Not quite a review, more of a brief discussion

I watched 'Color Me Blood Red' again last night and was struck by how close it is to being an underrated almost classic. In the event you're not familiar with the film, it's the third in a cycle of films known as the 'Blood Trilogy'. These low budget films made in the early 1960s by H.G. Lewis are considered to be the first horror films to feature prominent gore. In a number of ways, they recreate the earlier horror styles and prepare them for the slasher films of the 1970s and 1980s. Normally when I watch the films, I watch them in order of their release in the Trilogy, despite the fact that the stories aren't connected in any way. 'Color Me Blood Red' usually comes across as extra poor as the middle film of the Trilogy, '2000 Maniacs', is my favorite. After watching everything come together well for the middle movie, it's disappointing to see how the final film doesn't improve on that.

Watching them out of order, it was easier to see what 'Blood Red' does well. It's the story of frustrated painter Adam Sorg, who discovers that the color of blood is the red he's looking for his art (I know that scientifically that makes no sense and there's a lot of that in the movie, but it's a movie and we're just letting that go, okay?). The basic 'art through death' plot was nothing new at the time either (see 'House of Wax' and 'A Bucket of Blood' so the entertainment comes primarily from the gore effects and watching Adam Sorg's torment grow. He transforms from obnoxious artist to tormented, increasingly crazed killer as we watch but never reaches a truly mad for the sake of being mad character. He explains his twisted, justifying logic near the end of the film and his desire to not sell this line of art shows that, on some level, he knows there's something wrong with what he's doing. There's also signs that he has to 'talk' himself into these things. This makes for an interesting character and it's performed well.

Him being interesting is vital as his character is almost constantly on-screen for the first half-hour or so of the movie. I found that it flies by. Oddly enough, despite some other interesting characters, the movie starts to drag without Adam on-screen. Even with some fun dialogue and (surprising in retrospect but wouldn't have been at the time) chastity, things start to get old until we begin the end sequence. Nothing gets horrible in that twenty minutes or so and it's only about 80 minutes long in total but the stretch without Adam drags.

The ending has a character totally acting in character and some nice moments of dark humor. I enjoyed it more than I expected last night and yet remember why I don't like it as much as I should. '2000 Maniacs' is almost a really good movie if it's not and 'Blood Feast', the first movie in the cycle, is so horrible it's fun. 'Color Me Blood Red' is never really horrible so it doesn't get that quality to it. It sits as an oddity in the process, almost half a step incomplete. Still worth watching but not quite there.