Wonderfully offbeat film!

Truly Dreadful Film

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

What self respecting exploitation and horror fan is going to resist *that* title?When a sadistic, Satan worshipping, hippie gang starts raising hell in a remote and tiny rural community, a local kid fights back by feeding them meat pies infected with blood he'd obtained from a rabid dog.The result is an outrageous, wonderfully gory, trashy hippie horror hoot, directed for maximum shock value by David E. Durston. It definitely has a campy appeal as well as some twisted touches. The pace is always quite good, but things definitely get cranked up to a higher level for the intense and exciting finish.The cast, overall, is not surprisingly not so hot, but Indian dancer Bhaskar plays his lead role with a delicious amount of creepy charisma. (And that's another thing: one's gotta love a character name like Horace Bones.) Highly noticeable among the supporting cast is delectable, uncredited young Lynn Lowry, in one of her earliest roles, a mute member of the gang. Director Durston also appears uncredited as Dr. Oaks.Great music by Clay Pitts and enjoyable gore effects by Irvin Carlton are heavy assets. Along the way, we get to see hands and feet chopped off, a pitchfork through the neck, a hanging, a stomach stabbing, self immolation, a gang member running around brandishing an axe, another one stabbed over and over again, and of course lots of foaming at the mouth.Say what you will about "I Drink Your Blood", but one thing it's not is boring. It's extremely amusing throughout, in fact downright hysterical at times. The influence of "Night of the Living Dead" is undeniable, but the truly wild 'n' crazy approach of "I Drink Your Blood" is all its own, and the story comes complete with the subtext of concerns of small town America over the whole hippie movement. While understandably a cult favourite, this does come highly recommended to newcomers to exploitation & horror flicks. Great fun.Eight out of 10.

Certainly Charles Manson deserves to be in prison the rest of his life, not just because of the murders committed by his "family" but for inspiring a bunch of movies about lethal Hippies, such as this one. (In the book "Fatal Vision," about an army doctor who tried to blame the death of his family on lethal Hippies, there's a line "Four people on acid couldn't even organize a trip to the bathroom, let alone a trip to go kill people.") The leader of this wild bunch is played by a 40-year-old Indian dancer (Indian Indian, not American Indian) who in fact is great, jacking far more enthusiasm into his performance than this flick really deserves. He detects the group ritual being gawked at by an outsider (as per the later and vastly superior "Race with the Devil") who then gets mauled by some of the group. This victim, Sylvia, staggers into the nearby largely abandoned town and collapses; the local baker woman, Mildred (this actress eerily resembles Audrey Campbell from the "Olga" series) assumes that the culprits are some nearby construction workers. Meanwhile the Hippies show up in the same town after their van breaks down, setting off the main revenge plot which is basically a reworking of "The Virgin Spring"/"Last House on the Left" (although the latter appeared a few years later). The "gimmick" here is that the Hippies and the construction workers get rabies, after Sylvia's younger brother Pete injects dead dog blood into some meat pies (Sweeney Todd, anyone?) eaten by the Hippies. According to a medical website, "contact with the blood, urine, or feces (e.g., guano) of a rabid animal, does not constitute an exposure...." But I guess we need to allow for some "artistic license..." As to whether "I Drink Your Blood" is worth your time, there's some nice violence, limited of course by the minimal budget; the mass shooting at the end is unfortunately all off camera. The actors playing the rabies victims have varying degrees of frothing at the mouth---by the way, according to that same medical website, "The rabies incubation period may vary from a few days to several years, but is typically one to three months"---in other words not an hour or less, as per the movie, but again, artistic license... Other than the Indian dude, the best performance is by Rhonda Fultz, who unlike most of the cast has a "real movie" on her credit list ("In Cold Blood"). Since she manages to inject some recognizable humanity into her character Molly, Molly's death (by her own hand) is more affecting than what happens to most of the others, plus her being pregnant and all. Bottom line, "Blood" passes the "free/beer" test---if you can see it for free and have plenty of beer handy, then yeah, go for it. By the way don't bother looking for that scary face on the video cover, it's actually from another movie....

I just got back from watching this mondo-horror classic at The Bloor Cinema in lovely (but chilly) downtown Toronto, as part of a Fangoria B-Movie Festival Double Feature Night. I've been reading about this movie for ages, and I have the 2006 Grindhouse Deluxe Uncensored Director's Cut on my must-get list, but I jumped at a chance to see it just as the drive-in/grindhouse audiences did 40 years ago.To paraphrase a particularly trigger-happy law-enforcement officer in the flick, "Well, what can you say? The poor bastards are probably better off dead!" Short plot outline: LSD-shooting Satanic cult meets violent redneck hardhats, then everybody gets rabies! No-one thinks of taking the infected to a hospital for shots, because the local veterinarian proclaims "It's hopeless!" Starring nobody memorable except the insanely beautiful young Lynn Lowry. Really, i can't go further without ruining the enjoyment of seeing this cult classic which, trust me on this, deserves its reputation. Just remember - it's only a movie, and it's OK to laugh at torture, dismemberment and shaving cream lips! This was a digital screening of the nice restored print, with perfect audio, and some slight scratches (possible left intentionally for that authentic look.) This is all good because the unexpectedly good photography, loopy but interesting direction, and even the oddly effective primitive synth score (especially the one or two-note "going crazy" cues) deserves it.P.S. Never mind swords and shotguns, just don't be without your garden hose!

I am one of those who will never forget this movie's ad campaign, which advertised a double bill of this film and a movie called "I Eat Your Skin". If you already know "I Eat Your Skin" contained no eating of skin, then it will not come as a shock to you that "I Drink Your Blood" is not about vampires, and aside from an opening scene where a little blood is swilled, the focus of the film is not on blood drinking at all. It does turn into a freaked-out pseudo-zombie film in the vein of "The Crazies".A weird hippie and his small band of followers spend their time taking acid and conducting Satanic rituals. Their Satanic, wanderin' ways bring them to a little town on the verge of being completely abandoned; when they begin to terrorize the locals, a little kid gets revenge on them by injecting meat pies with the blood of a rabid dog and feeding them to the hippies, who then go on a homicidal rampage. When a group of rowdy construction workers also get infected, the spit really hits the fan.The ultra low budget gives the film a rickety appearance; you will either love it or hate it for that reason. Personally I loved it and think it's one of the best examples of a crazy 70s drive-in flick. It makes no sense, but there's a definite uneasy feeling going on throughout the whole thing, not the least of which is due to the obvious Manson family references. The violence is also often disturbing, and if the special effects are not always convincing, the eager spirit of things is enough to get under your skin.