"Let it be known, sons and daughters, that Satan was an acidhead."
This is one hell of a movie. The wacky as all get out story is about eight
Satan-loving hippies who wander into a small town (more like a few houses and a
store) and start raising Hell. After they brutalize a young woman and drug an
old man, the old's man's grandson gets revenge by killing a rabid dog, putting
the dog's rabies infected blood into some meat pies and the selling them to the
hippies. Later that night, the hippies start foaming at the mouth and go
completely batshit crazy. At first they start attacking each other, but then
their violence spreads and some construction workers get infected and go on a
rampage attacking everything.
For being 50+ years old, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD has more blood and violence than I
expected (it was one of the first movies to get an "X" rating based on
violence), but while it might have shocked audiences back in 1970 it's so
low-budget and the special effects are so amateurish that it's impossible to
take it seriously nowadays. That doesn't mean it's not an entertaining film,
because it definitely is. As far as trash cinema goes this movie is a classic.
The pace is very quick and I liked how it never dwelled on one theme for too
long: at first there's the hippie Satan cult, then the revenge thing going on
and then the revenge for the failed revenge which results in the rabies-infected
hippies attacking various people in a wide varieties of ways until finally the
miners are infected and suddenly there's a zombie horde assault on a house!
It's probably never going to be inducted into The National Film Registry, but
IDYB does deserve a small spot in Cinema history. All fans for horror and trash
should check it out.
I'd be interested to know how much of an influence this film was on John Waters.