Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Main Menu Audio Featurette-On The Set With Herschell Gordon Lewis Featurette-Behind The Scenes Featurette-Behind The Gore Deleted Scenes Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Burial Ground, Zombie Holocaust, Zombie Flesh Eaters Trailer-I Drink Your Blood
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	99:21 (Case: 98)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Herschell Gordon Lewis
Studio Distributor	Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	John McConnell Mark McLachlan Melissa Morgan Toni Wynne J.P. Delahoussaye Chris Mauer Christy Brown Christina Cuenca Michelle Miller Kristi Polit Jill Rao Cindy Roubal Veronica Russell
Case	PUSH-1 (Opaque)
RPI	$29.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    - Detective Dave Loomis stating the obvious

    In 1963, enterprising filmmaker (H)erschell (G)ordon Lewis unleashed his seminal Blood Feast on an unsuspecting American public. The acting was appalling and production values poverty row, but young thrill seeking audiences raised on a steady diet of Universal horror films and nuclear sci-fi flicks were left slack-jawed after witnessing astonishing scenes of bodily dismemberment and evisceration in all its unflinching, blood-soaked glory.

    Capitalising on the success of Blood Feast, Lewis released several more gore-drenched epics over the next decade. Although saturated in his trademark crimson grue, films such as Two Thousand Maniacs, Colour Me Blood Red, A Taste of Blood, Gruesome Twosome, Wizard of Gore and the Gore Gore Girls never quite reached the giddy heights of visceral outrageousness that made Feast such a unique viewing experience.

    Nearly 40 years later, the time was deemed ripe for a sequel.

    Take one incompetent detective called Mike Myers (Mark McLachlan, who bears a striking resemblance to a young Tom Cruise) and his overweight, food-obsessed senior partner Dave Loomis (John McConnell), stir through the plot copious amounts of bodily viscera lovingly made into human hors d’oeuvres by insane caterer Fuad Rameses III (J.P. Delahoussaye) to satisfy the goddess Ishtar, and the result is a virtual remake of the original cult shocker.

    In keeping up with the demands of his contemporary target audience, Lewis has added in a plethora of naked, and obviously enhanced, bevy of beauties with names like Misty Morning and Lacey Undies and plenty of schoolboy humour. While many of the one-liners fall flat, there are few that raise a chuckle, such as: “What is a four-letter word for a type of woman than ends in _unt?,” asks one of the male characters while trying to solve a crossword puzzle. “Aunt,” comes the quick reply.

    The nudity is as politically incorrect as the script itself and only appears to be inserted into the narrative to titillate. In one particular scene a woman runs topless down stairs for no other reason than to show off her ample breasts, while another sequence has a group of gorgeous girls stripping down to model their new lingerie.

    Technically more polished than its splatter-punk granddaddy - badly chopped edits are now smooth fade-outs, the acting almost bearable (look out for a cameo by John Waters) and the gore effects better executed - Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat aims for the sleazy, Grand Guignol aesthetic that made the first film so sordidly appealing: A woman’s screaming hand is put through a mincer, intestines are torn out and fondled, eyes gouged out of their sockets, and in one particular nasty sequence a woman has her scalp and face torn off – all in pornographic, lingering close-up.

    However, many fans who lived through and relished the carnage that defined the 80s ‘video nasty’ period will testify that gore for gore’s sake has had its time in horror history. Consequently, while some will be excited by the sense of nostalgia invoked by Blood Feast 2, most will be asking the simple question – Why?

Video

    In an interview by G. Noel Gross for the website DVD Talk, Herschell Gordon Lewis had this to say about the transfer on the Region 1 Media Blasters release: "I object to releasing Blood Feast 2 direct to video after shooting in 35mm color. Had we shot digitally, we could have had two cameras as well as the tool I missed most, a zoom lens."

    While G. Noel Gross himself had this to say: “While it'd been a treat to see the flick in wide theatrical distribution, what's more tragic is this crude transfer that degrades the original 35mm so severely that it could easily be confused for a desktop digital production.”

    The “degradation” Noel G. Gross speaks of is print softness/fuzziness and murkiness. Overall, the film appears too dark, unnecessarily drab and lacking in life. To make matters worse the transfer is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio and not 16x9 enhanced.

    Shadow detail tends to suffer as a result (the entire opening sequence, for example), leaving the action in many low-lit scenes indistinct and difficult to penetrate. Also, when not in close-up, the faces of characters (7:09) are badly defined and blurry.

    Edge enhancement is a concern, mainly around the head and shoulders of characters (5:28), while chroma noise affects scenes with red gel lighting (9:59) and colour bleed is obvious around red coloured objects, such as lamps (11:27).

