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Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Screenplay: W. Boyd Ford
Cast: J.P. Delahoussaye as Fuad
Ramses III; John McConnell as Detective Dave Loomis; Mark McLachlan as
Detective Mike Myers; Melissa Morgan as Mrs. Lampley; Toni Wynne as Tiffani
Lampley; Chris Mauer as Mr. Lampley; Christy Brown as Bambi Deere; Christina
Cuenca as Misti Morning; Michelle Miller as Laci Hundees; Kristi Polit as Trixi
Treater
Synopsis: Decades after the events of Blood Feast (1963), in which his grandfather slaughtered women to
create the titular feast for goddess Ishtar, grandson Fuad Ramses III (J.P. Delahoussaye) inherits the old catering
store, only for the statue of the Babylonian goddess to immediate possess him,
commanding him towards the desire to recreate the blood feast again for the
wedding celebration of Tiffani Lampley (Toni
Wynne) and Detective Mike Myers (Mark
McLachlan).
There is an irony to be had that Herschell Gordon Lewis, never one to
stay modest, confessed his contempt (in light heartedness mind) to the idea of
art minded cinema. The irony was that, however, you could tell a directorial
trademark to his films even if they were made just for money, idiosyncrasies to
how he made his films and his sense of humour to making them. This is more so
the case as, when the long awaited sequel to Blood Feast came about, his most well known film, he would
afterwards claim that it was never really his own project despite directing it
and collaborating with his old producer colleague David F. Friedman. It feels the case, this sequel instead feeling
like it was put together with an entirely different mentality drawn from the subterranean
fringe culture that embraced his films in the first place.
It is definitely an interesting
film for him, less a sequel than a remake set in the same world, but between
the psychobilly music by Southern Culture
on the Skids, and its jokey (and frankly weird) tone, it's more a cultural
signpost of alt-culture of the time of psychotronic cinema, rockabilly revival
and early 2000s softcore titillation. It also means Blood Feast 2 is a tangent fest, the original film's premise
replayed longer and with irony, liable to be off-putting in how much it dawdles
on subjects unless you relent and accept those tangents are more interesting
than the plot. Normally this type of ironic dithering about is why this kind of
low budget genre cinema from the 2000s onwards is off-putting for me, but it's
a peculiar experience instead here. It never becomes so-bad-its-good,
thankfully, but is the kind of film, to keep you on your toes, where one of the
police detectives (the older veteran obsessed with food) suddenly breaks out
into a weather report in front of a map just for one moment. It's never brought
up again and such odd turns are numerous.
It's an odd world as a result,
barely stringing together a simple plot but with these weirdly attempted tries
at humour actually weirdly inspired, closer to the camp mentality an overt
parody from this period like Psycho
Beach Party (2000) had all whilst still between playing the plot straight
as possible in spite of this tone. It helps the broad characters, one note, are
at least fleshed out in terms of joke characters. Our food obsessed cop, sceptic
about Ramses III being the culprit, and his younger partner, obsessed to bag Ramses
III for the sudden string of murders taking place, kept alive as a joke as they
when they switch sides, and because of the female secretary in the office turns
out to be the smartest and most confident person in the room between. The
bride's mother, who is an overt stereotype for mother-in-law jokes. Legendary
film maker John Waters in a cameo as
a Catholic priest, a life's goal as a fan of Lewis' work playing as tasteless a joke in the role he'd have been
game for and visibly relishes.
And then there's J.P. Delahoussaye as Ramses III, who at
first is actually given a great performance in comparison to other cast
members; at least a better performance than Mal
Arnold as the original Ramses from the first Blood Feast, a
"special" performance in itself. Then things change, and whilst I
apologise for the obscurer pop culture reference, it's the exact comparison to
what Delahoussaye's performance style
becomes soon into the film; in the mid 2010s a veteran of American professional
wrestling named Matt Hardy created an
idiosyncratic persona, an ageless mad entity obsessed with riding lawnmowers
and shooting fireworks at his own brother, to do something fresh, a
"broken" character for a company called Impact Wrestling with a Cruella De Vil white streak in his grown
out hair, and among the many other deliberately weird things using a manner of
speech that can be described as Shakespearian wall chewing, gravitas of the
hammiest sort Delahoussaye a decade
earlier uses in Blood Feast 2 for humorous
bombast.
