Red-Barracuda I Drink Your Blood is an example of a counter-culture horror movie. It plays on people's fears of the love generation running wild. Not long before this one was made the Manson family crystallised those fears when they slaughtered a bunch of people at Roman Polanski's house. This flick is an exploitation movie that uses these concerns as its basis.In it a group of satanic hippies arrive at a small town. For a laugh they feed LSD to a young boy Pete's grandfather. Pete gets angry and devises a plan for revenge. He supplies these hippies with meat pies injected with blood from a rabid dog. Naturally, they turn into homicidal maniacs and run rampant.Perhaps the single most significant fact about this movie is that it was the first film to be rated 'X' for violence alone. By today's standards it's not much but there is much schlocky blood-letting in this one. The tone is more silly than sinister however and there are quite a few laughs to be had. One example is the rabid hippies hilariously over-the-top fear of water which results in them running in mortal terror at the sight of a puddle. Of additional note, the film features the feline cult actress Lynn Lowry as a mute hippy. She would go on to star in films by George A. Romero and David Cronenberg. Once again, she is a very welcome presence. She has subsequently talked about the making of I Drink Your Blood and the one thing she can remember for sure was that all the participants were out of their minds on hallucinogens the whole time. It's hardly surprising, it's a crazy film.

BigBabe0 Certainly Charles Manson deserves to be in prison the rest of his life, not just because of the murders committed by his "family" but for inspiring a bunch of movies about lethal Hippies, such as this one. (In the book "Fatal Vision," about an army doctor who tried to blame the death of his family on lethal Hippies, there's a line "Four people on acid couldn't even organize a trip to the bathroom, let alone a trip to go kill people.") The leader of this wild bunch is played by a 40-year-old Indian dancer (Indian Indian, not American Indian) who in fact is great, jacking far more enthusiasm into his performance than this flick really deserves. He detects the group ritual being gawked at by an outsider (as per the later and vastly superior "Race with the Devil") who then gets mauled by some of the group. This victim, Sylvia, staggers into the nearby largely abandoned town and collapses; the local baker woman, Mildred (this actress eerily resembles Audrey Campbell from the "Olga" series) assumes that the culprits are some nearby construction workers. Meanwhile the Hippies show up in the same town after their van breaks down, setting off the main revenge plot which is basically a reworking of "The Virgin Spring"/"Last House on the Left" (although the latter appeared a few years later). The "gimmick" here is that the Hippies and the construction workers get rabies, after Sylvia's younger brother Pete injects dead dog blood into some meat pies (Sweeney Todd, anyone?) eaten by the Hippies. According to a medical website, "contact with the blood, urine, or feces (e.g., guano) of a rabid animal, does not constitute an exposure...." But I guess we need to allow for some "artistic license..." As to whether "I Drink Your Blood" is worth your time, there's some nice violence, limited of course by the minimal budget; the mass shooting at the end is unfortunately all off camera. The actors playing the rabies victims have varying degrees of frothing at the mouth---by the way, according to that same medical website, "The rabies incubation period may vary from a few days to several years, but is typically one to three months"---in other words not an hour or less, as per the movie, but again, artistic license... Other than the Indian dude, the best performance is by Rhonda Fultz, who unlike most of the cast has a "real movie" on her credit list ("In Cold Blood"). Since she manages to inject some recognizable humanity into her character Molly, Molly's death (by her own hand) is more affecting than what happens to most of the others, plus her being pregnant and all. Bottom line, "Blood" passes the "free/beer" test---if you can see it for free and have plenty of beer handy, then yeah, go for it. By the way don't bother looking for that scary face on the video cover, it's actually from another movie....

GroovyDoom I am one of those who will never forget this movie's ad campaign, which advertised a double bill of this film and a movie called "I Eat Your Skin". If you already know "I Eat Your Skin" contained no eating of skin, then it will not come as a shock to you that "I Drink Your Blood" is not about vampires, and aside from an opening scene where a little blood is swilled, the focus of the film is not on blood drinking at all. It does turn into a freaked-out pseudo-zombie film in the vein of "The Crazies".A weird hippie and his small band of followers spend their time taking acid and conducting Satanic rituals. Their Satanic, wanderin' ways bring them to a little town on the verge of being completely abandoned; when they begin to terrorize the locals, a little kid gets revenge on them by injecting meat pies with the blood of a rabid dog and feeding them to the hippies, who then go on a homicidal rampage. When a group of rowdy construction workers also get infected, the spit really hits the fan.The ultra low budget gives the film a rickety appearance; you will either love it or hate it for that reason. Personally I loved it and think it's one of the best examples of a crazy 70s drive-in flick. It makes no sense, but there's a definite uneasy feeling going on throughout the whole thing, not the least of which is due to the obvious Manson family references. The violence is also often disturbing, and if the special effects are not always convincing, the eager spirit of things is enough to get under your skin.

bababear Because I had some excellent chicken enchiladas for supper, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD gets eight out of ten. Probably a little high, but what the heck.The story starts with a group of inexplicably clean cut and well groomed hippies who aspire to practice the Dark Arts. Their charismatic leader is a young man from India. In the group we have one Black man, one Asian woman, one young woman who's a mute, and several rejects from suburbia. Imagine a lost touring company of HAIR. Somehow they go through about two thirds of the film looking freshly scrubbed and wearing spotlessly clean clothes. Amazing.The leader assaults a young local girl. The hippies go into town (what's left of it- it's a charming New England village that's abandoned due to construction on a dam)- and stay at the old, abandoned hotel. Grandpa goes to investigate and is beaten up. Worse might have happened but his grandson, Pete, comes along just in time.Nobody knows what to do about the hippies and, of course, nobody thinks about calling local law enforcement because nobody will buy tickets for a twenty minute long feature film.Pete shoots a rabid dog and then makes his decision. Grandpa is a veterinarian, so there's all sorts of medical equipment in the house. He'll draw blood from the rabid dog and inject it into meat pies, then sell them to the hippies.Now, this was no ordinary rabid dog. The incubation period for rabies can range from ten days to as long as a year before symptoms show. This is a Special High Speed Movie Rabid Dog. The hippies are soon foaming at the mouth and rampaging across the countryside.The tone of the film is, to say the least, strange. Obviously it's a comedy: what else could explain the hyperactive musical score? Most of the characters you expect to survive do so. Most of the ones you expect to meet a grim fate, ditto.I think everyone connected with the film has done better work, probably on stage. Many of the actors give what I think of as stage performances in that they don't so much overact but perform in a way that ignores that the camera is only a few feet away.This is one that could do with an updated remake. The plot idea is sound, especially the fact that the valley will eventually be flooded when the dam is constructed. That's the climax the writer/director probably dreamed about (remember that hydrophobia is marked by a fear of water) but didn't have the money to produce.Considering that I was able to rent this for 99 cents, I say the eight out of ten rating was well deserved.