BigBabe0 Review of I Drink Your Blood

I Drink Your Blood (1971)

So basically, this kid's a mass murderer, right?

[5 February 2011]

Certainly Charles Manson deserves to be in prison the rest of his life, not just because of the murders committed by his "family" but for inspiring a bunch of movies about lethal Hippies, such as this one. (In the book "Fatal Vision," about an army doctor who tried to blame the death of his family on lethal Hippies, there's a line "Four people on acid couldn't even organize a trip to the bathroom, let alone a trip to go kill people.") The leader of this wild bunch is played by a 40-year-old Indian dancer (Indian Indian, not American Indian) who in fact is great, jacking far more enthusiasm into his performance than this flick really deserves. He detects the group ritual being gawked at by an outsider (as per the later and vastly superior "Race with the Devil") who then gets mauled by some of the group. This victim, Sylvia, staggers into the nearby largely abandoned town and collapses; the local baker woman, Mildred (this actress eerily resembles Audrey Campbell from the "Olga" series) assumes that the culprits are some nearby construction workers. Meanwhile the Hippies show up in the same town after their van breaks down, setting off the main revenge plot which is basically a reworking of "The Virgin Spring"/"Last House on the Left" (although the latter appeared a few years later). The "gimmick" here is that the Hippies and the construction workers get rabies, after Sylvia's younger brother Pete injects dead dog blood into some meat pies (Sweeney Todd, anyone?) eaten by the Hippies. According to a medical website, "contact with the blood, urine, or feces (e.g., guano) of a rabid animal, does not constitute an exposure...." But I guess we need to allow for some "artistic license..." As to whether "I Drink Your Blood" is worth your time, there's some nice violence, limited of course by the minimal budget; the mass shooting at the end is unfortunately all off camera. The actors playing the rabies victims have varying degrees of frothing at the mouth---by the way, according to that same medical website, "The rabies incubation period may vary from a few days to several years, but is typically one to three months"---in other words not an hour or less, as per the movie, but again, artistic license... Other than the Indian dude, the best performance is by Rhonda Fultz, who unlike most of the cast has a "real movie" on her credit list ("In Cold Blood"). Since she manages to inject some recognizable humanity into her character Molly, Molly's death (by her own hand) is more affecting than what happens to most of the others, plus her being pregnant and all. Bottom line, "Blood" passes the "free/beer" test---if you can see it for free and have plenty of beer handy, then yeah, go for it. By the way don't bother looking for that scary face on the video cover, it's actually from another movie....