Crapsterpieces: I Drink Your Blood (1970)

By Paco McCullough

Crapsterpieces is one of the new features we are introducing. Every Sunday we will discuss a film that is bad to the point of entertaining. Because this is a review site, these will be rated with two ratings: a critical score and a crap-tacular score.
    This week in crapsterpieces, I watched the 1970 film I Drink Your Blood. In I Drink Your Blood, a group of satanic hippies clearly inspired by the Manson family invade a small town, raping its daughters, drugging its grandparents with LSD, and cutting its own members feet and swinging them from the rafters. A fed-up young boy decides to get revenge and feeds the hippies meatpies injected with rabid dog. Of course, the virus spreads and the town is overwhelmed with rabid maniacs.
    Everything about this film is a disaster of the highest caliber. Cinematography is bland to the point of boredom. Performances are so bad I occasionally felt I was watching a horror film version of The Room. The worst element of this film is the sound design, however. The suspenseful and chase scenes are ruined by bizarre sound choices. The repeating chase music would feel more at home in a silly spy movie or something, while most of the “terrifying” effects sound like they were made by kazoo.
    This is the sort of film where the bad guys call themselves SADOS (Sons And Daughters Of Satan) while also taking themselves seriously. It’s the sort of film where phrases like “Satan was an acidhead” are common. Logical inconsistencies occur so frequently that commenting on all of them would take forever, but my personal favorite was that the infected would work together until it became convenient for the plot to have them fight each other.
     I Drink Your Blood focuses on one actual side effect of rabies, hydrophobia (fear of water), to the point where they start referring to the disease as hydrophobia. I had to check to make sure that this is a real condition, because the film uses it as a way for the characters to escape whenever the writers couldn’t come up with anything.
    Overall, I Drink Your Blood is a horrible film in all the right ways. Like all bad films, there are times when it is simply boring, but for the most part it is so crazy that it can overcome its shoddier elements. This film is perfect for anybody who is looking for something to watch while having a few beers with friends, or for those simply fascinated with bad movies.

Critical Score:1.5 out of 5

Crapsterpiece Score: 4.5 out of 5

© Tanner McCullough, 2011