A Taste of Blood

A taste of Blood is Herschell Gordon Lewis's answer to a Vampire Film. Husband (Bill Rogers) and Wife (Elizabeth Wilkinson) get a mysterious package in the mail from England filled with brandy bottles and a message telling them to toast Their ancestors. The husband starts to nip away at it slowly despite his wifes insistence not too. Bad move, turns him into a creepy lookin, blue make-up, type vampire, with a funky looking ring that can hypnotize people. This movie has all the HGL trademarks, including the unstable camera shots, cheap locations, quit editing during exciting moments, and bad acting. Bill Kerwin (from Blood Feast and many more HGL's films) has a role in this one too as an overly bothersome friend of the family. There is even a Howard Hesling doing the Dr. Van Hesling thing here. Good 'OL Hersch has a cameo as an English sailor. This film has it's moments, but at 118 min. is way too long, it can easily be trimmed to a nice 75 min. and still have the same outcome. Also I might add for a HGL film the gore is rather tame, and it takes a good 45 min. to see any blood, and when you do see it, it is rather lame.

Part of the problem is its length: "A Taste of Blood" clocks in at a whopping two hours. Lewis tended to wrap up his films in about 80 minutes, and certainly "Taste" would have benefited from a shorter running time. But content-wise, too, this is one of Lewis' weaker efforts. The script was written by someone (namely, Donald Stanford) outside the HGL inner circle, and it shows; these 120 minutes are dour and talky, with none of the gallows humor that characterizes Lewis classics like "Two Thousand Maniacs!" and "The Gruesome Twosome". Finally, in a bid for respectability, the Godfather of Gore kept the blood and guts to a minimum, and a movie as monotonous as this one really could have used a little more action. "Almost a step into the mainstream," Lewis said of this film when he was interviewed for an episode of "The Incredibly Strange Film Show" in 1989, "(and) it was a mistake, because that step into the mainstream gave me a picture that was neither fish nor fowl." The film is beautifully photographed, and there is one bang-up gore effect (when vampire Bill Rogers has his way with a blonde stripper), but "A Taste of Blood" is for Herschell Gordon Lewis completists only. Casual viewers will not be amused.

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 Taste Of Blood, is about a businessman named John Stone, who one day receives a package in the mail. In the package are two bottles of brandy and the letter that comes with it says he is a great relative of a rather famous family. John, starts to drink the brandy and soon his wife Helene, notices how much he has changed. He is very cold and distant from her and he sleeps all day and works only at nights. John, soon travels to London where the package came from and learns that he is a descendant of Count Dracula, the vampire and now he is going to kill off everybody who tried to or is related to somebody who tried to kill Count Dracula. Meanwhile back home a man named Dr. Howard Helsing, visits Helene and her friend Dr. Hank Tyson, and tells them that Helene is in great danger and he is too because John wants to kill him too because his ancestor killed Dracula. Not believing at first soon Hank follows Howard, because he notices changes in Helene and does not want to see any more people dead. A Taste Of Blood, is directed by cult filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis, who is known as "The Godfather Of Gore" for giving us such films as Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs, Color Me Blood Red and The Gruesome Twosome. I have seen many of Herschell's films (and have liked them all) but A Taste Of Blood, is different than his usual horror films. One reason is because there is hardly any gore in this film at all. There is maybe three scenes with some very light blood so gore fans might have to look elsewhere for some of his regular gore. Also most of Herschell's films are under 90 minutes running time and this one is 118 minutes, just two minutes short of two hours. The film is well done but it is quite slow moving and doesn't have the same camp value as Herschell's other films and plays more like a straight faced horror film. It is very slow moving but at the same time I was interested in the film and wanted to see how it would carry out. It is not my favorite Herschell film but I still liked it and die hard fans of Herschell will probably like it as well if they don't mind the slowness of the film or it's no violence.

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.