Anyone who thinks that they’re laughing AT Herschell Gordon Lewis movies doesn’t entirely get it. These films are FUNNY. The jokes that 1960s audiences might have missed because they were too busy gagging over the spilled intestines shine bright today. Lewis doesn’t try very hard at it. He doesn’t use it to make any kind of point (thank God). His humor instead seems to come from a healthy awareness that he’s in the business of bullshit—like many directors on the independent exploitation beat back then, Lewis saw no future for these films past short-term profits at rural drive-ins—and there’s no taking any of it seriously.
This third gut-churner from Lewis, the final entry in what’s retroactively become known as his and producer David F. Friedman’s “Blood Trilogy”, is as entertaining and out to lunch as the others. It’s the old saw about the artist who kills for his art. A painter is stuck in a creative rut until he discovers a groovy new shade of red that can only be achieved with human blood. From there, his sanity goes out the window along with any sense of logic in the script.
The body count is a little lower than Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs!, but the carnage is no less ghastly. Lewis spends most of this film’s brisk seventy-nine minutes cracking jokes about the art world, making fun of effete critics, idle rich art buyers and the tortured artist personality. Lewis never considered himself an artist, so he approaches the subject with zero respect or sympathy. The only thing he has in common with this film’s mad murderer is that they both do their best work with plenty of red.