces that she is heading out to “the weekly lecture on ancient
history. We’re learning about the cults of the Egyptian gods!” Mrs
Fremont declares this to be “a coincidence!” and starts to babble about
“the nicest little man”--- Realising that she’s spoiling her own
surprise, she then just drops it; and Suzette having the attention span
not so much of a guppy as that of a piece of seaweed, promptly forgets
all about it.
And speaking of
coincidences - !? Who should turn out to be Suzette’s boyfriend
and fellow ancient history buff but Detective Pete Thornton? You might
think that Pete would have more pressing calls on his time than lectures
on Egyptology, what with seven – eight – nine – ten unsolved
murders on the books; but I guess even 50% of Miami’s homicide cops
needs a night off occasionally. Pete and Suzette listen gravely as one
Dr Flanders expounds upon – the trickle of coincidence swelling to a
flood – “Ramses I and Ramses II”. And then we are all swept away by a
veritable tsunami of coincidence, as Dr Flanders turns his attention to
“the cult of Ishtar”, one of “the most bloodthirsty religions of all
time!” The somnambulant Pete perks up a bit as he learns about the
“twenty virgin priestesses” who for “six wild days” would “mingle” with
the men of the city. (Now, there’s a euphemism I haven’t heard
before.) And then, on the seventh day….the Blood Feast of Ishtar!
We get a flashback
here, a bloody pay-off for our (presumed) patience through all this
exposition. We see one priestess lying on an altar. The high priest
approaches. Around his neck is – whoo, hoo! – a boa constrictor.
He thrusts it into the girl’s face, and she recoils in horror. Frankly,
sister, if that’s the worst thing that happens to you today….
Sure enough, the next moment she’s having her heart cut out.
While all this is
playing out, we also hear about how, as the climax of the festival, the
no longer quite so virginal priestesses were slaughtered, their was
blood collected in silver dishes, and “certain organs and limbs” were
removed, prepared in dishes and consumed…. The festival concluded with
the high priestess “rising from the altar”, Ishtar re-born. Cut back to
Dr Flanders, who tells his spellbound audience that it is said
that there are followers of Ishtar even to this day, but – chuckle,
chuckle – we don’t believe that, do we? Here endeth the
lecture. Afterwards, Suzette is all emotional and shuddery, Pete all
matter-of-fact and logical. Suzette dwells on the fact that they
actually ate human flesh….until Pete (with a condescending, “Aw,
c’mon, honey!”) suggests they talk about something more pleasant. So
they talk about the murders instead. Pete reveals that Tony (you know –
ol’ “A-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HOO!!”) finally calmed down enough to speak of an
older man with grey hair and “wild, glowing eyes”. He also tells Suzette
that he has a kind of clue of his own – “Something about a book” – but
that he just can’t make it fit.
Pete offers to drive
Suzette home, but the two of them end up parking out by a lake. But
they’re safe, because it’s broad daylight. I mean, it’s midnight. It’s
dusk. It’s….confusing. Pete drives a convertible (all the better to film
and record you in), and the combination of the car’s blood red interiors
and Suzette’s hot pink dress could leave you wishing that Fuad Ramses
would wander in and remove your eyeballs. Suzette wonders whether it’s
really safe, and Pete tells her with a leer that she’d probably be safer
with the killer than with him. Oh, that’s tasteful. Pete then
tries to get romantic, but gosh, shucks, he just can’t find the right
words. “I guess I’m a better policeman than I am a public speaker,” he
concludes sheepishly, leaving our minds boggling at the thought of just
how bad a public speaker he must be. All this modesty sweeps Suzette off
her feet, and Pete is just getting a little action when that darn PPSR©
(the moral guardian of Miami) puts a stop to it by announcing that the
maniac has struck again, but that for the moment his latest victim is
still alive.
Having disposed of
Suzette (no, not that way, unfortunately), Pete meets up with
Frank. At the hospital they learn that the girl had “her face hacked
away, clear to the bone” and “her eyes gouged out”. (Let’s hope at least
that she saw Suzette in Pete’s car first.) The guy playing the doctor in
this scene gives Connie Mason a run for her money in terms of sheer
inability to read his lines: “So far, we, uh, don’t know who she is.
There was no identification. Uh, on her. When the police brought her in.
