Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2003)

Oh, Jenny's gonna LOVE this one. This is the comeback vehicle for one Herschell Gordon Lewis, who more or less invented the gore film and then kicked around the exploitation circuit for a while before retiring from filmmaking back in 1972. I guess he just needed to show all the young turks who flung blood around in the shadow of his legacy that he still knows how to do it. Damn, does he ever -- watching this film, it suddenly feels like 1963 all over again. All the Lewis hallmarks are here -- the godawful acting (J.P. Delahoussaye tries, but he's no Mal Arnold), the surprisingly competent (and underrated) mise-en-scene, the crackpot sense of humor (one character breaks into an impromptu weather report in the middle of a scene, John Waters cameos as a pedophile priest, and there's a murder scene involving a meat hammer that's almost as funny as the one in The Gore-Gore Girls) but most of all the uninhibited blood'n'brains splattering across everything. For some reason, the plot is taken sorta seriously this time, which results in the film running a stunning hour-forty-five -- forty minutes longer than the original Blood Feast with about the same amount of plot -- but when a chick is getting scalped with a turkey carver, who cares about plot? This is good old-fashioned exploitation filmmaking given a 21st-century polish. I loved it. Glad to have ya back, H.G.

Grade: B-