I Drink Your Blood (1971)

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Blistering performances.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

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.

Originally shown as a 2-parter alongside I Eat Your Skin (you can see what they did there) in the Grindhouse theatres of the 60's and 70's, the film follows a group of Satanic hippies as they arrive in a ghost town, devoid of inhabitants due to a mining project nearby. They make themselves comfortable in one of the many abandoned homes and attack a young girl. Her grandpa goes apes**t and confronts the Manson family- esque group, only to be dosed with LSD and almost killed. The girl's young brother rescues the old man, and exacts revenge by infected a tray of mince pies with rabies (!), only for the remaining occupants of the town to one by one become infected by the disease and begin a rabid, frothy-mouthed killing spree.I thought I'd seen it all when I struggled through s**t-fest Island Of Death, but I Drink Your Blood is another example of how the genius of Grindhouse flashed an exploitative and lie-filled title in my face, only for me to giddily clap my hands in excitement only to be exposed to the cinematic equivalent to an anal raping. At least Island Of Death had a little bit of gore to appease my blood lust, but this just has a bunch of hippies waving their hands around and spitting what looks like soap from their mouths. Even though the film was one of the first movies to receive an X-rating due to violence rather than nudity, it spends most of its time painfully building up to violence that never comes. Utter crud.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

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!

Gory, obscure, raunchy and utterly demented independent cinematic exploitation-trash from the early 70's; that's what I live for! And "I Drink Your Blood" just happens to be one of the most – perhaps even THE most – quintessential titles to answer to this definition! The unquestionably deranged writer/director David E. Durston took as many contemporary sources of inspiration as possible and scripted down a crazed low-budget horror flick that is guaranteed to entertain all fans of the golden "grindhouse" classics. Judging by the title alone already, "I Drink Your Blood" obviously isn't the type of horror film that you watch for its incredibly suspenseful atmosphere (although some sequences are quite intense) or profound character drawings, but to get a lot of horror-related kicks and laughs out of it. This is a pretty sick- spirited puppy in terms of tone and content, but the final result is an often laugh-out-loud funny due to the amateurish acting performances, grotesque make-up arts and errors in continuity. Undoubtedly inspired by the Charles Manson killings, "I Drink Your Blood" introduces a group of drug-addicted hippies who call themselves the Sons and Daughters of Satan and throw devil-worshiping orgy parties in the woods during the middle of the night. The group passes through a little town called Valley Hill. The place is practically abandoned due to the construction of a new dam, but the hippies nevertheless manage to rise amok among people who left behind by raping a young girl and forcing the elderly veterinarian to take LSD. The grandson, who witnessed the hippies' vile behavior, decides to take revenge by processing the infected blood of a rabid dog into meat pies and then subsequently serving them to the hippies. The "prank" runs a little out of control when the hippies become homicidal and go on a killing spree across the area. Hell ultimately breaks loose when one of the female hippies gang-bangs with the construction workers and infects the whole lot of them. The great thing about "I Drink Your Blood" is that you often don't even properly realize how incredibly twisted and offensive it actually is. Many elements are totally bonkers and sick, like the rat-barbecue, forcing the old guy to take LSD, the self-initiated abortion, the dam workers gang-bang and – most importantly – the idea that the whole idea of spreading the rabies was thought up and executed by a 12-year-old kid! The gore is plentiful and outrageous, with multiple decapitations, impalement, disembowelment, stabbings and electric carving knife action! Apparently this was the first movie ever to receive an X-certificate based on violence alone, so I guess that should be enough argumentation for true horror fanatics to check it out. As far as I'm concerned, it's a must- see exploitation/grindhouse classic!