[Pause] Uh, your Missing Person Bureau is, uh, checking. And although,
uh….we’ll let you know if….we get a report.” The dying victim, her head
swathed in bandages (saving a salary: it’s the girl from the altar under
there) manages to describe a “horrible old man” with “wild eyes”, who
said it was, “For I’tar! I’tar! I’tar!” There’s nothing actually wrong
with this girl’s tongue, mind – or her ears; so you can
put your own judgement on this little “mistake”. As it turns out, she
probably could have bellowed “HE SAID IT WAS FOR THE BLOOD FEAST OF
ISHTAR!!” and it wouldn’t have made any difference. An hour after
sitting through a graphic description of Ishtar’s wicked ways, all Pete
can offer is that the name I’tar “somehow sounds familiar.”
Kill me now, Lord.
Back at his store, Fuad
is reading a letter from a girl called Trudy Sanders, who wants to order
a copy of his advertised book, Ancient Weird Religious Rites. Ah
–HA!! See how it all fits together?? (Although as it turns out, there’s
no need for the victims to have read the book; it’s not part of
the ritual or anything. Not to anticipate the ending or anything, but if
Fuad had just picked his victims at random, they never would have caught
him.) And then The Great God Coincidence interests himself in our
affairs again, as Fuad phones Trudy’s house, and learns that “she’s at
the Fremont residence”. In fact, it’s time for a little cheesecake.
Trudy is frolicking in the pool with another girl, as Connie – I mean,
Suzette – strikes model poses in a bikini by the poolside and
pretends to read a book. (Looking at Suzette – I mean, Connie –
I’d just like to say that it’s kind of nice to know that there was
a time when Playboy centrefolds were just natural, ordinarily attractive
girls. That said, I don’t really think that Connie Mason is all
that attractive. For one thing, she suffers from that peculiarly
American affliction, having way too many teeth.) As Connie lies
by the pool, a threatening shadow looms up – and is gone the next
instant. Proving surprisingly spry for an old guy with a gimp leg, Fuad
is off and away and over the garden wall before Connie can see him. (Of
course, it helps that, with the sun to her left, Connie first
looks to the right – that is, at the pool – for the origin
of the shadow.) More T&A as the girls towel off, then Trudy departs to
do some shopping….she thinks. Suzette and her unnamed friend
babble about the party, and Suzette guesses that her mother is planning
“an Egyptian feast!” “An Egyptian feast!” echoes the friend (try saying
it just once!); and as the scene fades, we register just how far up the
social ladder the Fremonts must be: in their yard they have….pink
flamingos….
Meanwhile, the
unsuspecting Trudy is ambushed and knocked out. In Suzette’s front yard.
In broad daylight. Fuad picks up the unconscious girl and carries her
away. On foot.
It’s a little known
fact that under Miami law, there have to be twelve murders before
anyone is allowed to initiate a Neighbourhood Watch program.
The next day – the
day of the Egyptian feast!! (the Egyptian feast!!) – Pete and Frank
worry that Trudy, too, has fallen victim to the killer. That is,
Frank worries. As soon as the boss has turned his back, Pete’s on
the phone to Suzette – not about Trudy; about dinner. He explains
apologetically that he’s going to be late for the party, what with
having eleven unsolved murders on his hands, and all. They do eventually
get around to mentioning the unfortunate Trudy. Pete tells Suzette that
– surprise! – there’s no news, but advises her to try and enjoy her
party anyway. During the rest of Blood Feast, we spend a lot of
time listening to Pete talk on the phone, only ever getting his side of
the conversation. Here, this is A Good Thing, as we don’t have to listen
to Connie Mason. Instead, we infer Suzette’s contribution from Pete’s
responses. We also infer – and correctly – that Pete is almost as big a
moron as his girlfriend. Having learnt that Mrs Fremont’s big surprise
was indeed an Egyptian feast (an Egyptian Feast!), Pete goes on to learn
one or two other details that you might have thought would be of some
interest to him.
“…Fuad Ramses! Nope,
never heard of him….oh, just like Dr Flanders’ speech, huh?….Ishtar!
[Chuckles.] Well, I hope it isn’t exactly like Dr Flanders
described it! But it does sound like fun, and I’ll be there just as soon
as I can. Good-bye, darling. [Hangs up.] Ishtar! Ha, ha!”
You know, I’m pretty
sure that there’s something in the Geneva Convention that forbids Pete
and Suzette even to consider reproducing. It’s in the part about
Crimes Against Humanity.
