Bloodeaters (1980)

Touches You

Instant Favorite.

hyped garbage

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

I'll admit to having a soft spot for TOXIC ZOMBIES, as it will always be known to me. The film has a legacy behind it that's somewhat bigger than the final results. Notorious for being one of the "Video Nasty" titles banned in Britain during a public outcry over gory, sexually suggestive horror movie videos. Its actually one of the last holdouts which hasn't gotten what would be a highly lucrative DVD revival, and there's a tragic, creepy reason for it.The premise is basic enough to be easily understood on a sort of Urban Legend sort of level: Dumb hippies camping up in the sticks for a summer growing season are waiting to harvest $2 million dollars worth of dope when a team of federal narcotics agents stumble upon their bivouac. They shoot the only good looking woman willing to bare her breasts for the camera and are promptly slaughtered for their efforts by the hippies, who aren't all peace & love after all. After the agents are reported missing cynical federal drug officers decide to dust the crop of weed with an experimental defoliant known to have toxic side effects. I actually remember stories about weed being dusted by the government with paraquat that would make you gag blood when I was a teenage troublemaker, and always wondered if this movie was a source of that urban myth.So the feds hire a down on his luck loser to do it, planning to off him afterward to cover it all up. The hippies get exposed to the defoliant and mutate into ravenous, bloodthirsty zombie type maniacs. They go on a rampage murdering and partially devouring anyone they come upon and the film does a good job of trotting a regular supply of fresh victims onto the location sets. Meanwhile, the hero (writer/director/star Charles McCrann) and his girlfriend happen upon a young girl and her mentally handicapped brother as they wander through the woods looking for frogs or whatever. The four flee the toxic zombies and take up with a survivalist hermit living in the woods who must have been Ted Kazinski's next door neighbor (even though the film was made in Pennsylvania). They fight a losing battle against the toxic zombies & find themselves on the run again, only to come face to face with the scurrilous drug agents, who plan to murder everybody and cover up the event. All we need is that cigarette guy from the X-Files and we'd have a nice little modern day post Vietnam era paranoia parable here.That's the movie in a nutshell. What works are the zombie attacks and the low budget middle of nowhere locations that were chosen. There's also a decent pulsating electronic musical score that suggest somebody had seen a couple of Lucio Fulci movies -- And it turns out, director/star Chuck McCrann was indeed a horror movie buff and sort of made this on his own with some friends & business contacts, one of whom was George A. Romero actor John Amplas, himself a native Pennsylvanian known to work on risky, low budget projects.There's certainly a "home movie" sort of quality to the proceedings, which I say works in the movie's favor. Mr. McCrann was apparently something of a financial entrepreneur and likely raised the funds for the project himself, giving the film a nice independent/regional edge to it. There are no big stars, the zombie effects and gore makeup are effective yet minimal, and the biggest bill for the project was probably the lab fee for the print. Most of the actors are non-professionals, it was likely filmed on public land with a modest crew, and was indeed apparently so independent of a production that there wasn't anyone to stick up for it when British authorities outright banned the film in or around 1984. Its legend as a barf-bagger epic banned by assorted heads of state grew far out of proportion to anything the movie actually delivers, resulting in some of the confusion amongst the ranks of my fellow reviewers here.Today the film exists in a sort of limbo. Not public domain but the legal rights to the film are probably undetermined since they likely remained with Mr. McCrann, who it turns out was one of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center, which is where his offices were located. Until the legalities are sorted out the film will remain slipped through the cracks and overlooked, with only its bizarre legacy to recommend it. The only DVD versions kicking around today are sourced from old home video releases. There's an R rated North American DVD and an unrated print from Japan that shows the complete 89 minute assembly rejected by the MPAA.One offbeat tangent of intrigue here is that the theme of government conspiracy and indifference to public well-being runs through TOXIC ZOMBIES right up to a paranoid survivalist hoarding guns & MREs up in his cabin. Of course its just a coincidence but it adds to the film's aura of seediness and cynicism. I actually kind of like it too. I adore low budget regional horror and this is probably one of the pinnacle efforts. It deserves to be resurrected and restored, both as a legacy to McCrann's vision and a great object lesson on how to make a cheap, sleazy, endearing little horror movie for peanuts.6/10

One of the infamous video nasties that were banned in Britain, this one known as Forest of Fear, is still banned. It was released on video in the US as Toxic Zombies, and is also known as Blood Butchers. With all these names changes, maybe they can sneak it past the British Film Board.It is a typical zombie movie. The government sprays some unapproved substance (DROMAX) on marijuana fields on government land, and it turns the pot growers into zombies. They start killing their friends that didn't get infected, then move to campers in the woods.Lots of blood and body parts, but only one gratuitous nude scene (Debbie Link) before the whole thing starts as one pot grower is bathing out of a pail.Cameo by John Amplas (Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Knightriders).For zombie completists.

A group of hirsute hippie pot-farmers are exposed to dangerous chemicals released by a cropduster. They die as a result, later to rise as pasty-faced, erratically lumbering zombies who proceed to batterfang the primary cast-members(John Amplas of "MARTIN" among them). It's probably a wise idea to maintain low expectations when going into a proletarian film such as this. Chances are that if your personal taste in movies has led you to BLOODEATERS, then you have already seen far worse. This is a chiefly insubstantial and technically substratal feature, but is does manage to deliver in a perfunctory, meat-and-potatoes sort of way...if you're able to dismiss from mind the shortcomings innate to catchpenny film-making, you may yield base gratification from this cheap little horror bauble.5/10

Talk about a one-man vision! This film maybe very low budget with little to recommend it any department, but when taken into consideration that is was written, produced, edited, directed and starred the same chap, McCrann, the film becomes quite impressive. Chuck Austin McCrann was presumed dead on September 11th, but for us horror film fanatics who knew nothing of the man we have this cheap little zombie flick, known as Bloodeaters in the States to remember him by.Filmed in the ‘ZOMBIE CAPITOL OF THE WORLD', Pittsburgh, this film also has regular Romero crewmember, John ‘Martin' Amplas as a double-dealing FBI agent. He and his colleague decide to dump their new herbicide, ‘DROMAX' on a cannabis crop, similar in theme to Return of the Living Dead. The dust settles on the harvesting hippies too. Soon these poor fellas are running around the country searching for different kind of munchies. The rest of Forest of Fear involves McCrann, his wife and brother frequently running from place to place escaping the carnivorous hippies; a mentally challenged kid and his older sister trying to find their parents who were previously killed by the ‘zombies'; a touch of comic relief between an unemployed alcoholic and his mouthy wife. There is the occasional scene of violence too, albeit not too graphic.This isn't a great movie by any standards. The special effects, acting and cinematography all scream the word ‘cheap' in unison. But there is something in particular with the one-man vision, Pittsburgh country setting, John Amplas and its inclusion on the ‘Video Nasties' list, which make Forest of Fear rewatchable