Horror Extreme Movie Catalog - Editorial Reviews

The newest trend in art is type O negative! When his girlfriend, Gigi, cuts her finger on a frame, maniacal artist Adam Sorg (Don Joseph) discovers a new shade of crimson that will make his artwork so special--human blood! Squeezing all he can out of his sliced-up fingers, Adam then stabs Gigi in the head, smears her face on a canvas and--voila--a macabre masterpiece is created. After his bloody new painting causes a sensation on the local art scene, a crazed Adam continues creating sanguine specialties by extracting art supplies from victims outside his beach house. It all goes bad, however, when he zeros in on April (Candi Conder) whose scarlet pigment he plans to remove with an axe.

In this 1965 Herschell Gordon Lewis opus (the final installment of the infamous "blood trilogy"), impulsive painter Adam Sorg (Don Joseph) seems to have it all: a pretty girlfriend, an exclusive gig at the local gallery, and enough sales to live comfortably in his remote, beachfront home. But Sorg wants more. Considered a trendy painter with a poor sense for color, he longs for critical acceptance. He sees his chance when his girlfriend cuts her finger and drips blood onto a canvas. That's it! Blood is exactly the color his paintings were screaming for. Cutting his girlfriend's finger, or even his own, won't provide enough blood for his new masterpieces, though, and his desperate need for more and more blood can only lead to one thing: murder. Despite the self-referential aspects of an artist who can only achieve true fame by using blood, Color Me Blood Red is more exploitation than art, with lingering close-ups of bloody intestines and the like. But what do you expect from Lewis? Joseph is surprisingly good as the painter with the "artistic temperament" in a movie that works better as camp than horror. --Andy Spletzer