Blood Freak

Where does one even begin when trying to describe this insane film?

Chances are the jargon "turkey monster", "christian", "druggie", "inept scientists", etc. will come up in the process, but I think the word that best sums it up is "amazing".

If taken at face value this would appear to be an over-the-top, ridiculous anti-drug christian scare film, but it seems to me like it's more likely a wierd joke by a sadist with a bizarre sense of humor. The plot is pretty much outlined in the other "Blood Freak" review on this site, but I would recommend this highly for anyone into "I can't believe this movie was ever made" type fare. My favorite element personally is the crusty narrator who occasionally interrupts the movie from what appears to be a suburban family rec room(?) and gives cryptic warnings about the harm of putting chemicals in one's body, all the while puffing away on cigarettes (at one point the guy even breaks out into a heavy coughing fit!). Everything about this is guaranteed to blow even the most jaded video geek's mind, and if you can get your hands on it I recommend it highly. Truly a masterpiece as far as cinematic trash is concerned...

After hearing about Blood Freak for years, after preparing myself by collecting over two hundred of the worst movies ever made, after nearly resigning myself to paying a fortune for a copy, I found Blood Freak sitting on a shelf with a cute little green price tag, biding its time, waiting to pounce.

I wasn't ready for this. Read all the other comments and realize that they're not exaggerating in the least. WORST movie ever made? No, that's still got to be Night of Horror. Blood Freak calls for a category not yet invented - the sheer glorious dancing-with-the-angels whack flakiness of Godmonster of Indian Flats or Troll 2, combined with the absolute ineptitude of Night of Horror, Weird World of LSD, or Broadway Jungle. And then add something more, an X factor, the ability to send you off the couch and onto the Karistan wheezing like a busted calliope, like the head of Hitler mugging it up in the back seat in They Saved Hitler's Brain, or the immortal. "The natives call it - Tabanga!" in from Hell It Came.

Yes, it's about mutant turkeys, good Bible preaching, a hair farm named Herschell, and balding cracker dopers, but Blood Freak goes so much further. It has the rare quality of twisting away from you and running off in a different direction, whenever you think you've got it pegged. At half a dozen points in the movie you'll have yourself totally convinced that this is a send-up, that the crazed lounge-lizards-for-Jesus narrator is smirking and winking at you. Then a throat gets slashed, a leg gets sawn off, and you realize that, no, the mutant turkeys that created this farrago are SERIOUS.

I'll give a free kitten to the first person who comes up with the present location of the papier-mache turkey head.

A very shaky camera follows leatherclad 'Nam vet Herschell (Steve Hawkes) down the Florida turnpike, where he helps Angel, a stranded, bible quoting "seeker of the truth" in hot pants. The two go back to her place, where a hippie drug party hosted by Angel's cute, baby-voiced "far out" sister Anne is taking place. When Herschell ignores the advances of a woman, she informs him, "You' re nothing but a dumb b***ard who doesn't know where it's at, anyway!"

Herschell ends up getting a job at the father's turkey farm, Anne gets him "hooked" on pot and scientists in lab jackets trick him into eating chemicals that transform him into a turkey headed monster that gobbles, hangs people upside down, slits their throats and drinks the blood, all while dressed in flared bell-bottom pants!

One very blood, standout murder scene has a guy getting his leg cut off with a table saw. Some real turkeys are beheaded, too, for additional gore. But the action stops cold when the on-screen, chain-smoking narrator (played by director Grinter) reads preachy, pro-Christian commentary off of cue cards on a desk!

The big, muscular Hawkes sports Elvis hair, thick sideburns and weird, blotchy skin, and is one of the worst actors I can think of. Other cast members flub or forget their lines and often look directly at the camera and laugh! No one is credited with writing it on the version I have (the original VHS copy), but with lines directed toward Hawkes like, "He's strong, he's handsome and he enjoys being attractive to the opposite sex," I strongly suspect he had his hand in there somewhere.

Do NOT miss this movie!

Score: (technically speaking) 1 out of 10 / (for laughs) 10 out of 10!

There are very few horror films that could make me laugh as much as "Blood Freak". The cinematography, script, and especially the ACTING in "Blood Freak" are so mind-blowingly awful that I still laugh at it even after seeing it 50 times. My favorite actors are the guy that owns the turkey farm and his two scientists. Their complete lack of emotion and their stumbling over their own lines (among other things) make me suspect that this movie only filmed ONE TAKE of each scene, regardless of mistakes.

I simply LOVE "Blood Freak" and never get tired of it. I even dig the '70s styling and funky soundtrack. There really aren't any other films like this out there.

I highly recommend "Blood Freak" to fans of unintentional hilarity. It is hard to find this film, but it's worth searching for it.

Studly, hog-riding Herschell gets reeled into the dope scene by a seductive ravenhaired trollop...a free-spirited hottie who loves the party life, and ignores the cautionary advice of her mousy, churchgoing sister.

Before long, Herschell finds employment at a turkey farm, which also happens to be the locus of some dodgy scientific quackery conducted by a couple of goofy whitecoats. They persuade Herschell to eat some chemically altered turkey meat...he obliges, and transforms into a grotesque, turkey-headed man/bird. As such, he makes gobbling sounds and kills people for a beakful of their blood. Herschell's girlfriend is troubled by his new look, but she wears a brave face and extends supportive reassurance. When her scummy dope pusher violates her, Herschell steps in as her merciless avenger.

The one...the ONLY film of its kind, BLOOD FREAK is among the most nonplussing cinematic anomalies in film history...a preposterous concept reduced even further by impalpably slipshod workmanship...if there is as much as one full second of BLOOD FREAK demonstrative of even the most meager professionalism, then I must have blinked and missed it. This scorching blaze of schlock wizardry is a deluge of incidental surrealism, causing the film to overstep its awfulness as a desultory masterwork of incongruous abstraction(which even manages to slide in a puerile Christian subtext).

A film to be awed, admired, studied, and cherished forever... 9.5/10