We hop back to Fuad’s
for a lingering shot of Ancient Weird Religious Rites and a visit
with – whoo, hoo! – Dave Friedman’s boa, and then we find Fuad
himself collecting the final ingredient from Trudy. Trudy is chained to
the walls being whipped, with silver bowls placed on the floor beneath
her to catch the rivulets of blood. This is easily the film’s least
convincing piece of violence, but we are distracted from that fact by
the combination of Mal Arnold’s bare-teeth snarling and his cries of,
“Give yourself up to the goddess! Give yourself UP!”
Back at Headquarters,
Pete has stopped chuckling to himself for long enough to exercise a
brain cell or two. “Ishtar,” he murmurs. “I’tar…. Ishtar! I’tar!”
Let there be light,
begged the people who had suffered through forty-nine minutes of
Blood Feast; and finally – there was light….
Pete grabs for the
phone and calls Dr Flanders, whose number he has memorised for some
mysterious reason, and asks for a bit more information about the Blood
Feast of Ishtar. You mean, apart from the fact that it involved the
slaughter of young women and the removal of certain organs and
limbs and that there are followers of the cult of Ishtar to this
day? And in fact, we don’t hear the “bit more” that Dr Flanders
volunteers, although Pete seems impressed by it. He asks Flanders if
he’s ever heard of someone called “Fuad Ramses”, and is further
impressed to learn that he is the author of that runaway best-seller,
Ancient Weird Religious Rites. “Why, we found a copy of that at - !”
gasps Pete. Cutting off Flanders, he makes another call and sends “all
cars” in the direction of “Ramses Catering” (the address of which he
just happens to know, for all he doesn’t know its name).
(By the way, I know
I’ve complained about cinematic anti-intellectualism plenty of times
before, but I can’t honestly say I’ve ever struck a film so frankly
anti-reading as Blood Feast. “If only those girls hadn’t
been so darned literate! How many lives might have been spared?”)
Over at Fuad Ramses
Exotic Catering, it’s business as usual: Fuad is just popping a
human leg into a pizza oven. It’s nicely roasted by the time the police
finally get there. Those “all cars” we heard about turn out to be –
count ’em! – one, carrying two uniforms, Frank and Pete: the
entire manpower of the Miami police force, at least as far as we
know. The uniforms are sent around the front, while the detectives
prepare to enter at the back. “I hope you’ve got a strong stomach!” Pete
warns his Chief.
It took so long for the
MPD to summons all of its resources that the bird has, of course, flown.
Pete and Frank go to check “in the back”, and by the light of their
torches, they see the effigy of Ishtar. “What the name of all that’s
holy is that!?” exclaims Frank, who must not spend much time
shopping in department stores. (For those of you who doubt the power of
Ishtar, behold!! – Frank’s hat suddenly appears from nowhere!)
What follows is, I
think, the one really successful moment in all of Blood Feast.
Pete and Frank start groping for a light switch, find one, throw it –
and then see what, all this time, they’ve been standing right next
to….
Namely, what’s left of
Trudy Sanders. We get a long, slow pan down the length of her body here,
and I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: the partial (and rather
convincing) severed head on the table next to her….or the bowl of
salad between her ankles. As Frank reels, nauseous, Pete adds up one
and one for him, explaining about the Blood Feast of Ishtar, and that
body parts of young girls are – ulp! – cooked, to satisfy the
goddess. And then the penny drops.
“Holy smoke! Frank, we
gotta get onto the Fremont house! They’re having a dinner party – and
Fuad Ramses is the caterer!” cries Pete. “Fuad Ramses!” cries Frank,
just for the fun of saying it, I think. (Just watch “Frank” in
this scene: he doesn’t dare use or close his right hand, because that’s
where his lines are!) Pete beats feet, leaving Frank to issue orders to
the unseen uniformed cops. And it is to Scott H. Hall that the privilege
of uttering one of the greatest lines in film history falls.
“Harris, get on that
phone! Call the Fremonts! For Pete’s sake – tell ’em not to eat
anything!”
At the Fremonts’, the
high-society shindig that we’ve been hearing so much about is in full
swing; or to put it another way, six uncomfortable-looking extras are
trapped in a room with Connie Mason and Lyn Bolton. That desperate
phonecall from “Harris” never does get through, however: there is a
piece of phone-in-use schtick so lame, I can’t even be bothered trying
to explain it. Let’s just say that one of Suzette’s friends won’t hang
up – although Suzette does her best to get her off the line by braying,
“NAAIIIIIRRRRNCY, Mr Raiiirrrmses is about to serve!”
