Blood Feast

This movie is a remake of a classic Herschell Gordon Lewis film. Lewis, known as the Godfather of Gore, did extreme and extremely silly high concept horror films like The Gore Gore Girls and 2000 Maniacs (remade as a Robert Englund flick about a decade ago). I'm not a huge fan of his and my interest in this movie had more to do with its marketing, which swore it was a hardcore, over-the-top gore film. Honestly, though, this movie seems almost apologetic for its intense content.

It tells the story of an unstable, American restaurant own that moves to Paris with his wife (Caroline Williams of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Hatchet 3) and college aged daughter (Sophie Monk of The Hills Run Red). He is going broke and goes off his meds then promptly begins hallucinating, believing he has been ordered by an Egyptian goddess to perform a blood sacrifice in her name.

He begins murdering and cooking young people while his suspicious wife noses around and his oblivious daughter is romanced by a local cop. Blood is spilled but it's often slightly off camera, which is disappointing. The opening is pretty awesome and the finale is great but the entire middle is a snooze. A lot of this has to do with a dull supporting cast and a stilted leading man. Caroline Williams and Sophie Monk, the only two actors I had heard of beforehand, are great but they're kind of peripheral to the movie for the most part.

I can't really recommend this movie. The trailer is stronger than the actual film and I found it kind of boring overall. There's certainly worse out there right now so I guess, if you're desperate, give it a look. Just don't expect too much.

I've seen some terrible movies in my lifetime, and this one is no different. Talent-less actors, weak special effects, the movie takes forever to get going and when it does it looks like a bad porn film. Really, this movie is just terrible and everyone involved should be embarrassed. Tragic film making at its worst.

I didn't connect this film with the original until I heard the crazy mans name. Not exactly sure why this is set in Paris or why they changed the focus to the chef. The chef in the original while still being a crazy man was really more of a side character. The casting was OK except for the 30 year old not so fresh faced daughter, who is a horrible actress at least in this but some of that falls on who ever cast this movie because she is clearly 10 + years to old for the character she plays. In a pleasant surprise the mother who I recognized but couldn't place her for awhile in fact it was past the midpoint of the movie until I put it together, I let you figure it out. If your a big horror movie fan you should know who she is. If you read this before you watch the film watch the original at least part of it because I most likely would not have watched the whole movie if I didn't make the connection to the original. Its public domain so it's on YouTube as well as most of the old horror movie channels on Roku or whatever service have like that. It's not horrible but it's not great if you have a problem finding something to watch the 1963 version first the stories are different enough so it won't feel like you've watched twice.

The H.G.L original is pretty much sacred turf and as an original film, is nigh impossible to recreate (in any shape or form). Saying that the modern 'Hardgore' scenes add practically nothing to the story, or does the hack style of acting. This is a pretty poor show and apart from the leading actor (who shows some promise), the rest of the cast are just all wrong.

Ishtar was Sumerian, not Egyptian. This is a sad attempt to make Goddess worship about sacrifice, which it isn't.