Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.

Long before the perverse pro-feminist excesses of I Spit On Your Grave, Jerry Gross produced this exploitation gem. Written and directed by David Durston, and released in 1971, as a cash-in on the then headline-news Manson family trial, this beauty has a few ghastly treats in store for fans of drive-in bloodbaths, guts, gore and tomfoolery.

Synopsis:
The film opens to the wonderfully dated blips and drones of an analog synth, scoring the ancient rites of satanic lore. A live chicken has its neck wrung and its blood is dripped over a naked buxom wench, the ancient rites of Lucifer are intoned by a long-haired hippy who is soon established as the Manson-esque leader of the cult. These shenanigans meanwhile, are overseen by an innocent and quite shocked local girl. As she runs away when she is seen and the hippies give chase. They gain on her and she is abducted for lord knows what debasement and corruption -mercifully this assault is conducted off-screen. In the morning she staggers bloody and dazed back to her sleepy hometown.

Meanwhile the satanic rock n roll group stumble into the very same town, and decide to hole up in an abandoned mansion for a while to raise hell and otherwise get their kicks on route 666. Gramps learns of what has happened to his pretty granddaughter and swiftly marches off, rifle in hand to sort out these amoral cretins. Though when he gets there he is humiliated -in a scene reminiscent of Doc Collingwood’s humiliation at the hands of Krug, albeit less dramatically- by the long haired no-goodnik. The evil hippy takes his glasses and crushes them underfoot, and then they spike him with a whole bunch of acid. Things then take a turn for the insane for poor confused Gramps.

With that his plucky grandson decides to take matters into his own hands. Taking the rifle he goes out into the woods and shoots a rabid dog, he then siphons some of the rabid blood into some homemade meat pies which they then sell to the hippies the following day. By that night the dwindling townsfolk have a house full of rabid, drooling, bloodthirsty, maniacal hippies on their hands. In the traditional zombie vein the rabid loonies infect everyone they devour, causing the mayhem to spread like wildfire.

Review:
In Durston’s film the shadow of it’s predecessor is plain to see, George Romero’s hugely influential Night of the Living Dead, leaves it’s impression on this work as on so many of the films which define this era, yet overall there is an originality to these proceedings that remains refreshingly vital. And if the film is guilty of racism, either by the sheer transparency of tokenism evidenced by the inclusion in the cult’s numbers of no less than four minority groups, or by the loathsome, antagonistic, and destructive behavior this group of miscreants exhibits, it is perhaps unintentionally so. It is my impression that in this movie neither Durston, nor Gross are purveying racism, openly or covertly, as aforementioned the film just feels too dumb to carry a credible political sub text.

However, the topicality of this movie is not limited to the clear references to Charles Manson’s The Family and the Tate-LaBianca homicides of 1969; one may find in the insatiable nymphomaniac hippy-chick, and the havoc she wreaks by her promiscuity, a comment, on the rampant spread of sexually transmitted infections the sexual revolution had helped to precipitate. A wry comment which predates David Cronenberg’s They Came From Within, by a good four years, although needless to say it is explored here in far less depth.

The film features typically inept performances from all of the main players, Bhaskar as the leader of the gang, and his endless enthusiasm, particularly grates. Although Lynn Lowry, who also stars in They Came From Within is enigmatic and alluring, in this she plays a mute psycho hippy chick who later goes on to dismember an old lady’s hand with an electric carving knife!!

However this is not all-too important, because if you are going to seek out a title like ‘I Drink Your Blood’, I’d hazard a guess that you are not expecting great method acting of the Stanislavsky school. Cheap thrills and lots of them are what this film promises, and it sure delivers. This is the cinema of Grand Guignol, a miscellany of all things gruesome, and macabre. The special effects whilst generous in serving up the gore are at times risibly unrealistic -a woefully realized decapitation immediately springs to mind-, and the photography while nicely shot is less than inspiring, but you’ve got to love that concept, and it is precisely the low-key, amateurish realization of that concept which is so charming and funny.

This film is an interesting artifact from a time long gone, the outrageous 70s wardrobes, the funky bass guitar score, it all makes for a nostalgic viewing experience for anyone with fond memories of summer nights spent at the drive-in or your local grind-house. Most of all it is the buoyant irreverence which carries this film, the ‘couldn’t-give-a-damn’ insouciance which makes for such a fun and perversely enjoyable experience. For a horror film it is not really horrific, and many of the laughs it generates are unintentional, but hey the way I see it; if it works it works, and this film works for me. It’s kitsch, it’s trashy, and it has no allusions to grandeur, but that in itself is a rather endearing quality. This film isn’t art, there’s no conflict or sub-text, there’s barely even a plot beyond the one-trick concept but then it has no pretensions to art, it’s a gross-out exploitation flick and it knows it, and just in case you find yourself wandering off there are even helpings of gratuitous female nudity to help sustain your interest.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age