(Ouch! I thought she was from Florida, not Noo York!) Mr Ramses himself
then appears, and announces that “the Feast of Ishtar” is about to be
served – but first – he needs the co-operation of “the young lady
in whose honour it is being given.”
“Oh, I’ll bet there
never was a party like this one!” trills Mrs Fremont. “Oh, but there
was,” purrs Fuad. “Five. TThhhousand. Years. Ago.” He leads
the reluctant Suzette into the kitchen, where the two of them start
playing Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding-Hood. Fuad explains that the
food is still in the garage, because it would be a “desecration” to
bring it into the house before Suzette had blessed it. He then manages
to persuade Suzette to lie down on the kitchen counter-top, so that she
can play her part in the, uh, “blessing”. And Suzette obliges. She
initially decides that “This is fun!”, but then has a moment of
doubt as she recalls the words of Dr Flanders. “Say, you wouldn’t
sacrifice me on this altar would you?” she demands with a straight face.
Fuad is caught off guard, either by the inference that Suzette knows
about the actual Feast of Ishtar, or by the sheer magnitude of her
stupidity. “Uhhh…of course not,” he finally replies. Reassured, Suzette
lies down, and Fuad explains that she must close her eyes, stretch up
her hands, and speak the words, “Oh, Ishtar! Take me unto yourself!”
And this is where the
whole dastardly scheme falls apart – because Suzette, you see, can’t
remember her lines.
I really can’t help
wondering whether this moment was a private joke on the part of ol’ HGL,
an understandable dig at his less than accomplished leading lady. In any
case, Fuad is left nearly weeping with frustration, trying to coach his
vacuously giggling student while hiding a machete behind his back, and
begging Suzette not to “break the heart of an old man!” This goes on –
and on – and on – until the puzzled Mrs Fremont wanders into the kitchen
to see what the heck is taking so long. She arrives just as Suzette has
finally mastered her terribly difficult seven-word speech, and finds
Fuad about to bring down the machete – we wish. Mrs Fremont screams
hysterically, and the thwarted Fuad limps away in alarm.
(We note in some
disbelief that the Fremonts apparently live opposite a car park and a
petrol station. And I’d really like to know who the guy some distance up
the street is, who – understandably – simply stands and stares as a gimp
with a machete lurches through his neighbourhood.)
The MPD then shows up.
Jeez, fellas, what’d you do? Stop for coffee and doughnuts?
Astonishingly, Pete actually notices Fuad limping down the
street, and – oh, nice division of responsibility, Pete! – sends two of
the uniforms after the maniac killer, while he and Frank go into the
house. Suzette is still having hysterics in the kitchen, and as Pete
comforts her, Frank breaks it to Mrs Fremont that Fuad is the killer,
and that “this feast is evidence of murder!”
“Oh, dear,” responds
Mrs Fremont. “The guests will have to eat hamburgers tonight!”
If only Fuad had taken
a moment, and offed both Suzette and her mother when he had the chance,
instead of running away like that! What would society not have owed him?
Still, it falls to Mrs
Fremont to ask the home question, And have you caught him? Pete
admits, well, no, they haven’t – but they will. They have to! He glances
at Frank who is, I’m pleased to note, sufficiently abashed to stop just
hanging around the kitchen and go out to help in the chase. Not Pete,
though. He chooses this moment who break it to Suzette about Trudy, so
he gets to comfort her for a while longer, until Frank bellows from
offscreen somewhere, “Okay, Pete! Let’s go get him!”
Meanwhile, you might be
surprised to learn that the Fremonts not only live opposite a petrol
station and a car park, but just down the road from the City Dump.
Location, location, location. Fuad is still limping along with he
machete, easily outstripping the two athletic young cops chasing him.
