A Taste of Blood

From the mind of gore master Herschell Gordon Lewis. a ghastly tale of the revenge of Dracula. John Stone(Bill Rogers), a quirky mundane business man,receives a couple of bottles of brandy that supposedly and unknown to him contains the spirit of Dracula's blood. Stone's wife(Elizabeth Wilkinson)realizes that her husband has become cold and distant since sampling the brandy. Stone is drawn to Europe, where he continues an awkward taste for blood and is driven by urgent revenge to destroy the last remaining descendants of Count Dracula's persecutors. Pretty lame even for Lewis's standards. Others in the cast: William Kerwin, Eleanor Vaill, Gail Janis and Otto Schlessinger.

It's hard to believe but Herschell Gordon Lewis actually made a non-gore horror film with this boring dreck. And with an almost 2 hour playing time, it's about 40 minutes too long. A wealthy businessman (Bill Rogers) receives two bottles of plum brandy in the mail as part of an inheritance from his ancestor's estate back in England. As he drinks the brandy over the course of a few weeks, he slowly starts to change into a (gasp!) vampire named (you guessed it) Dracula! With none of the usual Herschell Gordon Lewis gore feasts in sight, this one is a complete snoozer that lacks even the campiness of his other films. The alternate audio commentary with Lewis on the Something Weird DVD can be funny at times, but not enough to save this turkey. In other words, this ain't no BLOOD FEAST or WIZARD OF GORE. 1 out of 10 for sheer boredom

PRobably HG's most ambitious project even more so than 200 maniacs, and I really loved it. It is very talky but unlike other HG and exploitation flicks the acting from bill rogers and willy kerwin is quite good and makes you care about the characters and what they have to say. Since its an HG flick we have some gore but its not one of his intensive gore flicks. There is a great scenes where the vampire stone takes a nice chunk out of a * dancer. I do have to point out however that almost all of HG Lewis flicks have a certain style to them to make you know its an HG Lewis flick. There's the out of focus closeups, lingering gore scenes, but there is also these horrendous day-for-night shots. This movie is no exception to that as the last 20 minutes feature some of the worst day-for-night shots ever filmed. Bad movie lovers and exploitation fans should be very pleased.