Thursday, July 10, 2014

Blood Mania (1970), directed by Robert O'Neil


It's been some time now that Rhino hasn't been a player in the DVD market but, dangit, that still stings a bit.  Mostly remembered now for their incredible Mystery Science Theater 3000 box sets (many of which I have), Rhino started out in the 80's as the destination for lovers of vintage music and dubious cinematic and televised entertainment.  Rhino certainly knew what kind of goofy hook to throw at disposable incomers and they knew full well that an obscure horror flick from 1970 called Blood Mania would get a man of my curious disposition lowering my newspaper for a closer look.  I was still a bit unsure considering I'd never heard of the director, writer or anyone in the cast but then I found a copy for a penny and your reading the history that became the rest.  Let's find out if Rhino blundered in paying money to release this, even though it's got to be better than House of the Black Death at the very least.

CLANGBANGTWANG!!!  Brilliant post-Iron Maiden heaviocity segues into a neglige'd woman of excessive cup size pitifully skipping around in multicolored fog.  FREEZEFRAMESCREAM!!!  Crude animated hands drag the title down across the screen.  Already this is the greatest movie ever made and I have no idea what's going on, especially when hairstyling was done by "Jimie" and painting was achieved by "Mendij".  It turns out that was all the dream of a man who wears yellow pseudo-Neru shirts to his recliner bed and haphazardly nails ugly hunting trophies to the wall.  He's being taken care of by his daughter Victoria, though their relationship is defined by underrehearsed insults like "I could choke on my coffee and you wouldn't shed a tear!"  Victoria does have a neat hippie dress, though.  In another house, the father's doctor Craig (co-writer and co-producer Peter Carpenter of Point of Terror...fame?) is too lethargic to get into a bathtub with his wife, presumably because of the amazing rotating crystal nitelight on his nitestand.  Not for long though: "As a matter of fact, I'm tingling with great expectations!"  My worries that this wouldn't have a plot were quashed by the cartoonish cheetah and monkey figurines at the edge of the bathtub, but a hideous edit jostled me back.  Back at Victoria's house, a shirtless young man has to get his keys from the bottom of the pool, and Victoria responds in the language of stripping.  PSYCHEDELICBOOBZOOM!!! (Pool boy: "I've heard of people like you!")  We're only fifteen minutes in, blood maniacs.

Man, Victoria gets really pushy when she wants to sleep with every man in town.  The director thought we needed more bra shots to get through another hilariously stiff soap-opera pissing contest between male leads, in case you didn't have enough grease on your hands.  Pretend you care about blackmail and you'll get the picture...oh, wait, that's terribly dull, isn't it?  Right, right...though the blackmailer does a great job of jutting his jaw out while rocking that cigar.  The synth score closes the scene by farting.  JIBJABSNOOZE!!!  "Gotta get that money though...someway...somehow..."  Nurse: "Didn't you know?  I'm listed in the yellow pages under 'sex'."  I get the feeling Victoria is poisoning her father's meals, or maybe she's just overly attached for the sake of vague sleaze.  Finally, we see a weird candle and nude Victoria stuff a broach up nude Craig's nose as if it was a smelling salt, which makes him slump into a guitar-'n'-glockenspiel stupor.  God, I love fake slo-mo sex scenes in the negative zone, don't you?  "You'll probably live to be 110."  "Why's that?"  "Only the good die young."  With lines this good you won't believe acting this bad.  Good thing there's only four minutes between sex scenes and no plot propulsion.  Joint on a set of scales = symbolism.  And the blackmailer is a jerky date rapist.  At a certain point one has to wonder if amyl nitrate would really make Victoria thrust her bare breasts into a mirror.  Fortunately I fell out of my chair laughing when the dad abruptly sat up in bed with blood around his lips and the look of a man whose junk has been seized in the jaws of an alligator.  

Yeah, yeah, Victoria cops to the murder immediately but she at least delivers her lines with the most sidesplitting stoned performance I've seen since Rinko Kikuchi in 47 Ronin.  "Don't swear...please...don't swear...", and Victoria strips once again as if trying to get into the Church of Satan.  Craig: "You bitch.  Come here, bitch."  Victoria fuffs the will reading with primo screaming akin to a grandmother giving birth to a porcupine.  It's a good thing that a Renaissance fair montage came by just when the plot pulled the dragshoot or else I wouldn't have gotten to see Craig and Victoria's sister swing heavy bags at each other while mimes laughed their asses off.  Craig cheats, Victoria paints hideous red splotches on her already hideous painting.  Fireside sex on a zebra rug and ZOMBIEBITEINSERT!!!  After more narrative wheel-spinning, I remembered that the poster and DVD case promised that the climax would be shocking - good thing Victoria chose that very moment to club her sister and the editor to death with a candlestick.  Craig (crying): "Why?"  Victoria (hammy): "Why?".  Me (dying of laughter): "Best penny ever spent."

Where has this masterpiece been all my life?  It should be apparent at this point that Blood Mania will knock your socks off.  The score alone would've made the film, a dense slice of sloppy psychsynthloaf surpassed only by Kent Bateman's divinely warped The Headless Eyes.  Fortunately, the combination of stupidly melodramatic plot, technical sloppiness and head-shaking acting makes sure that there's never a moment the viewer isn't wetting their pants in joy.  While the content (lame blackmail melodrama masquerading as horror) is similar to Peter Carpenter's other writer-producer-star flick from a couple years later, Point of TerrorMania blows that movie out of the water by letting a steady stream of jaw-dropping ineptitude flow from the screen.  Sure, I could have been a bit insulted when Craig romanced Victoria's sister for absolutely no reason, but then psychedelic freakout inserts with a man with ash for facepaint brought me back home.  At least it wasn't the five-minute flashback from Point wherein the main character ran from a school bully through a field until I started clipping my nails.  Whenever you think the novelty is about to wear thin in Mania something gut-busting or just plain idiotic pops into frame, leaving the viewer fighting for air in disbelief.  Even the prop department was having a goof on set, apparently in a contest with Chester Novell Turner's Tales from the Quadead Zone to see how many wacky props it can burn into my retinas in the first 20 minutes.  If only MST3K aired on premium cable so they could keep in all the nudity and Mania could've gone down as one of the campy greats.  Thankfully DVD collectors have plenty of options - if you don't want Rhino's solo disc you can pop for Code Red's double feature disc with Land of the Minotaur (the only 70's Satanic cult flick with a Brian Eno score) or Mill Creek's Gore House Greats 12-flick'r.  Yes, this was well worth the penny and shipping, and yes, you need to see 1970's most delirious soap opera right this minute, lest Victoria unleashes her DD cups in front of her dad again.  PSYCHBLOODLAFFS!!!


Twisted souls of insanity!

~PNK