I started watching Herschell Gordon Lewis's films in the usual order: Blood Feast and then all of gore-series, then the rest of his works, as I found them online. And if many of his bloody horrors are practically unwatchable by modern standards - due to the slow pace, boring storytelling, terrible acting and just bad taste in general, I was very surprised that Living Venus is a fairly normal, pretty good film, despite the low budget (although it is not noticeable). And even the actors play well and believably!
I will not retell the plot - there is no point in it, but I will say that it is there, it is a quite exciting and it was interesting how the story ends. And how surprised I was that it ended not stupidly and absurdly, but rather tragically and unusual for films of those years. This is definitely something people did not expect to see in a movie back then, but there was no bad taste and cheap tricks in this one, like in other Lewis works. I also liked the main characters, they all had different and, importantly, well-developed characters. I was interested to see how their lives would turn out, and - another big surpise - each story in the plot was finished.
As for the cheap production - I can't say that everything here is cheap and bad. In some way, even the opposite: there are scenes on the street, and scenes in different locations, and even has a Rolls-Royce and a fancy Chevrolet, as the characters' cars.
The camera angles change quickly, this is not a monotonous stationary camera, as in Lewis's future films. And there is a decent soundtrack, no worse than in other more popular films with famous actors.
So to all those people who want to immerse themselves in the work of the Godfather of Gore, I recommend watching this, the first film. It will complement the idea of the work of Herschell Gordon Lewis, who could have made more worthy films, but simply did not see the point in it if it did not bring in big money. And cheap shock was a success, even if the film was made at an unimaginably poor level.
