Bloodfreak! (A.K.K Blood Freak!)

Blood Freak (or maybe Bloodfreak!) is a movie so wretchedly, abysmally awful it should be in a Museum of the Celluloid Atrocities. It's essentially a movie about a biker (director/ producer "Steve Hawkes" who looks like the bastard offspring of Johnny Cash and Elvis) who goes to a party with some freewheeling hippie chick, gets a lecture from her born-again sister, gets a job at a "poultry farm" (I thought those were mainly for chickens, but all we see are turkeys, which seems somehow appropriate, given this picture) and then eats a turkey or chicken meal wrapped in aluminum that causes him to hallucinate he has a giant bird's head. (I'm not making this shit up. Go, watch the film, and see for yourself.)

We get a lecture about Jesus in between, a few shots of some Sixties go-go chick lounging about. The upside-down exsanguination (very fake) of a kidnapped young woman by Steve the Psycho Turkey-Headed Killer, and then some drug dealer cum would-be rapist gets his leg sawn off in ...a sawmill. Imagine that.

Two of the "scientists" who turned him onto the experimental chicken or turkey that was pumped full of drugs, cut his head off with a machete. They then have a turkey (or is it chicken?) dinner, with Steve's birdbrain bird head sitting on the table. He wakes up. It was all a dream. He goes off with the sexy Bible girl's sexier sister, walking away looking at the ocean or a lake or something. The end.

It must qualify as the first Christian splatter go-go Sixties biker pic ever made. None of the dialogue is spoken as if it wasn't being read off of cue cards. It's also kind of low. The special effects (were there any, actually?) are Bloodsucking Freaks-level, and, though it is nice looking at the actresses, you could well imagine that they are probably dead or ancient and not much fun to look at now, either way.

Perhaps this was a vanity project or hopeful vehicle for "Steve Hawkes" (who is credited as the star twice, once over a black background of dripping red letters), but, if so, it is the most colossal turd I've ever witnessed crawl across a television screen. Oh, did I mention the cigarette-smoking narrator that breaks in with absurd, comic dialog every once in a while?

"It's funny at how in times of uncertainty, he says, people turn to God. This mysterious force we mock or play games with. But, be careful what you pray for!"

He ends the picture warning the audience about the horrors of drugs while coughing over his cigarette. They use to tell me you couldn't fry a turkey. Well, this particular turkey, turkey head and all is as fried as the legendary Southern Rat. It's a movie so bad, so without any redeeming qualities, that you could make urban legends about it. Sandra Bernhard might have shown it at one point on REEL WILD CINEMA (I have to capitalize the title of that show instead of just using apostrophes, as it was so great), but it would have constituted stripping the movie down to its "best parts." And since it doesn't HAVE any good parts, well, whaddya gonna do?

I rented it at the old Video Stop video store (remember those?) back about thirty-odd years ago, based on the misleading image on the box. It was distributed, of course, by "Video Treasures," the same distinguished company that put out such anti-classics as Crazy: Fat Ethel Two, and Mother's Day.

The only thing harder to figure out than WHY this movie was made was HOW they managed to stretch this shit out for ONE HOUR AND TWENTY MINUTES. What were they trying to accomplish here? Horror? Titillation? What? Can you just tell me that, Lord?

Stick a fork in this bird. It's done.

Blood Freak (1972) can be viewed on YouTube