The plot focuses on a psychopathic food caterer named Fuad Ramses (Arnold) who kills women so that he can include their body parts in his meals and perform sacrifices to his "Egyptian goddess" Ishtar.

Blood Feast is considered the first splatter film, a sub-genre of horror noted for its graphic depictions of on-screen gore.

At the police station the following day, Detective Pete Thornton consults with the chief of the homicide bureau about the killings, who says that the killer follows a pattern of mutilating his victims by removing their limbs and organs.

Elsewhere in town, Dorothy Fremont hires a caterer named Fuad Ramses to arrange a dinner party for her daughter, Suzette.

Later that day, Thornton tells the chief he interviewed the latest victim's acquaintances and that she was a book club member.

He describes a ritual in which women were sacrificed to the goddess on an altar, and their body parts were prepared and served as dishes during the feast; this was said to cause Ishtar to be reborn.

Suzette informs Thornton that Fuad Ramses will be catering her dinner party and serving an authentic Egyptian feast in honor of Ishtar.

Noting the similarity between Ishtar and the word "Etar," Thornton calls Dr. Flanders and learns that Ramses is the author of Ancient Weird Religious Rites.

Thornton explains to the chief how he deduced the killer's identity and says Ramses must have kept a list of people who requested his book as potential victims.

The concept for Blood Feast arose in the early 1960s, three years after the release of director Alfred Hitchcock’s horror film Psycho.

[4] In the United Kingdom, the film faced censorship issues, eventually being banned and added to the infamous "video nasty" list.

Variety declared the film to be a "totally inept shocker", "incredibly crude and unprofessional from start to finish" and "an insult even to the most puerile and salacious of audiences".

[9] The review labeled the entire production a "fiasco", calling the screenplay (credited to Louise Downe) "senseless", and the acting "amateurish".

Renshaw concluded his review by calling the film "offensive, nasty, shabby, and revolting, but also great fun, if you can stand the sight of guts".

[14] Dennis Schwartz of Ozus' World Movie Reviews gave Blood Feast a C grade, stating that it was "one of those really bad films that some take pleasure laughing at and others sneering at and others doing both".

[15] Allmovie's Fred Beldin wrote, "The plot is threadbare, the acting is on a par with the clumsiest of high school plays and the direction is static and uninvolving.

[18] Fuad Ramses was described by author Christopher Wayne Curry – in his book A Taste of Blood: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis – as "the original machete-wielding madman" and the forerunner to similar characters in Friday the 13th and Halloween.

After the third, producer Friedman said, "I think that for now we're going to abandon making any more 'super blood and gore' movies, since so many of our contemporaries are launching similar productions, causing a risk that the market will quickly reach a saturation point.

[22] The novel, which features significantly different versions of central characters Fuad Ramses, Pete Thornton and Suzette Fremont, has a much more humorous tone than the film and is set in Chicago rather than Miami.

[26] A remake directed by Marcel Walz and starring Robert Rusler as Fuad Ramses, was given a limited theatrical release on June 23, 2017.