6/10
one of *the* awesomely bad exploitation flicks of the early 70s; doesn't mean it's any good, but it's bad fun while it lasts
1 May 2007
David E. Durston's most readily available motion picture- which means it's the only one that isn't either an obscure porno or others- is I Drink Your Blood, a quickie made for peanuts and meant to be artful to those who have said peanuts in their brain. All you need to know: satanic hippies- a winning contradiction of course- find an abandoned house, beat up grandpa (who looks very oddly enough like Luis Bunuel), and the grandson gets angry enough to shoot a rabies infected dog, draw out its blood with a syringe, inject the blood into MEAT PIES (yes, meat pies, what kind of meat is meant as an eternal mystery), and the Charles Manson wannabes eat em up. The response: they all become, to one extent or another, ravaging quasi-zombies who go after the rural folk one by one, some with a pure ravenous delirium like the black hippie or the native American, and others who's madness grows more steadily (the women in the group). There's even one, I won't say who, goes almost Shaolin-style on the situation.

Filled with nobody actors who probably all knew they were going nowhere all the same (save perhaps for Lynne Lowry, who had somewhat of a successful B-movie career with her cat-eyes appearing later on in the Crazies), it's a cheapo attempt to cash in on Night of the Living Dead, but it does have some really f***ed up ambition going for it in hindsight: it's quite possibly the very first (un-official) Troma production. Spared all expense, I Drink Your Blood shoots its financial wad on what little special effects and gore and make-up there needs to be, and that alone. No need to get things like the *foam* from rabies infected people right, just dab some shaving cream. And why bother rehearsing (at least, that's what the way it seems of course), which is more than evident in possibly the worst child actor I've ever seen in a schlock fest playing the kid who starts this whole she-bang. Yet it is, living up to its hype, a very violent movie, however without a single socially redeeming statement in the process.

But unlike some other ultra-violent horror fests of the period (Last House on the Left immediately comes to mind), I Drink Your Blood isn't really out for loftier goals than to shock, and Durston's most significant achievement, if nothing else, is to make all of this bad crap really, hysterically funny, if only in big bursts amid scenes that are also, predictably, dull. The aforementioned Chinese character is the oddest one to have in a satanic LSD cult, though it's also a lot of fun seeing how sleazy the director can get in exploiting racial stereotypes. Of course, due to budget constraints, no "daring" exposes of what it MUST be like to trip, however just watching the hippies chow down on the meat pies is enough to get some chuckles. It might even make for a decent do-it-yourself Mystery Science Theater night, as the ultra-violent rabies-infected LSD-satanic-hippie movie was sort of left in the dust during the show's run.
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