It fits the film, one which
saddles itself between this intentional humour and splatter, the raison d'être of
Lewis' film. The original Blood Feast, despite its quirky kitsch,
is important because it created the splatter genre of horror, back when on a
limited budget Lewis had to use a
cow's tongue and fake blood for the initial gore sequence. Decades later, and
on the cusp of the new century, splatter and gooey special effects became more
over the top and available in lowest budgeted productions. This is seen
metaphorically here in how the main practical effects designer is Joe Castro, the director of the low
budget series of Terror Toons films
started the same year as Blood Feast II,
the third one of the last works Lewis
did before his death playing himself as the narrator of gristly
reinterpretations of fairy tales. The gore in Lewis' older films, even as sleazy a later work like The Gore Gore Girls (1972), was crude
and deliberately silly even if utterly revolting; the same is the case here
where, despite how gruesome it is, there are overtly farcical details like
Ramses III using kitchen implements or the infamous scene of someone's face
being peeled off, the skull underneath still looking around like a perverse
animatronic. The gore's most accomplished here, which is a humourous thought to
consider, which arguably still keeps the sense of ickiness to it even when Delahoussaye is chewing the walls too.
At this point, I do have to deal
with the softcore nature of the film which is the aspect which jars immensely;
even whilst Lewis made nudie cuties before he made gore films, and at least one
porn film he denied making, Blood Feast
II at times feels like it was a 2000s softcore film meshed in DNA with a
splatter film in a horrible teleportation machine accident. Now admittedly this
is a film when most of the victims of these gore scenes are women, but the
softcore nudity is a caveat in itself. This is to be minded in that,
thankfully, we live in a world where we realise women are just as obsessed with
gore films, cult and outlandish music, and very different views of good taste
so there's a greater sense of complexity to the gaze a viewer has with a film
which is neglected badly. It does however mean I would like a woman's
perspective on a film like this, especially if she is someone who would
actually defend these types of exploitation films, many in existence who are
professional or amateur writers about such filmmakers like Lewis.
The specific type of softcore here
is I can pin point to the early 2000s straight-to-DVD film, like Jim Wynorski's Busty Cops (2004), which became common on the lower shelves of even
British DVD rental stores and those I admit freely I have seen a few of, like
the aforementioned one*. Films which are on the verge of porn and are very
statically shot even before they get to the nudity; films, from the few I've
seen, the kind that Misty Mundae (real
name Erin Brown) starred in, which were low budget and in many cases strange. Its
the same here to the point of being pointless filler, where nude scenes are
paraded in their own separate space, where a woman wanders a house very naked
to Devil's Stompin' Ground by Southern Culture..., or when the bride and
her bridesmaids decide to have a lingerie party for some unknown reason. It's
this sledgehammer subtly with the material which is the one thing which may put
off many rather than the gore or the strange humour.
Eventually the film's strangeness
becomes compelling. One of the strangest running gags compels this opinion from
me - in which a minor character dies and their body inexplicably starts popping
up in future scenes, even at the wedding reception at the end of the film.
There is a sense of the film being self aware of itself and trying to top what
it did previously how genuinely eccentric it can be. Even one of those nude
scenes, for the police secretary, is played as a bizarre dream for one of the
police where her breasts become two iced deserts and for her, when he wakes, to
chastise him. What in any other case would be a sloppy early 2000s production,
a predecessor to Neo-Grindhouse in being too ironic and not taking itself
seriously, instead in this case is camper than a boy scout conventional and genuine
in its weirdness. In spite of the visible, overlong mess, that actually becomes
the film's greatest virtue. Obviously, its alien to Lewis' films entirely, but it's a curious piece in his career
because of this.
Abstract Spectrum: Camp/Eccentric/Grotesque/Psychotronic/Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None):
None
Personal Opinion:
An outlier in
the career of Herschell Gordon Lewis's filmography;
also not as easily available as once it was when, thankfully learning where the
song comes from and what it is, one of its songs used to play on the trailer
for Arrow Video's promo reel in their
early days. Blood Feast II does feel
like a feast, a vast contrast to the quick and sudden shocks of luridness of
the director's heyday but a long, peculiar thing. It requires being a hardcore
fan of the legendary gore meister to appreciate, but God it's a curious thing
to witness.
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* And that particularly example, still irredeemable, did
show how bizarre these films could get, with random nude egg breaking in a
group shower and a talking lama as a police chief. No, I'm not making any of that up either.
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