I'll Have Another

I Drink Your Blood has a nifty distinction: the first film to be rated X purely for its violence. 

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Quick Plot: A diverse gang of devil worshippers makes camp in a small, nearly empty town filled with some decent abandoned real estate and a whole lot of rats. After raping a local woman, they ignite the fury of her ineffectual grandfather and wildly creative little brother Pete. 

Grandpa tries to exact revenge only to end up being forced to take LSD by a gaggle of hysterically laughing punk satanists high on rodent hunting (happens to the best of us). Peter, on the other hand, has a more solid plan. He shoots a dog infected with rabies, collects its blood, injects it into meat pies at the town's only market for food, and convinces his sister's tormenters to chow down.

As cinematic little brothers go, Peter is up there with the best of them

Since I'm not scientist, I have no choice but to take the movie at its logic that eating rabies-seasoned pot pies will turn the consumer into a ravenous zombie. 

Mayhem takes over the town as the rabies takes its toll, igniting pure savagery in some, suicidal tendencies in others, and insatiable lust in one who just happens to end up naked with a full construction crew. Since rabies (or at least, I Drink Your Blood's version of rabies) is spread by any touch of bodily fluid, it's not long before the whole town is either hunting or being hunted. 

I Drink Your Blood was directed by David Durston after producer Jerry Gross decided, if the internet is to be believed, that  "he wanted to make the most graphic horror film ever produced, but he didn't want any vampires, man-made monsters, werewolves, mad doctors, or little people." 

Success all around! Three years after I Drink Your Blood, George Romero would play with a similar concept in The Crazies (which happens to also costar I Drink Your Blood's Lynn Lowry). The Crazies is a scarier film, but there's an element of wacky fun to I Drink Your Blood that makes it a darn fun watch. It doesn't take long to hit full chaos, and when full chaos involves a LOT of severed limbs, who can complain?

High Points

I am, and will always be, an easy mark for frantic jazz used to enhance insanity, and Clay Pitts' score is perfectly applied in a way that truly takes the wacky tone to the perfect level of escalation

Low Points

You can't give me "old man force fed LSD" as a plot point without the fun of, you know, showing an old man high on LSD

Lessons Learned

You don't have to know about LSD to know abut rabies

The mark of a good machete is one that can sever a head from its body in just one swing

Satan was an acid head

Rent/Bury/Buy

I dug the heck out of I Drink Your Blood. It moves fast, in a wonderfully weird and over the top way. I found the film via a Netflix disc rental, so while it doesn't seem to be streaming anywhere, the disc does come loaded with a batch of special features worth checking out. Bon appetit!