I DRINK YOUR BLOOD 1971
“I Drink Your Blood” is a movie that came out in 1971, and is a “hippie exploitation film”. I started to watch the movie on Fawesome, but for some reason, the night I tried to, the website wouldn’t load it completely. I ultimately switched to Tubi, and while the picture quality was better than what was on Fawesome, the audio was much worse. I guess that means there are multiple cuts and edits to this film, that even streaming websites have.
I’d been recommended the film in the past, since it has apparent influence from The Manson Family. Within the first 12 minutes of the film, this was clear. There are mannerisms that seem like clear nods towards the sheer craziness the Manson Family would do, such as traveling as a ragtag group of questionable hippies, beating up various members of said group, hanging out naked, and inhabiting abandoned places. The opening scene shows a “Satanic Ritual”, and a chicken is actually killed for the film. In general, it looked like actual animals were killed for the movie, though the only confirmation towards this was the chicken. There were some rats later, but those were apparently already dead, and painted brown to look like they were alive. Though, I question where they found those dead rats to begin with. At the end of the film, a dead goat is seen, though I couldn’t find any trivia on whether that animal was killed for the film either.
Maybe I’m the hippie here, but I don’t approve of hurting or killing animals for the sake of a movie. Movies are fake. But death is real.
The hippie satanic cult used buzzwords that were commonly referenced about the Manson Family. There seems to be this mixture of The Church of Satan and The Manson Family referenced, between the Satanic hand poses used at the rituals, and talks of “I will die for him”. Considering how the film came out only 2 years after the Tate-LaBianca murders and the release of “The Satanic Bible”, I can definitely see why a horror movie would be influenced by both, as it was an odd time to be around in for sure. Of course, while the film was being written, the Tate-LaBianca trial was all over the news, which had proven a great influence to this.
One of the problems with the film, is that I really had no idea what was going on at first. There’s no real story line at first, then it picks up a bit, but the “story’ is loose at the end.
A young woman is assaulted by the hippie in the beginning, too shocked to say anything at first. Her grandfather later gets it out of her, and he goes over to where the hippies are staying, which was an abandoned old hotel, which in real life, was about to be demolished before the film. The grandpa goes to the hippie’s hideout, and they break his glasses, and one of the women give him LSD. His grandson, Pete, shows up to try and save his grandfather, and after a struggle, they let the two go and they return home. In one scene, the granddaughter Silvia, tells her brother that Grandpa was “doped” with LSD, “which makes you crazy.”. I thought that this was a funny scene, because the actors nearly looked straight at the camera when saying this. I think it was definitely a sign of the times, as the public opinion of hippies and drugs, LSD especially, was at an all time low.
The movie starts to act like it was going to turn into a revenge plot film against the hippies, like as if the grandson and grandfather would have done some sort of redneck justice towards the group of thieves. But this doesn’t really pan out. I thought it would have been interesting though, to have seen the film turn out this way, I know it would have been pretty satisfying to many in the general public, to see annoying evil hippies “get their due”. I wonder if this idea might have later inspired Quentin Tarantino later.
Even still, what ends up happening is that Pete shoots a rabid dog, and the next morning, he extracts the blood from said dog, and injects it into some meat pies at the local bakery he seems to work at. 3 of the hippies come in and buy the pies, and there’s a scene where the group as a whole is eating them. Mostly. Only one person, Silvia’s boyfriend, doesn’t eat anything, and a pregnant hippie takes a taste, but she doesn’t finish her pie. For some reason, the main hippie, Horace, calls the pregnant lady, who seems to be his baby mama, “Fatso”. What a horrible thing to call a pregnant woman.
Later on, the hippies turn rabid rather quickly, and that’s when the real plot starts to come out. Of course, in real life, rabies doesn’t affect people immediately, but obviously they had to do this for the sake of the film. Apparently, the idea for the rabies plot came from a real life story that the director read about, where a school of children in Iran became infected with rabies.
Right before the tallest member of the hippies goes on a killing spree, one of the other members is seen shuffling through a tarot deck. I found this interesting, because she pulled a card that said “Death”, when in traditional tarot, that same card would have been called “The Ten of Swords”. I don’t know if they created the tarot deck specifically for the film, or if it was some really bad “reimagining” of tarot. Either way, the ten of swords/death card was used to symbolize how just a few seconds later, the tall hippie would stab one of the other members, killing him, and lopping his foot off.
Once the hippies start to turn rabid, the film really comes out as a hokey and corny film, that was pretty gross to look at-at times. I personally I cannot stand looking at people eat, and the foam coming from everyone’s mouths was almost too gross for me to look at. That’s just a “me” thing, I know, but I had to look away sometimes.
There is a scene in the film where one of the locals gets into a fight with the main hippie, and during this, the local man’s dentures falls out. This was apparently unintentional, and something that happened in real life, and they left it in the film. I actually think this was a great choice.
Late in the film, there’s a scene where the pregnant lady hurts herself in the stomach, which I found nuts. I’m surprised that this was allowed to stay in the film. I do question, did she actually have rabies though? She never foamed at the mouth, nor attacked anyone. Was her and baby’s death completely unneccesary? I think so. But I guess for the sake of the plot, they had to do something with her, so that there wouldn’t be any loose ends.
The movie has similar vibes to “Let’s Scare Jessica To Death”, but is no-where near as serious. It was very clearly influenced by other popular films of time, such as “Night of The Living Dead”, while also having this Scooby Doo type chase music. Some of the music is in the same vibe as the synth soundtrack on “Jessica” too. In many ways, this film just made me want to watch Jessica’s movie again.
You can really tell the influence that the 1950’s still had on this film. There were a lot of lingering elements to it in the movie, where many of the cars, hairstyles, and mannerisms were reminiscent of that time. I was a treat in a way, to see this. You can see how in certain parts of America, the hippie movement really didn’t seem to affect much.
I don’t understand why the rabid hippies started to turn on each other, but the fight scene between the tall guy and the cult leader was interesting. I think this was partially done to pad out time. The ending was unsatisfactory and stupid, not making the movie worth the watch time. I don’t know why there are so many movies that shoot for the 1 hour and 30 minute runtime, when a 1 hour film would have been just fine.
Overall, I didn’t care for the film, and found it stupid.
I couldn’t find any actual reviews for the film, just ads and summaries for the plot, when it came out in 1971. Of course, “I Drink Your Blood” was paired with “I Eat Your Skin”, a movie that had actually been made in 1964, but was shelved. The director to this movie simply bought the rights to that one, and renamed it, setting up the two to play together in theaters, typically. The scary looking face used on ads for the film has nothing to do with the movie, apparently coming from a British film that was created years before this one. The movie had a lot of “thrifting” to put it together.
I wonder how many films this one influenced though, because in many ways, I can see a resemblance between “I Drink Your Blood”, and “28 Days Later”.
I rate the film a 0.5 out of 5.
My video: https://youtu.be/cms1MZfH2II
