The Thirsty Dead (1974)

Just perfect...

Brilliant and touching

Absolutely Brilliant!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Shot in the Philippines, Z-grade horror The Thirsty Dead opens with voluptuous go-go dancer Claire (Judith McConnell) gyrating wildly in a cage as drunken sailors ogle admiringly. Shortly after her entertaining routine, the woman is abducted by hooded assailants, and the film goes rapidly downhill from thereon in.Together with three other women—blonde beauty Ann (Fredricka Meyers), Filipino cutie Bonnie (Chiqui da Rosa), and Laura (Jennifer Billingsley), who ain't so attractive—Claire is transported to the remote jungle headquarters of a strange cult who drink a potion consisting of human blood and leaves that keeps them eternally young. Imprisoned in a papier-mâché cave, the girls are forced to wear sexy bikinis and are drugged for the bleeding ritual, all except for Laura, who is given the opportunity to enjoy immortality thanks to her resemblance to a painting by cult member Baru (John Considine). However, Laura isn't wild on the idea of eternity in a cave and refuses to drink the potion; together with the other three girls, she makes a bid for freedom.As attractive as Claire, Ann and Bonnie are in their skimpy get-ups, The Thirsty Dead is still extremely hard going, a dreadfully sluggish pace, boring dialogue, a distinct lack of action, wooden performances, and lousy production values all taking their toll on the viewer. Not-so-special effects include the slicing of one of the girl's neck with a knife and the subsequent healing of the wound using a special leaf, a disembodied living head in a glass box (around which bucktoothed cult priestess Ranu, played by Tani Guthrie, does a tribal dance), and the rapid ageing of Baru as he goes beyond the cult's 'Ring of Age' in a bid to help the women escape (after a surprising change of heart).

Beautiful young girls are kidnapped off the streets of Manila by a death cult that needs their blood to remain immortal.Apparently, back in the 70's the dark streets of Manilla were littered with hot blonde white chicks. They get captured by crimson hooded guys and offer no resistance whatsoever.The movie is fairly typical of these Philippine 70's films. Dark, little real action and the same music over and over, all filmed on grainy high speed over saturated 35 mm.There was a documentary made about these movies recently and apparently, there was little safety on the sets and sometimes stunt men died! I guess Marcos made it very advantageous to make movies here back then because so many cheapo horror/girls in prison films were made there.This movie follows the same format and if you are a fan of the genre because the films are so bad, you'll probably like it. It's a fun midnight movie to laff at.

Lovely white women are caught in the city of Manila by members of a blood eternal youth cult that worships a head in a red box and bleed these kidnapped victims for the properties that mix well with a potion. Jennifer Billingsley gets top billing as one of the kidnapped, Laura, her face found portraited by cult member, Baru (John Considine, who deserves better than this; I can't imagine how it must have felt chanting a religious song to a severed head in a box, and not question where your career went awry), taken as a sign from their worshipped god, Raum, that she is special. Tani Guthrie is Ranu, the wife of Raum who benefits from the blood of the captured girls whose throats her jungle minions cut with a knife during ceremonies. We witness the drinking of the blood after the collections (a leaf is applied to the wounds of the women, healing them for the time being), with Ranu relishing her eternal youth, completely unencumbered by any form of moral guilt in what her people are doing to the victims taken against their will and imprisoned on her jungle mountain fortress. Baru must confront all he has ever known and believed when he falls in love with Laura, her inability to drink the blood of other kidnapped girls she has befriended throwing everything he holds dear out of whack. Will Baru choose love for Laura or the cult he has been an active member of his whole life? Will you really care? I didn't and this movie really should be more exciting than it is. It is just plain safe and tame. I imagine a good cannibal movie, demented and warped, could've been derived from this, but the serious nature of the material (it is played so straight, that I just couldn't have fun with it) and lack of anything interesting considering the twisted idea presented before us (I mean, this is a cult that worships a head in a box and yet it never can capitalize on such a schlocky idea) just kind of dulled me into a boredom I never could recover from. I guess the actors hired and the uneventful direction (the cast cannot summon a lick of charisma and enthusiasm considering the bonkers plot, and the sluggish pace doesn't help matters) couldn't wring out any fun from the storyline. There is one great scene where Laura is punished, for not agreeing to drink, by being thrown in a prison with victims, whose beauty and youth had been drained, leaving them wrinkled and hideous, tearing away at her with their overgrown fingernails (the way the prison is dark and how they engulf her is pretty effective). Considine has a fascinating face and gives a rather decent performance, understated and soft, but Billingsley is really a boring heroine. Judith McConnell runs away with her scenes as club dancer, Claire, one of the whites kidnapped, who seems perfectly fine with her current predicament; she's really an uninhibited tramp, but because the film is so tame, her character never really can flower as a seductive trollop, which is too bad. The real star is the Philippines jungle, a setting which could have been far more sinister but at least has enough sweaty atmosphere to convey to us that civilized man/woman doesn't want to wind up here. The ending, after an escape, with Vic Diaz and the police getting involved in a hunt, winds up quite ludicrous.

This film was one of the regulars on the NY area TV's "Fright Night" horror showcase. And anyone who has stayed up late, week after week to watch these movies, knows that most of the movies have to be watched multiple times. This particular movie does get better the more you view it! It has a special quality about it that one never gets tired of. Some people, myself included, thought the sets had a "Star Trek" look about them. For that reason alone, check it out. The "video" version was released under the title Blood Hunt, with inferior color quality. Even still the on location Philippine scenery adds so much. Now with it being available on DVD the improved color makes all the difference in the world. Hey, if you liked the other Philippine horror movies such as Mad Doctor of Blood Island, this is 10 times better! And yes, the Blood Island films are pretty good. Stick with the single edition DVD, though.