Blood Freak (1972)

Frank was waiting for a six-inch turkey club at a Cracker Barrel convenience store on the Strip in Lafayette, Louisiana, and thinking of Albert Fish… Albert Fish of Washington DC had a head injury from a fall off a cherry tree in 1877. By the age of twenty he began to travel across 23 US states involved in house-painting, masochistic-homosexual relationships, raping children, cannibalism and bible study. He also liked inserting needles into his body near the genitals; acts of pain sexually excited him. Albert Fish, the ‘Brooklyn Vampire’ committed hundreds of sexual assaults and 16 or more murders before being sentenced to death by electrocution at Sing Sing in 1936. He called it ‘the supreme thrill of my life.’ The first electrical charge failed; it was short circuited by all the needles Fish had inserted between his testicles and anus over the years. It took a second massive current to finish the blackened Fish off. Frank concentrated this true ‘blood freak’ because the thought of turkey reminded him of the movie of that same name. And, if he thought of Grinter and Hawkes’ infamously bad Blood Freak (1972) while he idled in the chip aisle, he would burst out into uncontrollable laughter (and gobbles) and probably over topple over the rack of pickled pig snouts, gator jerky and pork rinds. For those not in the know, the pro-Christian/anti-drug Blood Freak (re-released on DVD by Image Entertainment on 9 September 2005) is one of the few films that can be recommended solely for their sheer absurdity. Blood Freak stars Hawkes (A former Eastern bloc bodybuilder, former Mr. Canada, former Tarzan, current inept exotic animal keeper) as Herschel, an unlikely biker-slash-‘Nam vet torn between a swinging sex kitten and her ultra Christian sister. Meantime, their daddy gets Hersch a job eating experimental turkey on his poultry farm. Obviously, a combination of tampered turkey and some wicked-ass pot (truly, Hersch gets the DTs after a single joint) turns our hero into bloodthirsty gobbling turkey monster. Didn’t his mom tell him that if he ate that much turkey he’d start to look like one? He looks like the not-so nice cousin of the San Diego Chicken, trying to shove bloody limbs into a papier-mâché beak. Only clean living and prayer can save Herschel now! “Perhaps Hersch needs to go cold turkey?” Frank snorts and knocks a stack of Penthouse Letters off the magazine stand. Details are too bizarre to expand upon. To be honest, despite Hawke's spastic transformation into a turkey, the camera effects are kinda cool, although are probably just a result of poor lighting. The second half of the film is very dark and often hard to follow. Hersch also cuts the leg off a drug dealer with a power saw. A real amputee is used so there is no “hidden limb” in the effect. However, a prosthetic spurting red paint doesn’t look much real either. Hersch’s war wounds are more convincing: in reality, Hawkes was badly burned on the set of one of his Tarzan flicks thus fating our side-burned, muscle-bound hero to not rise above the B-classics. “Oh come on,” the nay-sayers whine. “Certainly lack of talent first-doomed Hawkes career!” But, need Frank remind anyone of another ex-Eastern European body builder (with less cool ‘chops’) who festers in Hollywood blockbusters (and—ulp!—politics)? Truly, though, what makes the film for Frank, if not all this aforementioned silliness, is co-director Brad Grinter as the narrator. He looks like a sad Vincent Price (House of Wax; De Toth 1953) with uncombed hair and sagging faux wood paneling. He chain-smokes and reads off a script (one reviewer calls him coy for looking away—he’s reading the lines, idiot!). At the film’s climax he ironically breaks out into an uncontrollable smoker’s hack while lecturing on the evil of recreational drug use. Any other directors would have filmed a second take. Any other take. But Hawke’s and Grinter are not any other directors!

If not completely confused by the fractured Hawkes-Grinter vision, stay around for the featurettes included on the DVD. These include the 1969 skin-noir featurette The Walls Have Eyes, Brad Grinter, Nudist, and Narcotics, Pit of Despair. Pit easily rivals Reefer Madness (Gasnier 1936) in dated health class drug paranoia. Classic line: “Man, get with the countdown. Shake off this Square World and blast off to Kicks-ville.” Walls has a simple formula: find a way to link an anti-drug message with full frontal nudity, and then find a reason to play all that footage a second time. Nudist is truly just disturbing. You just have to watch to appreciate all this bad-goodness--or good-badness?.

Listing all the bad things which are so so damned entertaining about Blood Freak is impossible and so many other reviewers have described, speculated about, and interpreted the film to death. Just wonder what Christian money was backing drive-in horror movies in the early 1970s?! There’s just something about a film with no redeeming value which will make you smile and groan when you are enjoying a turkey sandwhich light years away. Blood Freak is simply a total tryptophan-trip!