"Bloodsucking Freaks" contains women in some of the most degrading scenes probably ever put on film. Watching this movie with a group of friends is like watching the presidential debate with a diverse and angry mob. On the one side you have the folks who are laughing their asses off at the poor production value and the sheer camp quality of each and every line and every drop of blood. But then you have the other side who sit in a quiet and shocked silence as they don't know what to make of the film, but indeed they are offended. Debates ensue. A nice topic for discussion at your local coffee shop. I fall into the first category. This is some dark, grimey, grungy, disgusting, foggy, vile, trashy entertainment. I laughed at the movie. I had a good time watching it with friends. Did I actually like the thing? The side of me that wants to make a good impression would say "no," but come on. I've shown this movie to about every girl I've dated. Because it is what it is. Trash. There is some part of me that actually does like "Bloodsucking Freaks," even though the good qualities in the film are slim.
The movie is full of women being tortured. When a woman isn't being tortured, they sit around waiting to be kidnapped, and then tortured, or they try to stand up to the chief villains of the film, only to be transformed into a murderous sado masochist. Upon release, the movie was banned in the U.S. following several protests from women speaking out against the film. The MPAA then sued Troma Studios for placing a fake "R-rating" on the posters. The MPAA found out about it when a lady complained that the movie upset her child. Frankly the woman should have been sued for being a complete moron. When you watch Lloyd Kaufman in interviews now days, he'll explain how he's kind of ashamed of himself for distributing this film. Oddly, no one really seems to like this film all that much, mostly for its portrayal of women. Do I personally think that the movie has something against women? No, I don't. Joel M. Reed set out to make an exploitation film about torture. He did that. I don't feel that he has some vendetta against women and is trying to make some sort of political statement with this film. The violence in the film is degrading and harsh, of course, but come on. Do not take "Bloodsucking Freaks" seriously. I could be wrong about all that, but I stand by my belief that this is just an insanely violent exploitation film that people took real life offense too. If anything, the movie is an attack against the film critics of America, and it's not even symbolic. It makes that pretty damn clear in the film.
Seamus O'Brien plays Sardu, The Master of the Theatre of the Macabre, who runs his own bottom of the barrel show in SoHo, that advertises sadomasochism and violence, all to be performed onstage. What happens, is that the audience is gathered in this damp and dark room, and they watch women being tortured on stage, various ways, by Sardu's dwarf sidekick Ralphus. Ralphus will rip out the fingernails of some women, then at one point he gouges out someone's eyeball, eats it, and starts screwing the eyehole. You gotta hand it to Ralphus. Atleast someone finally made good out of that old drill sergeant threat. Sardu basically just gives the audience what they want. Violence and nudity on stage. At the end of each show he is always congratulated for putting on a display that is "so realistic!" Well, that's because it is real. The audience just think that it is special effects.
One of the men in the audience is a local critic for a top New York magazine. The first thing that he does after the show is bash Sardu for being a ringmaster for the geekshow of blood and guts and nudity. He claims he won't even print up a negative review, because he feels that it would strike curiosity from the public. I can't image any critic ever really doing that, otherwise negative reviews wouldn't exist, but anyway, just like in real life, the critic hates what the select audience wants. Gory entertainment. You can kind of imagine the same thing happening to Joel M. Reed after the premiere of this film. Maybe he was just foreshadowing his own life, or he could have been inspired by a past event. Either way, Reed goes to show that he knows this movie isn't made for critics, so he's going to have the exploitive time of his life humiliating this character.
Sardu comes in contact a celebrity ice skater named Natasha D'Natalie (Viju Krem of "M*A*S*H*D") after he receives compliments from her after one of his torture shows. The main plot of the movie is his diabolical plan to gain some, in his eyes, well deserved respect, by ultimately kidnapping Natasha and placing her in one of his shows, therefore gaining star power. Of course, that would only mean that he has to kidnap the critic as well. Does he force the critic to watch the show? Not exactly. The critic is one of the show's stars. After a bit of advertising and some blackmail (he cuts off the feet of another ice skater to force Natasha to dance on stage), the show gets some curious word of mouth. Does it come as a surprise that the show is basically just Natasha doing a ballet performance that includes kicking in the face of the critic, who is tied up, and weak due to a lack of food. For you see, he is being kicked in the face by the star power he so cherishes.
That's really the only plot going on in this film, and if it just focused on that, the movie would be a whole thirty minutes long. An interesting thirty minutes to say the least, but the movie is padded with about everything that made it so controversial: the torture scenes that don't really have much to do with anything. For some reason, Sardu keeps naked cannibalistic virgins in a caged cellar, and all they do is run around, scream, and eat human body parts (a penis sandwich is one of the definitive and funniest parts of the film). In exchange for some services, a local doctor rips the teeth out of nude blonde, shaves her head, drills a hole in it, and sucks out her brains with a straw. And there you have your title. I'm not exactly sure where the box cover comes from, there is nothing like that in the movie, but it's very well drawn I must say. I would like to see a movie with the characters that are on the box cover. It would be brutally elegant.
I think that one of the reasons that this movie works so well as entertainment isn't the violence, even though, obviously, it is deliciously campy, and you really don't know what kind of tortures are going to be unfolded. There's a scene where a woman's behind is being used as a dartboard, and Sardu checks out another woman to see if her mouth will make a good urinal. Some of the tortures don't even make sense! Like the stretch rack scene, at least I think that's what it was. Was it really stretching her? Those are all well and fine, but it's Seamus O'Brien that makes this film. The man is...how can I put this...a really good actor. He's obviously too good for "Bloodsucking Freaks," but he completely makes this film simply because he is way too good for it. Watching him on screen, you're not looking at man who is having fun in an small exploitation film, you're watching a man who is treating this material exactly the same as he would treat a Shakespearean performance. He doesn't look embarrassed, he doesn't underperform, or overperform, he is insanely perfect in this movie and is exactly what a real life Sardu would probably be like. Sardu is cocky, manipulative, sadistic, masochistic, passive, humorous, an insane artist, a critic hater, and it's thanks to Seamus O'Brien that we can see that about the character. Anyone else probably would have just lined up the tortures and fake laughed into the camera. The only other movie that O'Brien did was "The Happy Hooker." Sadly he died in 1977. I would love to have actually seen him in a Shakespeare production.
"Bloodsucking Freaks" will always be known as one of the biggest guilty pleasures of the 1970s. That's pretty much what it is. Joel M. Reed doesn't have a lot to say in this film, except that he has vile contempt for critics, and this is like some weird attack on that, which it doesn't even attempt to hide. That's really all you can say about the film, unless you do hate it, and you do think that it is a huge attack on women, in which case you will have a lot more to say about the film than I do, but I don't think it's a serious attack on women. I will agree that there's no denying the fact that the film is brutal towards the female characters. The other characters literally treat them like objects, and most of them get tortured. That's because it's an exploitation film about exploitation. The women are naked in the film, because that's what Sardu's audience wants. They are tortured because Sardu is a madman, not Joel M. Reed. Also, what do you expect from a bloody disgusting exploitation film whose alternate titles are "Sardu, The Master of the Screaming Virgins," "The Incredible Torture Show," "House of Screaming Virgins," "An Orgy of Sick Minds," and my personal favorite, "The Heritage of Caligula."
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