I Drink Your Blood

source: I Drink Your Blood

Formerly known as Phobia, I Drink Your Blood is a fine example of raw, unflinching, horror. Horror, with a chip on it's shoulder. Horror with a small budget, a smaller cast, often humorous dialog, but let me tell you, that on this day, there is evil in the air, and it's awfully humid. A gang of Satan-worshiping hippies, with bad intentions, ends up in a nearly-abandoned town, after their van breaks down. With only a population of 40, the gang figures that this is their town now, so they pick a house, settle in, but soon grow bored with all the acid taking, and rat killing, and take out their frustrations by forcing some acid on a defenseless, old man. I would imagine, forcing LSD on the elderly would be a real keen time for most hippie-satanists. Unfortunately for the gang, the old man's grandson, little Pete, takes offense to this prank, and seeks vengeance for grandpa's psychedelic misery in a way that any level-headed boy would. The portly, little fellow finds a rabid dog, shoots the damn thing, fills up a syringe with the blood, and injects it into some food in the bakery, which would end up in the stomach's of the acid-fueled satanist's. Evil has just got a double-dose of madness, and it's feeling real bad, and that can only mean bad news for the unsuspecting "town" . Contrary to what I had heard, I Drink Your Blood is not exactly a Lucio Fulci blood bath, or even what I would consider a gore film, in fact, I see no reason why they couldn't have squeezed in an R rating. With that said, gore, or even moderate amounts of blood, ain't everything. I Drink Your Blood, from beginning to end, is a nightmarish hell, with no redeeming qualities. With this one, you can feel the evil, as if it's in the room, with you, plus, the psychotic score, and nerve-racking sound-effects couldn't be more fitting. I recommend I Drink Your Blood to anyone who appreciates quality, low-budget horror from the dark side, but regardless of what Bhaskar tells you, I sincerely doubt Satan was ever an acid head. 8/10

I recently purchased Grindhouse releasing's re-issue of this film and was very pleasantly surprised by it. I had never seen this film before and decided to purchase it based on the fact that I have yet to read one negative review about it (not to mention the fact that Grindhouse tends to give you more "bang" for your buck with all of the extras they usually pack into their DVD's/videos). Rumor has it that there was rampant drug use and sex happening all over the set during the making of this film and the director readily admits to some of this in the extras but that does not make the film inept in any way (nor does it make the film any less fun). This would be a great double bill with "Bloodsucking Freaks" which is equally as fun and offensive to just about every race, creed, sex, and religion imaginable! This film has it all: Rabid hippies, impaled pregnant women, severed limbs, cannibalism, animal torture, rape, sex, and drug use...all done in such a clever tongue-in-cheek manor that you can't help but LOVE this movie and, like a train wreck or car accident you will not be able to take your eyes off of it no matter how repugnant the subject matter may be...not for the squeamish but a MUST for all gore-hounds!

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!

I DRINK YOUR BLOOD is yet another film that I revisited after not having seen it in many years, and let me tell ya friends - this is what classic grindhouse cinema is all about. This is fun, trashy, sleazy, gritty, gory, exploitation goodness - and I love this sort of thing... A group of Satanic hippies invade a small town where they rape a local girl. Her grandfather goes to find the punks to get revenge, but they end up dosing him with LSD instead! To avenge his sister and grandpa, a young boy injects rabies into some meat pies to give to the hippies!! The hippies eat the meat pies and become zombie-like cannibals and begin terrorizing the town!!! Yeah - that's the real story - and it's GREAT. For the 1970 time-stamp, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD was pretty ahead of it's time. The gore, though cheezy, is pretty heavy in this one, the performances are quite decent for this type of film, and the camera-work is solid and effective. Also of note is the very PC and multi-cultural cast as far as the group of hippies is concerned - don't know if this was done purposely for any real reason, or if it just happened that way but I found it interesting. If you dig fun, sleazy exploit films - this one is definitely a safe and entertaining bet...8.5/10

Wow, talk about drive-in fare. The acting is terrible and the dialog is unbelievable and yet this one's kinda campy in it's own way, forcing me to laugh at it in parts. This DVD supposedly has the original 'X-rated' (for violence) version that the MPAA gave back in '71, but since there really isn't any graphic sex in it, I don't see much of anything 'X-rated' about it. A hippy cult's van breaks down near a near-deserted town in upstate New York. The hippies rape a local kid's sister and feed his grandfather LSD for kicks. The grandfather's tripping-out scene is pretty funny. The kid comes up with a brilliant idea for revenge by contaminating some meat pies with rabies-infected blood taken from a dead dog he had shot earlier, and feeding them to the unsuspecting hippies. Most of the hippies eat them (except for two guys) and they start getting feverish and kill one another. The ax scene where the black guy flips out and cuts off the other hippie's leg looks pretty cool. Next thing ya know, a construction crew from a nearby dam site have sex with one of the hippie girls and get infected that way. Pretty soon, most everyone left in town is foaming at the mouth, especially the black guy who goes running around wide-eyed, looking like a crazed lunatic. It's hilarious. The Grindhouse DVD has plenty of extras including an alternate downbeat ending (it's quite different from the one they actually used) where Mildred Nash shoots Roger in the mouth in a fit of rabies rage. She was infected earlier when one of the construction workers bit her while she was trying to escape in the old '62 Ford station wagon. We also get as extras, 2002 interviews with Lynn Lowry (who's aged gracefully), John McCook, David Dunston, etc. They give a quick history behind the making of this film, inspired by (sur-prise!) George Romero. I'll give it a 5 out of 10 for inspiring a few laughs.

