Review of Blood Sucking Freaks (1976) by Al M — 10 Aug 2010

Blood Sucking Freaks is a difficult film to rate because it is a rather repulsive piece of B-movie exploitation that uses sex and torture for no reason other than titillation. Essentially, the film is ripoff/remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis's splatter-classic The Wiard of Gore, which is a film that is as profoundly terribly as it is groundbreakingly enjoyable.

Reed's film takes the basic premise of the film and opens with it and then turns his story into a Sadean tale of white slavery, sado-masochism, and mutilation. Except, unlike de Sade, Reed's film has no point--it is a purely exploitational piece of cinema that parades a stream of naked, young women before the camera who are subsequently abused, degraded, tortured, and killed.

Like H.G. Lewis's work, it is film that is meant to be enjoyed on purely sensual and silly level without any underlying themes. And taken in such a context it succeeds, but Reed's film for some reason left me feeling dirtier than Lewis's original, probably because it features such a constant stream of nudity and degradation.

In summation, Blood Sucking Freaks is a film that will most likely only be enjoyed by fans of gore and exploitation cinema.