A Taste of Blood

Like others on this site, I really like low budget gore movies from the 1960s and 1970s. I can usually look past the terrible sets, dialog and acting if there's a sufficient amount of blood and guts.

Sadly, I must say this movie is the weakest of the H.G. Lewis films I've seen. To repeat what other people have said, it is WAY too long for this type of movie. The acting itself is no worse than his other movies. And the plot is similarly ridiculous. But there's almost no blood or other ghastly effects at all. Some seriously twisted gore would have made this more bearable. Graphic violence made "Blood Feast", "The Wizard of Gore", and "The Gore Gore Girls" pretty entertaining viewing experiences.

Maybe he was trying a more serious approach with this film. Who knows? I love his films, but I don't recommend spending 118 minutes of your life watching this one.

The director of what is widely considered the first splatter film ever made(Blood Feast) directed this film about a man, through drinking a brandy laced with blood and his ancestral relationship to Count Dracula, that turns slowly into a vampire and begins to kill the relatives of the six men that killed the famous count. If you are looking for the typical Herschell Gordon Lewis trademarks of great quantities of un-realistic blood, super bad acting, gobs of intestines and the like, inferior lighting, and a litany of other flaws in film-making that seem to find such a home in Lewis's work, you might be disappointed. This is easily Lewis's best film in terms of direction and acting. The actors in here are average. No small feat for a Lewis film. Even Bill Kerwin(one of Lewis's regulars) does a decent job! The female lead was also average, and that says a lot for a Lewis film. Usually he just puts pretty girls with no acting talent in his films like Connie Mason, but sexy Elizabeth Wilkinson has some acting talent(albeit not a lot) as well as boobs! Bill Rogers makes an adequate vampire as well. Not only are the actors decent, but the script is interesting. Donald Stanford used some interesting tie-ins with the novel by Bram Stoker for the names of the relatives. I thought it was a fairly unique concept. The film is two minutes shy of two hours, and it is a tad long. It is very apparent though that Lewis wanted to make this film the best that he could. It shows. It shows he has some talent as well. Lewis also has a bit part as a sea captain affecting a working-class English accent. He is pretty good too. There is not much in the line of killing or gore though. The film shows far less blood that you would see in your typical Hammer feature. There are some obvious budget concerns with sets, etc..., but all in all this is a decent film about the vampire myth in a modern setting.

This is Herschell Gordon Lewis' "Epic" movie. This is the film with, according to Lewis, the highest production value and budget of all of his "gorror" (a term coined by Lewis describing the gore genre of films that he created) films. Despite this, I found this film to be slightly disappointing. Anyone, viewing this film expecting to see something along the lines of "Blood Feast" or "The Wizard of Gore" as I did would be slightly disappointed. The gore is kept to a bare minimum in this film and it appears as if Lewis was trying to make a legitimate horror movie without all the stomach-churning effects of his classic work. Although the storyline is fascinating, the bad acting and hideous effects do not serve this film very well, even though this is what most Lewis fans have come to expect from him. It doesn't quite work in this one, because it seems to have been the intention of Lewis to try to provide his audience with a legitimate scare. For Lewis fans, this film is still worth viewing but for those who have not seen his work before I suggest you first watch a couple of his classics such as the previously mentioned entries.

A Miami businessman, John Stone (Bill Rogers, "Santo Versus the Vampire Women"), receives a parcel from England containing two old bottles of Slivovitz brandy from his recently deceased ancestor, and after drinking both bottles, becomes a vampire.

The story started from a screenplay by Donald Stanford (his only credit), who claimed to Lewis that he intended this film to be a vehicle for Frank Sinatra. Originally, the film had a title referencing "Dr. Alucard", which is now fairly well-known to be "Dracula" backwards, and it was wise to change this.

Interestingly, the film was originally intended by H. G. Lewis to be about 90 minutes, which would already be long for him, but Lewis found it made more sense to pace the story more slowly to give it a serious nature than to be "frantic". This was also wise, and makes it a better film. Shooting took three weeks, the longest Lewis ever spend on any film. All of this shows.

