Uriah43 This movie begins with some young women being kidnapped in the city of Manila and forcibly taken to a remote location deep in the jungle. At first they assume that they will be transported to Hong Kong in order to be sold in the white slave market. However, they soon realize that they are being held by a strange cult which needs their blood to retain immortality. Not only that but one of the kidnapped young ladies named "Laura" (Jennifer Billingsley) holds a special place in their plans as well. Now as far as the overall merits of this film are concerned I will say that it featured an interesting plot and a couple of attractive women in Judith McConnell (as "Claire") and Fredricka Meyers ("Ann"). On the flip side, the dialogue was rather basic and the film itself was clearly a low-budget, grade-B movie from start to finish. Even so, in spite of the obvious weaknesses mentioned I personally didn't think this movie was that bad and because of that I have rated it as just slightly below average.

Scarecrow-88 Lovely white women are caught in the city of Manila by members of a blood eternal youth cult that worships a head in a red box and bleed these kidnapped victims for the properties that mix well with a potion. Jennifer Billingsley gets top billing as one of the kidnapped, Laura, her face found portraited by cult member, Baru (John Considine, who deserves better than this; I can't imagine how it must have felt chanting a religious song to a severed head in a box, and not question where your career went awry), taken as a sign from their worshipped god, Raum, that she is special. Tani Guthrie is Ranu, the wife of Raum who benefits from the blood of the captured girls whose throats her jungle minions cut with a knife during ceremonies. We witness the drinking of the blood after the collections (a leaf is applied to the wounds of the women, healing them for the time being), with Ranu relishing her eternal youth, completely unencumbered by any form of moral guilt in what her people are doing to the victims taken against their will and imprisoned on her jungle mountain fortress. Baru must confront all he has ever known and believed when he falls in love with Laura, her inability to drink the blood of other kidnapped girls she has befriended throwing everything he holds dear out of whack. Will Baru choose love for Laura or the cult he has been an active member of his whole life? Will you really care? I didn't and this movie really should be more exciting than it is. It is just plain safe and tame. I imagine a good cannibal movie, demented and warped, could've been derived from this, but the serious nature of the material (it is played so straight, that I just couldn't have fun with it) and lack of anything interesting considering the twisted idea presented before us (I mean, this is a cult that worships a head in a box and yet it never can capitalize on such a schlocky idea) just kind of dulled me into a boredom I never could recover from. I guess the actors hired and the uneventful direction (the cast cannot summon a lick of charisma and enthusiasm considering the bonkers plot, and the sluggish pace doesn't help matters) couldn't wring out any fun from the storyline. There is one great scene where Laura is punished, for not agreeing to drink, by being thrown in a prison with victims, whose beauty and youth had been drained, leaving them wrinkled and hideous, tearing away at her with their overgrown fingernails (the way the prison is dark and how they engulf her is pretty effective). Considine has a fascinating face and gives a rather decent performance, understated and soft, but Billingsley is really a boring heroine. Judith McConnell runs away with her scenes as club dancer, Claire, one of the whites kidnapped, who seems perfectly fine with her current predicament; she's really an uninhibited tramp, but because the film is so tame, her character never really can flower as a seductive trollop, which is too bad. The real star is the Philippines jungle, a setting which could have been far more sinister but at least has enough sweaty atmosphere to convey to us that civilized man/woman doesn't want to wind up here. The ending, after an escape, with Vic Diaz and the police getting involved in a hunt, winds up quite ludicrous.

Gblakelii This film was one of the regulars on the NY area TV's "Fright Night" horror showcase. And anyone who has stayed up late, week after week to watch these movies, knows that most of the movies have to be watched multiple times. This particular movie does get better the more you view it! It has a special quality about it that one never gets tired of. Some people, myself included, thought the sets had a "Star Trek" look about them. For that reason alone, check it out. The "video" version was released under the title Blood Hunt, with inferior color quality. Even still the on location Philippine scenery adds so much. Now with it being available on DVD the improved color makes all the difference in the world. Hey, if you liked the other Philippine horror movies such as Mad Doctor of Blood Island, this is 10 times better! And yes, the Blood Island films are pretty good. Stick with the single edition DVD, though.

missmonochrome 2 beauty queens, a stewardess and a stripper, are taken hostage to a remote jungle, where they are held by a group of blood drinking immortals.Oddly enough none of our captives seem too worried about it in the first half of the film, blindly following their captors with giggly enthusiasm usually seem in infatuated schoolgirls. Perhaps this is because these mutton dressed as lamb (with the exception of the token Filipino girl, whom actually looks like the young girl she's supposed to be playing)are desperate for attention from any shirtless men they can find, blood drinkers or not.Only after our heroine (who has a face like a badly used cart horse)is anointed as the prophesied queen and begins falling in love with the high priest of the cult and discovers their love for the red stuff does anyone panic.She refuses to join her lover (the living embodiment of Disco Stu, complete with man perm, leisure suit and medallion) in the sanguined feast, pissing off the high priestess in the process. (The priestess' overbite was so severe she could eat corn on the cob through a picket fence, so her being angry and not smiling was a plus) The girls mount a daring escape, with the help of disco stu and one of the drained dry zombies the cult uses as slaves. Stu dies (not so) tragically, the most irritatingly sex starved of our quartet of ladies meets her death in a rat pit, and the remaining 3 escape the jungle and fade back into the (deserved)obscurity they came from.I'm giving this a two for the sheer bravery blended with idiocy of the filmmakers for thinking that a rated PG horror flick was somehow going to become even a mild success.