Pete Banner (Riley Mills), his pretty older sister Sylvia (Iris Brooks), and their gramps, Doc. Banner (Richard Bowler), sure don't have much in the way of smarts. When Sylvia catches hippie Andy (Tyde Kierney) stealing a chicken for use in a black magic ritual, she doesn't call the police: instead, she lets him take the bird, just so long as she can spy on Andy and his pals performing their ceremony. Spotted lurking in the woods by the naked Satanists, the girl is pursued, beaten and abused. In retrospect, calling 911 would have been the wiser option. Gramps also displays a remarkable lack of common sense. When Sylvia is found in a catatonic state, he quite rightly thinks that the gang of hippies staying at the local deserted hotel are responsible. However, rather than contact the sheriff (does this family not own a phone?), the old man grabs his shotgun and goes it alone to have it out with the drug-crazed drop-outs. One doddery pensioner against eight devil-worshipping lunatics on L.S.D. -- unsurprisingly, it doesn't go well for Doc. Banner. As for young Pete, he has to be the stupidest of the lot: in order to take revenge, the lad extracts blood from a rabid dog and injects it into a tray of meat pies that he sells to the hippies. Soon, instead of lawless Satanists, the town is under siege from crazed maniacs foaming at the mouth (I wonder how many tubes of toothpaste went into the making of this film) with a lust for blood who can pass on the deadly disease via a bite. Pretty soon, there are machete wielding maniacs everywhere! Produced by exploitation movie legend Jerry Gross, and written and directed by David Durston, I Drink Your Blood is exactly what a drive-in/grindhouse movie should be: cheap, totally trashy, with over-the-top performances, gratuitous nudity and plenty of gore. It takes until the halfway point to really get into full swing, but when it does, the film is an absolute blast. The mayhem starts proper as Manson-like cult leader Horace (played with wild-eyed relish by Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury) and his followers start to feel the effects of the rabies, black Satanist Rollo (George Patterson) being the first to go full-on bonkers, stabbing fellow hippie Shelley in the gut with a dagger and then hacking off his foot with an axe. The rest soon follow suit, with cultist Molly (Rhonda Fultz) infecting a whole crew of construction workers (with rabies, although they might well have contracted something else as well), making matters even worse. Meanwhile, Sylvia and uninfected Andy (now a couple, the girl having bounced back from her earlier ordeal) and Pete try to avoid being sliced and diced until construction site foreman Roger Davis (John Damo) can alert the authorities. I Drink Your Blood was one of the first films to be rated X by the MPA based on its violence, and its easy to see why: there are plenty of shocking scenes of brutality, with an evisceration, an uncredited Lynn Lowry (who appeared in George Romero's similarly themed The Crazies) cutting off a woman's hand with an electric carving knife, a pregnant woman impaling herself with a stake, self-immolation, a pitchfork in the throat, a sword in the back and out of the mouth, and my favourite moment, the shock decapitation of a major character, the victim's head carried around by the killer. As I watched the violence escalate, my rating kept getting higher and higher! A neat downbeat ending tops off what is a hugely entertaining exploitation classic that demands to be seen by any self-respecting gore-hound or trash movie aficionado.

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

A band of devil-worshipping hippies take root in a small town that has been evacuated save a group of construction workers, a baker, and a family led by Grandpa the veterinarian. While holing themselves up in a rat-infested hotel(where the hippies actually play a game of who can kill the most rats for the rat barbecue), they are confronted by an irate Grandpa the vet. They force him to take some lsd and beat him up. Grandpa's grandson gets back by injecting a dozen meat pies with rabies from a dog he shot later that evening. The hippies go mad and all those people they infect do likewise. This film is rather distasteful, yet strangely interesting. It is definitely a low-budget affair as no one in it has a name and the special effects are extremely poor. The film is markedly gruesome as you see a man stabbed repeatedly, a leg, hand, head chopped off, and crazed hippies with bloody hands wielding axes, a sword, even an electric carving knife! The producer's name does his film great honor...his name is Jerry Gross.

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.