Pete and Frank drive up, but decide in the interests of fair play (and
of dragging out the movie a minute or two longer) to park the car and
proceed on foot. One of the screen’s great chase scenes follows, as the
old man with the gimp leg manages to keep about twenty yards between
himself and the four hardened, trained professionals chasing him. (Mind
you, Pete hasn’t stopped smoking since we first laid eyes on him. See
what it leads to?) Fuad then decides that twenty yards isn’t far enough,
and chucks his machete at his pursuers, who all drop back about another
twenty more. (In fact, the uniforms disappear altogether!) And then – a
chance! Fuad spots a garbage truck that is just about to depart, and
hops into the scoop at the back of it. The truck starts to pull out, and
Pete, whose nasty little habit has really caught up with him,
gasps, “Frank, stop the truck!” Frank sprints off gamely, but in the
end, the forces of Cosmic Justice decide that they can’t afford to leave
matters in the hands of these two clowns any longer, and step in to
serve up a little karma. As the truck rolls off, the crusher at the back
is activated; and the last we see of ol’ Fuad is a single bloodied hand
jutting out of the back of the truck.
(Staging the climactic
scene of Blood Feast at the dump, and having Fuad crushed to
death by a garbage truck, is of course HGL’s little gift to all film
critics. You can almost picture the unrepentant grin as he effectively
says, “Go ahead, fellas! Take your best shot!”)
Frank finally manages
to get the truck driver’s attention, and he jumps out to see what all
the kerfuffle is – just in time to see a bloody mess being spread all
over the scoop in the back of his truck. The driver seems remarkably
unphased by this turn of events: his attitude is less “Oh, my God!” or “WTF!?”
than it is, “Aw, not again!”
Frank, privileged as
always, gets to deliver the epitaph of Fuad Ramses: “He died a
fitting death for the garbage he was!”
Well – it ain’t He
tampered in God’s domain, I guess, but it will do. Hey, you know
what the main difference between Bride Of The Monster and
Blood Feast is? Bride Of The Monster knows when to stop.
Instead of a dramatic chord and a fade to black, Blood Feast
gives us---gives us---
---gives us another
full minute of – get this! – Pete explaining the brilliant
detective work that put him on the trail of Fuad Ramses. He actually –
gasp! choke! – BRAGS about the Ishtar/I’tar thing!!!!
It’s not hard to see
what’s going on here: HGL is struggling desperately to drag Blood
Feast out to the magic seventy-minute feature-length mark. (He would
later have the same difficulty with The Gruesome Twosome, hence
the opening sequence with the talking styrofoam heads.) Alas, Pete’s
detective work was not quite brilliant enough to fill the required five
minutes, so Blood Feast concludes with Our Hero waxing
philosophical:
“So, Frank – who knows
if the spell of this monstrous goddess has possessed anyone else? Lust,
murder…. Food for an ancient goddess who received life through the
perverted death of others! Let’s go home, Frank.”
And – both lighting up
again; will they never learn? – go home Frank and Pete do,
leaving the hardworking and dedicated employees of the North Miami Beach
Department of Sanitation to clean up the mess. We get one parting shot
of the Goddess Ishtar, weeping blood – awww – and then it’s The
End.
Final count? Sixty-six
minutes, fifty-five seconds. Sorry, Herschell!
***********************************
That, then, was a
“Video Nasty”. I’ve been sitting here for a while after watching it,
trying to feel depraved and corrupted. Mostly, I feel like a beer.
It’s understandable
that in 1963, audiences might have been sent so far into catatonic shock
by the gore scenes of Blood Feast that they didn’t notice the
cheerfully goofy ineptness of everything around them. By 1985, however,
you’d think that people might have gained enough perspective to make a
more accurate assessment of the material. For all that it lingers upon
the bloody dismemberment of scantily-clad girls, Blood Feast is
essentially harmless, much closer in spirit to Lewis and Friedman’s
“nudie-cuties” than to the “roughies” in which they also dabbled. A
quick boob shot here, a girl in a bikini there, a shock scene to break
them up…. Just a little titillation, and no damage done.
That those who were
most vocal, most active, in the condemnation of the Nasties knew nothing
and cared less about film in general and horror movies in particular is
painfully evident. Nothing, however, spells it out quite so plainly as
the wildly heterogeneous nature of the titles that ended up on the DPP’s
list; a gathering that saw innocuous efforts like Night Of The Bloody
Apes, Contamination and, yes, Blood Feast rubbing
shoulders with undeniably contentious works such as I Spit On Your
Grave, Cannibal Holocaust and The Gestapo’s Last Orgy.
