There's an online petition afloat to protest the court ruling in Germany banning the sale of Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast. The 40 year old gore film was declared by a court in Karlsruhe as Gewaltverherrlichung, "promoting violence". The court's seizure edict (Google Translation) details the scenes that contributed to its subsequent banning. Here's one:
The scene sounds a lot worse than it plays on film. I remember reading about Lewis' films way before I ever saw them and expecting them to be the most horrid things I could ever imagine. Sure, I saw some stills, and of course I knew his films scraped the bottom of bottom barrel production values and were shot in the wilds of South Florida, but that knowledge just reinforced in me that these movies (especially Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs) were the culmination of some Southern culture of blood, an instance of trailer-park sadism and in-bred hillbilly carnage and killing for kicks (I went through my adolescence in Texas, if that explains anything). Then I found an oversized video box of Blood Feast (Wizard Video) at a local mom and pop video emporium. Shrinkwrapped and garish, the box was shelved next to copies of Faces of Death, Dr. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, and Zombie Lake. I dared myself to pick it up, and then I dared myself to rent it. Two hours later I slid the tape into the VCR. And just 15 minutes later, as I sat on that beat-up couch, beer in hand, I asked myself, is that all there is about Blood Feast?
Is that all there is? Clearly my fears were not justified. While the movie was not without certain primitive charms and had a kind of 1963 motel room aesthetic (the bright colors, the sets), there was nothing horrible about it but its execution. Sure, there was blood and gore, lots of it, but the violence and mayhem was so profoundly unrealistic and so incompetently shot, that horror was the least and the last of the emotions this movie delivered. Simple disgust, maybe, or a risible kind of disdain. In spite of all that (or, most probably, because of it), through the years Blood Feast has garnered a worldwide following (one can safely call it a "cult", although I feel the term has been bandied about and way overused by film critics and pundits in referring to "off-beat" films in that it has become a genre unto itself; moviemakers are writing and lensing films that they consider "cult" without taking into consideration that it's the appreciative and somewhat obsessive audience that makes the "cult" and not their "wacky" skills --The Dark Backward, anyone?). While some may admire the corny and creaky mechanics of the narrative, the Playboy Playmates ("Introducing Connie Mason... you've read about her in Playboy"), or the phony Egyptology, I'm sure the reason for most of Blood Feast's renown and appreciation is simply a matter of history. In 1963, even if it only played in Southern drive-ins, there was nothing in the world like it. The clinical and pornographic way the film portrayed bloodletting and violence shattered movie paradigms and we haven't been the same since. While 1960's Psycho pushed the envelope of film shock and violence, Blood Feast took the envelope, tore it into shreds, formed the pulp into a ball the size of a large Bartlett Pear, and stuck it up your ass. Which does not make Blood Feast a better movie (it's hardly close, on so many levels), but it certainly is important as a historical and cultural document, a precursor, for better or worse, to a new kind of violent film, splatter cinema if you like. While we may think of splatter as cheap and ugly genre films, it's influenced more films than you think, from Saving Private Ryan to The Passion of the Christ.
Which leads us back to the German ban of Blood Feast, which I find unconscionable and, yes, obscene. To deny Germans the right to view this thin historical slice of American schlock is simply wrong, not unlike the British ban on "video nasties". I genuinely hope that the ruling is overturned, or at least reexamined.
For more on the Blood Feast ban, here's a Mobius thread on the story.
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