Color Me Blood Red (1965) Dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis
By Cory C, November 11, 2025
It would probably be sacrilege to make a website named SPLATTER and not talk about Herschell Gordon Lewis (HG Lewis), the father of the splatter film genre. He is widely credited with creating the genre in 1963 with BLOOD FEAST, a film about an Egyptian caterer hired for a party who takes it upon himself to make a special cannibalistic feast for the unknowing and guileless guests. 1963 was a big year for HG Lewis, who in the same year also created the brand new sexploitation genre of so-called “roughies” with SKUM OF THE EARTH. These films, made with miniscule budgets, amateur actors, and DIY ingenuity, were surprise successes. They catapulted HG Lewis into some of the most productive filmmaking years in history as he released 23 films between 1963 and 1968. Most of these were in the splatter/gore genre and designed for regional releases at drive-ins and small theaters especially in the Chicago-land area.
BLOOD FEAST and SKUM OF THE EARTH are bizarrely entertaining even today and have an interesting role in film history. If you’re reading a site like SPLATTER, you may have the precise level of brainrot to properly enjoy them. My personal favorite HG Lewis movie TWO THOUSAND MANIACS! was released in 1964 a year before COLOR ME BLOOD RED (1965). You don’t even need that much brainrot to love it. It’s a deep fried southern gore flick whose influence is felt in movies like DELIVERANCE (1972) and whose tropes of southern hick killers remained relevant enough to be parodied decades later in TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL (2010). Following a two year creative stretch that would rival the most influential 2 years of any career in film, it’s easy to see COLOR ME BLOOD RED (1965) as a bit of a disappointment. It’s more derivative, less creative, and less entertaining than much of HG Lewis’s output at this time. Nevertheless, it is worth a viewing for those looking to dig deeper into the catalog of one of filmmaking’s most interesting and influential outsiders.
COLOR ME BLOOD RED (1965) follows Adam Sorg, an artist, who is derided by critics. His paintings can’t capture that je ne sais quoi. In particular, he just can’t find the correct hue of red to make his artistic vision a reality. When the woman he’s in a situationship with accidentally cuts herself and gets blood on a canvas he realizes that he has found the exact correct hue of red for his paintings. I am sure you can guess where this is going. He takes more and more extreme actions to get blood for his paintings, ultimately resorting to murder. Gordon Oas-Heim who plays Sorg gives a pretty good performance all things considered. With HG Lewis films you’ll learn quickly not to take a decent performance for granted. Given that the effects in this one are not as impressive as many other HG Lewis films, Gordon Oas-Heim’s manic performance as Sorg is a saving grace for this film.
If this entire concept sounds familiar to you, it may be because you have seen Roger Corman’s A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959). In that horror comedy, a man desperate for approval from the beatnik art scene keeps accidentally killing animals and people and turning them into statues. Seeking approval from the art scene he begins to kill intentionally. The natural comparisons between the two films are not flattering for COLOR ME BLOOD RED (1965). It’s less entertaining, more plodding, doesn’t have Dick Miller’s dynamite performance and the concept loses too much of the humor in HG Lewis’s hands.
Still, there is something here to be enjoyed. The manic, psychotic artist willing to do anything for his art, even murder is a potent trope and it’s fun to see the Godfather of Gore HG Lewis experiment with it. This one is not essential viewing, but it is a curio that fans are likely to enjoy.
