Give Thanks for BLOOD FREAK


There's a classic movie for almost every holiday.

Christmas possesses several lovely cinematic stocking stuffers, including the 1951 Alistair Sim adaptation of A Christmas Carol and Frank Capra's beloved It's a Wonderful Life (although I cast my personal vote for Rene Cardona's Santa Claus myself). Of course, Halloween begat Halloween. Hell, even Groundhog Day got its own Bill Murray comedy. But what about Thanksgiving?

Sure, the perfectly competent Jodie Foster-directed comedy Home for the Holidays and the modestly successful indie flick Pieces of April possess their followers. But my official nominee for the ultimate Thanksgiving Holiday Classic--the one film that captures all of the awkwardness, gluttony, surrealism, and absurdity of the holiday--is 1971's Blood Freak, available from Something Weird Video on DVD.

Steve Hawkes plays Herschell, a chopper-riding, pompadoured and well-muscled Vietnam vet who stops and offers some Good Samaritan help to a young woman with car trouble. Herschell follows the young woman, Angel (Heather Hughes), home and meets up with Angel's nasty sister Ann (Dana Culliver) and Ann's pot-smoking buddies. Though Herschell initially resists (he's a devout non-smoker and non-drinker), Ann and her pot pals peer-pressure the big lug into taking a hit of the Devil Weed. He's hooked.

Around this time, Angel's and Ann's dad Tom hires Herschell for a job at a turkey farm. Tom then introduces Herschell to two scientists who work in a secret lab at said turkey farm (don't ask). These mad doctors ply Herschell into eating some turkey that's been 'altered' for the 'government' with the promise of extra drugs (Ann got the big guy hooked on drugs, y'know).

The drugs in the tainted turkey make Herschell grow a turkey head, and he goes on a homicidal blood sucking rampage. Yes, the hero becomes a vampiric turkey-headed monster.

No, I'm not making this up. And, yes, he gobbles.

Blood Freak was co-written, co-produced, and co-directed by Hawkes--a slavic emigre who starred in two Brazilian Tarzan movies before an on-set accident left him penniless and stranded in Florida--and Brad Grinter, a nudist who'd previously directed Flesh Feast, a horror schlocker that marked Veronica Lake's final screen appearance. Grinter also narrates the movie at a desk, in front of a chunk of wood paneling, smoking compulsively, and coughing up 3/4 of his respiratory tissue--Criswell in a bourbon-stained '70's polyester shirt.

The resulting motion picture somehow combines drug-scare film doom-saying, exploitation gore, trash horror, ecological/governmental paranoia, and Up-with-People post-hippy Christianity into a poorly-focused, scuzzy, sloppily-edited and dubbed, completely inexplicable--yet utterly irresistible--whole.

See it with someone you love, over a bountiful turkey dinner. And Happy Thanksgiving.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mining for Overlooked Pop Music Jewels: Jigsaw

Image
Venerable record chain Tower Records filed for bankruptcy late last year, and its demise bummed me out in a big way. I hadn't shopped with frequency at Tower in ages--put bluntly, their steep prices of late alienated me big-time--but back in the eighties the chain's size and diversity did a lot to open my ears. I remember every purchase I made at Tower Records' Tacoma store from my first at age 14 (for the record, a cassette of Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy and a vinyl copy of Sparks' Angst in My Pants ), all the way to just before I moved to Seattle at age 21 ( Invisible Lantern by the Screaming Trees --and yes, I AM a big ol' dork for remembering). Rampant sentimentality, however, did bupkis to keep me from picking at the chain's dying carcass late last year like any good bargain-hunter. Right before the Tower Records on 5th Avenue in Seattle breathed its last in December, it bestowed one last parting gift in its final week: a 90%-off sale that drew...
Read more

An Interview with Joe Dallesandro

Image
( I wrote this interview for Seattlest.com , and it is reprinted on the Petri Dish with their kind permission. ) For a minute, it looks like the perfect photo opportunity. Joe Dallesandro—former bodyguard at Andy Warhol’s fabled Factory, star of several key Warhol-sponsored cult films in the sixties and seventies, and accidental avatar of the Sexual Revolution—stands outside the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, his back to me. He cuts an almost dangerous-looking figure. Clad head to foot in black, his compact body sits atop slightly bowed legs in an almost pugilistic stance as he smokes his cigarette. A soul-patched, dark-haired kid stops to bum a smoke, and both figures huddle, almost silhouetted thanks to the overreaching shadow cast by the hotel building, as vaporous off-white ribbons of smoke curl above their heads. But then Dallesandro begins to turn, and I don’t want to come off like some stalker before a formal introduction, so I retreat back into the hotel lobby. The sublime noir ...
Read more

Character Actor Heaven: Hollywood Collectors Show, Feb 2005

Image
Hollywood Collectors' Show, February 18/19, 2005 Character actors are the building blocks of cinematic life. And like a lot of important foundations (architectural or otherwise), they get little credit from the outside world for their contributions. Fortunately, there's the bi-monthly Hollywood Collectors' Show , where fans of all stripes can show these hard-working but underappreciated fixtures of film and TV some serious love, and even get some love back. Expect to make a bit of an investment for that love. Daily admission is $15 ($25 for a two-day pass), and all of the celebrities in attendance charge for their autographs (more on that later). But for a real film (or TV) nut, a Hollywood Collector's Show is absolute manna from heaven, and totally worth the extra change. Imagine a Star Trek convention stripped to its absolute essentials--ample celebrity guests and heaps of cool merchandise--and you get the idea. My wife and I saved our pennies for several months and ...
Read more