Review of Color Me Blood Red (1965) by Cassandra M — 29 Sep 2009

Colour Me Blood Red is pretty much the typical Herschell Gordon Lewis film. In Blood Feast, a man killed people to create a feast; in The Wizard of Gore, a man killed people for his magic show; in The Gruesome Twosome, a young retard killed people to make wigs out of their scalps; and here we've got a deranged painter who discovers that blood is exactly the right shade of red to colour his paintings with. This film is the third and final entry in Herschell Gordon Lewis' "Blood Trilogy", and while it is perhaps not as gory as the other two; Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs, if you enjoy Lewis' style, you're bound to like this one! As mentioned, the plot revolves around a painter. He discovers that blood is the paint he needs when he cuts his girlfriend's finger and begins smearing her blood on his canvas. After attempting to 'paint' the picture himself, he soon realises that he doesn't have enough blood - so naturally, he kills his girlfriend. As you might expect, her blood doesn't go too far, and the only way to get more blood is the to kill more women...

Obviously, this plot has been lifted straight from Roger Corman's B-movie classic 'A Bucket of Blood', but Herschell's style is all over it, and he succeeds in making the plot his own...although 'succeeds' might not be the right word. The movie is trash in every sense of the word, as the acting is as rubbish as it gets, and the film has a distinctly cheap and nasty feel running throughout it. The director's use of music is good, however, as while it does nothing to increase the film's credibility; it does give the movie a hilarious sense of humour, and it works really well with the plot. As I said, this isn't as gory as some of Herschell's earlier stuff, but it's still got plenty of blood and gore; although as anyone that has seen one of these movies before will know; it's absolutely impossible to take seriously. It's clear that Herschell was more interested in the red stuff than anything else, as there are a number of obvious plot devices on display and the artist's descent into insanity is a joke. But even so, this makes for a very fun viewing, and I wouldn't hesitate to name it as one of my favourite of Lewis' movies.