Blood Feast
An eccentric caterer prepares an Egyptian feast while secretly carrying out murders for a ritual dedicated to the goddess Ishtar. Cheap, lurid and historically important, the film became a landmark in screen gore.
Film details
| Original / alt title | Blood Feast |
| Year | 1963 |
| Director | Herschell Gordon Lewis |
| Country | USA |
| Runtime | Approx. 67 min |
| Main cast | William Kerwin, Mal Arnold, Connie Mason |
UK status
A prosecuted Video Nasty despite being made two decades before the VHS panic.
Passed 18 uncut.
Why it caused controversy
UK censorship / Video Nasties history
A quick status check first, followed by the film’s censorship timeline. A DPP prosecution was an obscenity case against a particular video publication — it was not automatically the same thing as a permanent nationwide “ban”.
Detailed censorship timeline & facts
FACTS & TRIVIA
- Often credited as the first commercially successful modern splatter film.
- Producer David F. Friedman collaborated closely with Lewis.
- Mal Arnold plays the murderous caterer Fuad Ramses.
- Connie Mason was heavily promoted in the original advertising.
- Its crude effects became part of its cult charm.
- Its Video Nasty status shows how older exploitation films were caught up in the panic.
- Herschell Gordon Lewis later became known as the 'Godfather of Gore'.
Distributor / VHS label
Archive cover shown is the user-supplied scan. UK distributor / VHS-label attribution varies by edition and is not asserted here without a verified sleeve imprint.
Trailer
Open a search for the original theatrical / VHS-era trailer. This keeps the archive linking to publicly available trailer sources rather than hosting copyrighted film footage.
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