Review of Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002) by Dougal S — 25 Jul 2011

Around 40 years after his first 'Feast' Herschell Gordon Lewis returns with a sequal. I'm not really sure why he bothered.

The film is a pretty lame rehash of the original video nasty with Fraud Ramses III returning to his grandfather's shop (the scene of all the splatter in the original film) to re-open the catering business. Low and behold he gets possessed by a statue in the back room and starts killing and cooking the locals in order to create a 'blood feast' in honour of his new God.

Whilst the HG Lewis has never had any pretensions at high brow entertainment it's difficult to know what he was trying to achieve here. If it was meant to be a straight exploitation flick then it's mired in dreadful acting and dialogue. if it's supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of his old films then it seems like a bit of a wasted exercise.

The gore is there but despite being more elaborate in intent, HG doesn't seem to have moved on in terms of style so it all ends up looking a bit cartoony. There are a few good moments but they're shamefully few and far between and mainly involve the mother-in-law from hell whose appearance is always proceeded by a burst of music repeating 'satan'. Oh - and her husband is supposed to be so insignificant that when he dies no one notices and his corpse then appears in every subsequent scene which all the characters duly ignore. That in itself was a funny idea but it is so glossed over in the rush to try another bit of gore it ends up more bemusing than anything.

So maybe HG should have stayed in retirement and let someone remake the original (as is the norm these days) rather than trying to resurrect it himself.