    I watched the film twice and on both occasions missed the layer change. I couldn’t bring myself to make a third attempt.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) mix is rough and badly mastered. Sound levels rise and fall like the tide throughout the entire running time.

    The soundtrack is relatively quiet, with dialogue, the odd organ strain and a few abrasive sound bites from songs by rockabilly surf rock band Southern Culture on the Skids (well known for the 1995 Camel Walk release) to add a modicum of comedic, sleazy or dramatic effect.

    As most of the action is forced through the front channels, surround use is non-existent. The subwoofer is silent.

    There is also moment of distortion in the soundtrack during a song by Southern Culture on the Skids at 85:06. Although it only lasts a few seconds, it was indicative of the poor mastering.

    At times dialogue is muffled (36:20), but generally it is clear and easily understood.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Main Menu Audio

    Infectious theme song sung by Southern Culture on the Skids.

    Annoyingly, the following bonus features are not time-countered, so the length of each are approximations.

On the set with Herschell Gordon Lewis (approx. 5 minutes) (full frame)

    Beginning with a badly recorded interview with Lewis discussing the difference between intensive and extensive gore (!), this brief featurette is followed by him directing the cast and crew in the setting up of the ‘corkscrew’ scene. The last couple of minutes involve Lewis discussing a continuity issue and setting up a shot.

Behind the scenes (approx. 10 minutes) (full frame)

    Opening with Gerard Livingston (Plumber?!) squashing a mosquito on his forehead, this featurette has a camera operator going around interviewing actors and assorted crew members on the set. I was thrilled to see John Waters, but the audio was so poor I couldn’t discern what he was saying until I cranked the volume up so far I thought my speakers would melt  down from audio hiss.

Behind the gore (approx. 5 minutes) (full frame)

    Now this is better. With on-set production audio, this criminally short fly-on-the-wall featurette demonstrates how many of the gruesome effects were achieved.

Deleted scenes (approx. 10 minutes) (1.78:1 and not 16x9 enhanced)

    The following three supposedly deleted scenes (without the benefit of a commentary) are really extended sequences involving:

    • More of the sexy women having a shower, and discussing cocktails and condoms.

    • An overly long sequence where Mrs Lampley regrets hiring Ramses for her catering needs followed by more of Myers talking and dribbling his blood sweets.

    • A soldier suddenly appearing then walking off the set saying that he’s in the wrong movie after Myers discovers the maggot-ridden girl.

Theatrical Trailer (approx. 3 minutes) (1.78:1 and not 16x9 enhanced)

    Playing more like a marketing segment, this trailer includes an introduction by H.G. Lewis followed by scenes from the film so the potential viewer will know exactly what to expect.

More Gore – Umbrella Trailers

    Four beaten and battered trailers for: Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror, Zombie Holocaust (AKA Dr Butcher M.D. (Medical Deviate)), Zombie Flesh Eaters and I Drink Your Blood

    There are three different versions of Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat released by a company called Media Blasters in Region 1. These being:

    • An ‘R’ Rated version which removes nearly all of the gore.

    • An unrated single-disc edition containing Media Blasters trailers plus a 30-minute behind-the-scenes featurette of one of their titles called Flesh for The Beast.

    • An unrated, uncensored Director’s Cut 2-disc edition with the second disc containing bonus features, including an Easter egg (which simply re-plays all the nudity).

    The good news is that we seem to have been blessed with the unrated, uncensored Director’s Cut and the bonus features from the unrated 2-disc edition - minus the Easter egg. From what I can gather the Region 1, 2-disc edition is a bit of a money grabbing exercise (it retails for around $35 US) as the combined running time for the bonus features is around 30 minutes and our Region 4 disc comfortably places the film and the extras on one dual-layered disc.

    It also seems we have the same non-enhanced, soft, murky print and flat Dolby Digital 2.0 mix that Region 1 fans were subjected to.

    So, unless you’re titillated by a couple of minutes of nudity that you can replay yourself or want a featurette of a totally unrelated film (available on the unrated single disc edition) Region 4 is the way to go.

    Blood Feast was the inspiration for an entire sub-genre of horror films. It encouraged countless filmmakers to pick up a camera and shoot their way to notoriety, which even led to H.G. Lewis being crowned the Godfather of Gore by his fans.

    Unfortunately, although Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat has a compulsive abattoir allure, it really is an unnecessary sequel (remake?) of the original groundbreaking film, further let down by poor picture and sound quality and a few sloppy extras that do nothing to enhance it.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall