As Hollywood’s go-to guy for scary stories, Stephen King knows a thing or two about horror. He’s written plenty of it, seen dozens of his works adapted for both the big and small screens, while he also likes to kick back and watch what everyone else has come up with, for better or worse.
The prolific author has also gotten heavily into the habit of recommending movies and TV shows to his legion of social media followers. The man clearly has a vociferous appetite for content looking at how regularly he shares his opinions on the best and worst the current media landscape has to offer, but he’s now plumbed the depths and revealed to the world the single worst horror film he’s ever seen, which you can check out below.
What is the worst horror movie you ever saw? For me, BLOOD FEAST.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) June 29, 2021
1963’s infamous Blood Feast was cobbled together by director, cinematographer and composer Herschell Gordon Lewis on a budget of just $24,500, and followed a murderous caterer who killed women and included their various body parts in his food, all while performing ritual sacrifices to the Egyptian goddess Ishtar. It may have turned a hefty profit relative to its budget after earning $4 million in theaters, but let’s just say the critics weren’t too kind.
It did turn out to be hugely important in the grand scheme of things, though, with other filmmakers now emboldened to create their own excessive portrayals of onscreen gore, and Blood Feast has been cited as an influence over such classics as Friday the 13th and Halloween, just obviously nowhere near as good or fondly remembered.
Reviews at the time threw around such verbiage as “inept”, “unprofessional”, “puerile”, “amateurish”, “offensive” and much more in between, but the fact someone with the standing of Stephen King is still talking about it almost 60 years later just goes to show the long-lasting impact such a terrible, terrible example of self-indulgent slicing and dicing continues to have on some of horror’s most notable names.
