Back in the far-flung past of 1963, Godfather of Gore Herschell Gordon Lewis unleashed Blood Feast; a blood-soaked tale of an Egyptian caterer who serves up feasts of human flesh, upon unsuspecting drive-in goers, and the world of horror films got that much more extreme.
As is the case in the horror biz, it was high time for the picture to get the ol’ remake treatment ‘round 2016 courtesy of writer/director Marcel Walz (along with co-writer Philip Lilienschwarz)… and it’s this version that got the deluxe 4K treatment recently thanks to the fine fiends over at Synapse Films.
Moving the action from Florida to Paris, our tale follows Fuad Ramses (Robert Rusler, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge) who have transplanted his wife Louise (Caroline Williams, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) and daughter Penny (Sophie Monk, The Hills Run Red) to France where he has established a restaurant that serves homesick American tourists authentic diner food.
Sounds solid enough, but business sucks, so our “hero” takes a night job as a security guard at the Louvre in their Egyptian exhibit. Once entrenched in the work, Fuad is visited by a vision of the Goddess Ishtar (Sadie Katz, Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort) who gets all demanding and requests a feast in her honor in exchange for eternal life.
After some online “research” (which features a cameo from Herschell Gordon Lewis himself), Fuad learns just how insane the courses of the feast truly are, but he goes right ahead and goes about gathering the unsavory ingredients to appease the Goddess!
More of a re-imagining than a straight-up remake, Blood Feast keeps the basics of the original yarn, and thankfully the gore as well, while presenting it’s own take on the monstrous material with Paris offering a fresh location and various sequences of cannibalism and torture to keep Gore-hounds chompin’ art the bit to see what dish is offered to Ishtar next!
While Walz punctuates the narrative with scenes of violent mayhem where necessary (and you’ll get to slap your putrid peepers on even more of that glorious red sauce… and some more talky bits as well… as this 4k release from Synapse contains the 99 minute uncut version of the film) things don’t always move as brisk as they could… but when the good stuff goes down it’s worth the wait!
To that end, Rusler, Williams and Monk give solid performances across the board, but the real star of the show are the special effects courtesy of Ryan Nicholson and his crew which ups the ante considerably from the homemade effects that made the original as charming as it was shocking.
While we are talking about “special” things, this release has a few special features to offer which include the film’s Indiegogo teaser, a theatrical trailer, a nearly 30 minute “making of” documentary, a music video, footage from the film’s red carpet premier, and some “scare cam” footage shot on cellphone.
As for the picture and sound… well, this is a modern film shot on digital, so if it doesn’t look good someone well and truly fucked up… but such was not the case here as the picture is sharp, the colors vivid, and the sound rich.
Offering a fresh take on the material and a host of top-shelf gore effects, Marcel Walz’s rendition of H.G. Lewis’ gore trendsetter Blood Feast is well worth a wicked whirl especially if you dig on the dishes served up by the original!
