Color Me Blood Red (1965)

Undescribable Perfection

Don't Believe the Hype

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The third collaboration between director Herschell Gordon Lewis and the 'sultan of sleaze', producer Dave Friedman, is a ramshackle and shoddy affair not worthy of the infamous status it has attained over the years. This instantly forgettable movie is scuppered from the start by the amateurish production levels, from the inaudible sound (in which the character's dialogue is drowned by the sound of crashing waves) to the static camera and the wooden acting on display. Sadly there isn't even the benefit of many gruesome gore scenes for horror fans to enjoy, as this is a very small-scale film there are only two or three deaths on view.The only incidental pleasures come from viewing the film in the frame of mind that you are watching a "so-bad-it's-good" type of film, and from this viewpoint there is some fun to be had. The first is the acting of Gordon Oas-Heim (or so the credits say) as the deranged artist; his "acting" consists of periods of quiet brooding followed by some extreme overacting. He's pretty poor, yes, but he shows more emotion than the rest of the wooden cast put together. Halfway through the eighty-minute production a quartet of obnoxious teenagers arrive on the scene to participate in a beach party, and the film seems to chart their endless amusements. It has to be said that the sight of these overgrown actors and actresses parading around in red swimming costumes and joking together is pretty funny, although they quickly outstay their welcome! The occasional line of dialogue is hilarious, like when one of them discovers a buried corpse on the beach : "Holy Bananas! It's a girl's leg!".The first of the few gore scenes comes when Adam Sorg - the artist - decides to do in his girlfriend by driving a sharp implement into the side of her face (we're later treated to a lovely closeup of her gory countenance as it is devoured by insects). Later on, he attacks a man in his speedboat, impaling him with a spear before driving over his body! A female is chained up in a back room, and Sorg arrives to squeeze blood from her intestine in a scene which disturbingly resembles a man milking a cow! Sadly, other than the villain's own bloody demise, this is as much gore as the film has to offer.The ending unforgivably lets the partying teens survive for another day, but still offers some amusement to be had from the confrontation between madman and teenage boy, who eventually shoots the psycho in the head with his own gun, conveniently left lying around! The loose plot is cribbed from Corman's A BUCKET OF BLOOD, so the it doesn't even have the saving grace of being original either. My advice is to pick up one of the duo's other, better films such as BLOOD FEAST, and give this boring amateurish obscurity a miss at all costs!

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.

I tried hard to think of a reason to recommend this, but the best I can do is say it was ahead of it's time in terms of subject matter. The script is appalling, the acting wooden, and the gore non-existent. Yes it's from a bygone era, and from a historical point it may be of interest to some dedicated film buffs. But as a piece of entertainment or art, it fails miserably.There is one 'lol' moment - well documented here - and a few unintentional laughs at the expense of the players. Gordon Oas-Heim is to be credited for making an effort, and with a better script and cast maybe he could've made a decent movie out of it, but the material just isn't there. I actually felt sorry for him both as an actor and as a character, for getting involved in something so dire! It's best viewed as a 'so bad it's good' exercise, maybe with some buddies after a few pints of strong ale. Or am I missing something?!

In Herschel Gordon Lewis' third part of the "blood trilogy" he did with producer Dave Friedman, a local crackpot artist named Adam Sorel (Don Joseph) can't get the right shade of red for his canvases. One day, his girlfriend/assistant cuts herself on a nail and accidentally drips blood on to a canvas. Sorel thinks this is the perfect shade of red he's looking for so he starts off by cutting his fingers and supplies his own blood to his first canvas.But he soon realizes that he doesn't have enough blood to supply all the red 'paint' that he needs, so he goes on a gore killing spree. He starts by killing his assistant/girlfriend by stabbing her to death and burying her body out on the beach near his oceanside bungalow.The next victim is a female sunbather who's pedaling on one of those boat-cycles and is grabbed by Sorel after he kills her boyfriend by ramming into him with his powerboat. He takes her back to the house, hangs her from the rafters and disembowels her. It doesn't look very effective, though. It looks like red-painted pieces of plastic hanging down from the waistline of her pants. We see Sorel squeeze the so-called 'entrails' as he tries to wring every last drop of blood out of her.The daughter of a woman who wants to buy one of Sorel's paintings from him, goes over to his house after Sorel entices her to pose for him. Her teenage friends are outside on the beach roasting marshmallows while they wait for her. As they gather wood for the fire, they accidentally uncover the assistant's body. In the coolest scene of the film, we get to see the corpse's rotting, blackened skull-face with earthworms crawling through and on it. Not bad! One of the boy's goes over to Sorel's house nearby to let them know what they found and he sees Sorel about to strike the hanging girls with an axe, grabs a shotgun that's hanging on the wall and shoots Sorel in the face, turning it into a bloody pulp. It's so cheesy-looking, it's hilarious.The Something Weird DVD uses a print that's a little blurry in spots, but is perfectly watchable. It also includes 10 minutes of outtakes that are interesting along with the original theatrical trailer. It's not quite as much fun as the two earlier films but it's still a gas, anyway. 6 out of 10