Judging by IMDb, this film is not very appreciated and not as respected as Lewis' other work. Even "Gruesome Twosome" seems to fare better, which surprises me because the two are worlds apart. "Gruesome" is a mess, whereas "Taste" shows real talent and I can see why Lewis considered this his masterpiece. In what world is a film that shows real skill rated lower than one of Lewis' more slap-dash efforts?

Yes, "Taste" is still flawed, with some cheesy lighting and makeup effects. The blue spotlight is rather silly. And yes, I am pretty sure that at one point the actors forget the lead is supposed to be "John" and instead call him "Dan". But the plot, production value and acting are all better than the average Lewis film. Bill Rogers is great, and Thomas Wood is really quite incredible. He could have been a leading man in any Hollywood production.

The film is available from Arrow Video as part of their "Feast" collection, on the same disc as "Gruesome Twosome". The special features are covered in my review of the other title. The audio commentary on "Taste", among many other things, talks about Lewis' interactions with other low-budget icons, specifically Roger Corman and Bill Rebane; we also hear about how films such as these can go through various owners who you've never heard of (like how this one is or was owned by one Norm Seinfeld). If you have a love for the history of low budget (and no budget) film, the commentary alone is like a master class in the topic.

I have this little tradition that when an iconic horror veteran dies, and if I both respect and admire his work enormously, I try to watch one of his/her movies in the next few days following the sad news. Herschell Gordon Lewis passed away, and even though 90 years is a fine age I'd sign for immediately, it's still a great loss for the horror movie industry. Lewis was, and forever will remain, the man who brought gore and splatter to the movie and TV screens. And how! Titles such as "Blood Feast" (1963) and "Two-Thousand Maniacs" (1964) weren't just the first gore flicks; they still stand proud and strong even by today's gore standards. That being said, another trademark was that his movies were extremely low-budgeted and often so damn amateurish that they balanced on the verge of tolerability. His gory movies are great fun, but Lewis also made a number of drama/action movies without bloodshed or absurdity ("Just for the Hell of it", "Something Weird", "She- Devils on Wheels"…) and those are quite difficult to sit through. Mr. Lewis' departure also meant for me personally that I no longer had an excuse for postponing my viewing of "A Taste of Blood". I have this DVD lying in my closet for at least 12 years already, but I could never bring myself to actually watch it for one sole – and admittedly shallow – reason, namely … its length! "A Taste of Blood" has a running time of 118 minutes! Seriously, one hundred and eighteen minutes! In my humble opinion horror movies that last for almost two hours shouldn't exist. I can motivate myself to watch good movies that run more than 110 minutes, let alone to watch a lesser acclaimed H.G.L with a low gore factor!

Having completed my little tradition, I can gladly state that "A Taste of Blood" was better than I expected and a fairly entertaining horror movie; - but still too damn long of course! Easily 30-40 minutes of poor, irrelevant and repetitive footage should have been cut, and then – probably – this would have been one of the director's better non- gory flicks. The story is pretty interesting and engaging, being a modern-day of vampirism and blood retaliation. Without knowing it himself, American businessman John Stone is the last living descendant of the legendary Count Dracula. He receives a package, from London solicitors, containing a few bottles of brandy, but doesn't know that the liquor is mixed with the authentic blood from the family line. Shortly after tasting the brandy, John loses complete interest in his beautiful wife who worships him and his job he was previously so obsessed about. All he can think of right now is exterminating the descendants of the bastards that killed Dracula, and he travels to England to extract his bloodline's vengeance. The last heir of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing seeks the help of Stone's wife and best friend in order to stop him. "A Taste of Blood" definitely features a handful of bright ideas and memorable moments, but overall the pacing is too slow while the quality of sound and picture is too poor… Oh yeah, and it's far too long! Especially the dreadful love/friendship relationship between Stone's wife and best friend is incredibly tedious and redundant and even half of all the dialogs in general are unnecessary. The film is low on gore, but still HGL manages to insert a couple of gruesome moments of gratuitous bloodshed. For example, when THIS vampire feeds on the blood of a random go-go dancer, he doesn't leave two pathetic little holes in her neck but rips her entire throat wide open! He's to my knowledge also the only vampire ever who rams woods stakes through the chests of his enemies instead of vice versa!