I bring this phenomenon up now because Color Me Blood Red, the third and final installment of H.G. Lewis and David Friedman’s famous Blood Trilogy, isn’t all that good. It’s decent and has its moments, and it certainly doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 and Carrie 2, but it’s a letdown after Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs! But aside from its association with its predecessors, it has a connection that will always bring back fond memories for me. But before all that, let’s discuss the movie.

What’s that some people say about trilogies? The first one is good, the second is great and the third is a disappointment? Check, check and check. For being the third installment of the Blood Trilogy (though I believe Moonshine Mountain was actually squeezed out in between Two Thousand Maniacs! and Color Me Blood Red, and the movies of the Blood Trilogy are only related in spirit, not plot), it’s not all that bloody. More problematic, it lacks the goofy fun factor that was so prevalent in the first two. Would a few Ewoks cheer things up a little? It’s hard to say. But this movie has issues.

It’s tough to review Color Me Blood Red without comparing it to Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood, from which Lewis clearly lifted from in making his own macabre artist movie. But Bucket of Blood is clearly the better movie; it’s superior in virtually every aspect.

The plot is basically the same as A Bucket of Blood: Painter Adam Sorg is an artist going nowhere. The town’s resident art critic and poof labels him a “commercial success but artistic imposter” and impugns his lackluster use of color. By accident, Sorg finds that blood makes excellent red paint. He eventually kills his insufferable girlfriend Gigi by stabbing her in the temple to use her blood to complete his first masterpiece. While this does bring about a brief-but-hilarious scene in which Sorg uses her bloody noggin as a paintbrush, fun moments like that are few and far between. We’re also missing a trademark Lewis-penned score, which itself adds tons of character to his movies.

What’s not working here? For starters, Gordon Oas-Heim (here credited as Don Joseph; he was also in Moonshine Mountain) is unlikable as Sorg. Unlike Dick Miler’s portrayal of tragic, hapless busboy Walter Paisley, Oas-Heim’s character is aloof, boring and a ridiculous dresser. He’s completely unlikable. Another problem comes in the grisly works of art themselves. Paisley’s sculptures were genuinely creepy in a minimalist, black-and-white sort of way. Sorg’s paintings are too goofy to be grizzly; they’re basically bad high school art class projects with blood drizzled all over them. Hell, even I don’t buy that as artistic genius. My favorite painting is actually a pre-blood one that features a devil bull burping out a spaceship.

The biggest plague on the movie is the group of teenagers that is supposed to pass as our protagonists. Though they qualify as protagonists by textual standards, they wander in and out of the movie at random, inane at best (“Holy bananas! It’s a girl’s leg!”) and annoying as fuck at worst. The lead teen April’s mom is Sorg’s biggest fan, therefore creating the illusion that her daughter and her friends matter. Eventually, April wanders onto the beach in Sorg’s backyard, and he talks her into modeling for him; i.e. letting him tie her up for a bloodletting. It all leads to the inevitable showdown when Plucky Teen Gang discovers Gigi’s body and April’s boyfriend rescues her. But damn, it takes forever to get there, and it pretty much sucks. The payoff is worth it, though, when the boyfriend shoots Sorg right in the face, causing him to inevitably fall against a canvas. In this, we get a trademark Lewis gore scene that’s worthy of being the capper of the trilogy, but it’s too late to save the movie. The movie’s only about 80 minutes, but it’s at times painful to trudge through.

Though the Lewis/Friedman touch makes it worth catching, the truth is Color Me Blood Red kind of sucks and is a big disappointment. But it gets a free pass because of my first experience with it.

It was Valentine’s Day, 2008, the first Valentine’s Day (yes, I celebrate the mother of Hallmark holidays, and I love bunnies, too) with the latest, greatest and final love of my life. Here’s the scene. Since the poor girl’s present didn’t and still hasn’t shown up from England, I rented the nicest hotel room in town, and we spent a night in luxury and saint-like sexual discretion; our pre-marriage prerogative. Anyway, it was about 1 a.m. We made our way to the whirlpool to watch a movie in each other’s loving embrace. Before checking in, I grabbed a mess of movies from my collection to bring along. Which one did she choose? Color Me Blood Red. And she’s not a big-time gore fan, either, which I wouldn’t care for; I like my females as dainty and Disney-like as possible. So picture this magical moment: It’s been a fantastic day. You’re sitting in the arms of a gorgeous woman in a plush whirlpool. You’ve completely dominated every aspect of trying to plan the perfect night. The lights are low; the atmosphere is fantastic. You’re surrounded by reasonable luxury — not the nauseating kind that makes you, or should make you, feel like you’re a bad person. Food and drink are bountiful. She’s happy. And you’re watching an H.G. Lewis movie that she picked as the backdrop for your perfect night. That’ll do, Color Me Blood Red. That’ll do. (Even if you do kind of suck.)