I Drink Your Blood (1970)

Running Time: 1hr 23 min

Release Date: December 1970

Directed/Written by: David E. Durston

Review by: Stacey

Don't be fooled, there's no drinking of blood in this one.  Hell, the poster (as seen above) wasn't even originally meant for this movie, and the character is never seen at any point, unless I blacked out during that time.  David Durston's trashy exploitation flick I Drink Your Blood (originally titled Phobia) is equal parts awful and hilariously entertaining; I was contemplating taking a nap during my viewing but found myself engrossed in the story, if that tells you anything.

Inspired by several real life events, I Drink Your Blood follows a Satanic cult of hippies (sounds fun, right?) who disrupt the remaining population of small ghost town, Valley Hills.  After assaulting young woman, Sylvia (Iris Brooks), and attacking and dosing with LSD, her veterinarian grandpa Doc Banner (Richard Bowler), Sylvia's little brother Pete (Riley Mills) decides to exact his revenge on the group.  He takes blood from a rabid dog he killed the night prior and injects it into the meat pies at the bakery that are sold to the group.  Now infected with rabies, the cult soon starts attacking the residents of the small town.

Sounds like they should have stuck with the original title, huh?  Anywho, those real life events I mentioned earlier that inspired Durston to write the film?  Clearly Manson and his "family" had a large part in it, especially considering the trial had been highly publicized around that time.  There were a couple of scenes that were tell-tale of the killer group's actions (one scene where they wrote 'PIG' in blood on a victim).  Killer hippies all hopped up on mind-altering drugs sounded pretty horrifying at that time.  Although the Manson family were rabid in their own right, the rabies angle came from an article that Durston read about a village in Iran whose residents had contracted rabies.  I suppose both situations are very plausible, but put together just made it almost comical.

Firstly, I have to talk about the ethnically diverse cult.  That wasn't the issue at hand, the problem was that each one (with the exception of the white folks) were wearing "traditional" garb of their culture?  Only in the 70's could that have been acceptable, I feel like.  Leader Horace Bones (Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury) was Indian but I couldn't tell if they were trying to play him off as Native American, it was all just a tad awkward.  Sue-Lin (Jadin Wong) wore traditional Chinese dresses, which just seemed impractical for the setting.  There was a pregnant woman, a mute girl, and the "floozy" of the group.  It was like a grab bag of crazy.  With the exception of Chowdhury as the batshit crazy leader, the rest of the group and their status as relatively unknown actors at the time didn't lend to their roles.  Their acting (along with most of the other cast) was definitely a reflection of the poor script.

 I don't know how old little Petey was, but that kid must have had one dark mind to think about injecting rabies blood into someone's food, but that's what made I Drink Your Blood fascinating!  It wasn't a typical revenge movie- Durston took this one as far as he could go.  It's X-rating from the MPAA had to do more with the violence in the movie more than anything else, which tells you you've found a good one.  The gore is cheesy and fairly minimal, even with beheadings, dismemberments, and brutal stabbings, but you didn't need all the blood and guts to get the animalistic violence.  Once a group of construction workers become infected and start chasing everyone with giant machetes, the action ramps up even more and by then you have no idea who is going to make it out alive.

I Drink Your Blood was rife with bad and quotable lines, my favorite being from the intro scene when the cult was performing a Satanic ritual: "Let it be known, sons and daughters, that Satan was an acid head.  Drink from his cup; pledge yourselves.  And together, we'll all freak out."  It's all just so delightfully 70's.

Oh, and I must mention that while it looks like a lot of animals were killed during the filming, apparently with the exception of the chicken in the intro scene, the rest were donated, I believe.  Which doesn't make it any less gross to see them roasting rats over an open flame or dragging the carcass of a goat through the town.

I Drink Your Blood is gross, gritty, and grimey.  And very much so a product of it's time.  It's entirely too fun to watch and never expects you to take it too seriously.  It was originally on a double bill with I Eat Your Skin because producer Jerry Gross (how appropriate) was just doing his own thing apparently (which included changing the original name of Durston's film without his knowledge).  So it's only fitting that I include a review of I Eat Your Skin in the next few days, so be on the lookout for that one!

3/5

Check out the trailer below!