I Drink Your Blood

"I Drink Your Blood" (1970) is a film that I'd been wanting to see for a very long time. By now, what horror-film fan worth his Judith O'Dea Fan Club membership card has not heard of the movie in which a band of hippies dose Grandpa with LSD, and grandson Petey gives them rabies-infected meat pies in revenge? Only these aren't your typical peace, love and groovy button type of hippies, but rather Satan-worshiping, sadistic thugs, whose violent tendencies only get worse when they start to foam at the mouth... A film that is consistently suspenseful and that keeps the viewer riveted, this is actually a very well-done horror shlocker. The use of bizarro freakout music really helps to punch across the frequent scenes of carnage, and the picture grows increasingly wild as it proceeds. In one scene, a rabid hippy girl practices "free love" with a construction crew, infecting the entire bunch with the disease; a sadly resonant scene in today's AIDS reality. This film's debt to George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," made two years earlier, becomes fairly obvious in the final third, when some defenders cower in a cellar to escape the crazed mob. And speaking of debts, could David Cronenberg have borrowed from this picture, when he was busy putting together 1977's "Rabid"? In any event, "I Drink Your Blood," while never overly gross, is surely not a movie for the faint of heart. It's no "Old Yeller" (1957), that's for sure! And wait till you see all the extras on this deluxe DVD. Fifty chapters for an 80-minute movie! Now that IS crazy!