I Drink Your Blood (1971)

 

 Well, here we are, we made it to the big day and there's no telling how many posts we will get through today but I'll be watching and writing up until the doorbell dings it's last dong.  So let's jump into the best day of the year with a grind house flick from the early 70's just loaded with hippies.  Not only are there hippies but we have Satan worshipers, lots of bad actors, and some of that "L" drug that makes you crazy.  I Drink Your Blood begins with a group of hippies who are also Satan worshipers getting stranded in a small town after their hippie mobile breaks down.  I mean, really, one of the best parts of the movie was this damn car.  I loved it and would drive one in an instant.  The town they are in is close to being an abandoned ghost town with more houses and buildings empty than are occupied.  They are holding some ritual in the forest and one of the local girls, Sylvia sees them and they rape and beat her before she can get away.  She struggles back home where her brother and grandfather live.  The grandfather goes to confront the hippies who are staying at an abandoned hotel. 

 

 There's rats getting killed and a chicken being sacrificed (I think they might have been really killing the animals too I mean it sure looked like it) and a rabid dog running around and a dam being built.  The dam is responsible for all the people moving away but the guy behind it, Roger, is also dating Mildred, another townie.  At the hotel, the grandfather is beaten and forced to take LSD.  His grandson, Pete, comes looking for him and the hippies allow the grandfather to leave although he is on a bad acid trip.  Pete is nearly attacked by a rabid dog but he is able to shoot and kill it with a shotgun.  He then goes home and draws blood from the dog.  He goes back to the family's bakery where they are making meat pies.  He injects blood from the rabid dog into the pies and then gives them to the hippies to eat.  Which they do, and afterwards they go ape shit.  Foaming at the mouth, killing each other, and just general running around creating havoc.  The only person I actually have seen before this is Lynn Lowry who plays one of the hippies named Carrie.  She's been in The Crazies, Shivers, and the 1982 remake of Cat People.  This was her film debut.  Since there is no law enforcement in the town of just forty people, Mildred talks to Roger and he says he will bring some of his men from the dam and straighten out the hippies.

 

One of the hippies, Andy, doesn't want to be with them any more and develops feelings for Sylvia who also has feelings for him.  The construction workers instead of helping end up just mixing in with the hippies and having one big party with them.  The grandfather, who is a veterinarian recognizes that the hippies have rabies and the interaction of the disease and the drugs they have been doing is making them go crazy.  Soon the construction workers have rabies as well and go on a rampage.  It's actually more comical than frightening.  The movie bounces back and forth between corny and disturbing.  Especially when one of the hippies, who is pregnant and infected, decides to impale herself with a wooden stake right in the stomach.  This was originally rated X when it first came out and was released as a double feature with I Eat Your Skin.  This is a grind house exploitation film at it's finest and while it's very polarizing if you know what you're getting going into it you should be OK with it.  Graphic violence with lots of nudity.  I'll go ahead and give this three and a half frothy mouths out of five.  I'll be back later with more as the day has just begun.  Happy Halloween!!  👻👾💀