The list contains three, possibly four, films with serious arthouse
pretensions. There are slasher films, of course, both worthy and
unspeakable; supernatural horror films (and nothing, I think,
demonstrates the fundamental ignorance of the anti-Nasties campaigners –
or the fact that they hadn’t seen most of the films they were
persecuting – more than the constant stigmatising of The Evil
Dead as “the worst of the Nasties”); zombie films; gore films; a
giallo; a race-hate film; a Mondo film; and some
delightfully silly science fiction. There are films that were simply in
the wrong place at the wrong time – like Eloy de la Iglesia’s The
Apartment On The 13th Floor, which was re-titled “Cannibal
Man” for its British release, and promptly fell foul of the censor
as a consequence. (As, indeed, did nearly any film with “cannibal”,
“don’t” or “evil” in its title!) And then there are the films that,
let’s face it, have no merit whatsoever; dull, inept, dismal little
films, that in the natural course of events would have sunk into
deserved oblivion – except that they somehow landed on that dreaded
“List” – and thus automatically became “Collector’s Items”….
These, then, are the
“Video Nasties”; the films that were going to destroy British society,
had the gallant, self-sacrificing souls at the British Board of Film
Cens---sorry, of Film Classification – not stepped in and
prevented it. Mysteriously, neither James Ferman nor any of his
underlings seem to have ended up depraved and corrupted as a
result of their viewing of all the Nasties; nor is there any
record of any of them going on a rampage of rape and murder. Funny,
that.
Like all manufactured
hysterias, once it had served its purpose the Nasties scare was allowed
to die away. This was not, however, before the British tabloids had sunk
to a whole new shameful nadir with their handling of the death of James
Bulger, the three-year-old boy abducted and murdered by two
ten-year-olds; a tragedy that the newspapers, ignoring the total lack of
evidence and the blanket denials from the police, the parents, the
defence lawyers and the perpetrators themselves, chose to blame upon, of
all ridiculous things, Child’s Play 3.
In time, video began to
give way to DVD, a medium whose cost-effectiveness meant that films for
which there was only a niche market could still be profitable.
Specialist companies began to emerge that not only released obscure or
contentious titles, but treated them with as much or more respect as the
majors did their blockbusters, restoring the prints, subtitling them,
collecting bonus material and releasing the films uncut. One of
the leaders in this field is, of course, Something Weird Video, behind
which lurks none other than….Frank Henenlotter. That Frank was left
depraved and corrupted by that early encounter with Blood Feast,
no-one would attempt to deny; least of all him. And thank Ishtar for it.
Where do the “Video
Nasties” stand today? Of the films originally branded with this peculiar
cinematic Mark of Cain, nine remained banned in the UK. These are a
mixture of “Nazi atrocity” films (whose banning is understandable if not
excusable), and films that, let’s face it, are so entirely crappy that
no-one’s bothered to get then un-banned. Some of the titles – even a
number of those most loudly proclaimed “obscene” some twenty years ago,
such as Snuff, Zombie, The Driller Killer and –
gasp! – The Evil Dead – have now been released uncut; while the
rest, for one reason or another, continue to feel the wrath of the
censor. Among these is Blood Feast; and amazingly (to me,
anyway), of all its violence what they chose to cut was the completely
unconvincing whipping scene – on the grounds that it constitutes “sexual
violence”. I find myself indignant on behalf of Fuad Ramses.
And what of the one
that started it all? The first film sent to the DPP for prosecution
under the Obscene Publications act, a work condemned for its “extreme
violence”, publicly branded as “this exercise in depravity”, and
subsequently banned, S.S. Experiment Camp was passed uncut in the
UK in 2005. And if we needed any further evidence of the contrived and
fraudulent nature of the entire Nasties campaign, consider this
rightfully shamefaced statement from the BBFC, which accompanied the
film’s DVD release:
“The content of the
film is in fact very mild and poorly executed. If anything, it was the
title of the film and its original packaging that led to difficulties,
rather than the content. The idea of the film may, of course, be
offensive to some but that is not a good enough reason to cut or reject
it. We would only cut or reject a film for adults if the content was
illegal or harmful. SS Experiment Camp is neither illegal nor
harmful, just tasteless….”
Footnote:
Most of the quotes in this review are taken from the three main studies
of the “Video Nasties” era: See No Evil, by David Kerekes and
David Slater; Seduction Of The Gullible, by John Martin; and
The Video Nasties, edited by Martin Barker.
 |
Director: