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Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)

Dir: Joel M Reed

Even today "Bloodsucking Freaks" is one of the most infamous exploitation titles, it's legacy living on in graphic detailing of it's content on message boards and in books. But a description of events is very different to how those events actually play out…..

Sardu (Seamus O'Brien, who ended up knifed to death a year later following a botched break in at his home) runs a grotesque stage show called the "Theatre of the Macabre" down some off off Broadway back street. Under the guise of 'magic' he tortures and murders women in front of his (very bored looking) audience.
But what the punters see as a trick is in reality real and the women are really dying.
Sardu, with his sadistic Dwarf side kick Ralphus (Luis De Jesus, ex hardcore porn actor who according to Director Reed was not small all over if you know what I mean, and I think you do) and his 2 topless female helpers are kidnapping women, keeping them in a cage and selling them to sinister foreigners. The 'over-spill' he uses to sate his sadistic ego during his act.

When Sardu takes a fancy to ballet Dancer Natasha (Viju Krem), the girlfriend of Football star Tom Maverick (Niles McMaster), he kidnaps her and keeps her prisoner until she agrees to dance for him in his show. Subjecting her to mental torment as she is made to watch the other women being tortured and killed.

But Tom and corrupt Cop John Tucci (Dan Fauci) are on Sardu's trail……..

Lets get right down to the grit, the dirt, the filth and the grime.
"Bloodsucking Freaks" is packed with sights that go above and beyond the call of Exploitation duty.
The captive women are forever naked and Reed makes sure we are aware of that fact by zooming in on as many hairy pubic mounds as possible.
The most exploitative nudity is during the 'cage' scenes where the dirty, feral group of women scrabble for the scraps of food thrown at them by Ralphus. The camera spends much of its time at groin level just to hammer home the fact that these women are…naked! Goddamn it!

As far as the sadism goes the film pulls no punches.
The naked women are subjected to various gory tortures and much sexual cruelty.
One woman is used as a table for Sardu to eat his lunch off, a candle dripping down her naked back (an actual candle as well, in one of a few scenes where S/M practices are real).
Another woman has her teeth pulled out (in perhaps the nastiest scene) so she can't bite during an implied oral rape, before having a hole drilled in her head and (in the films most famous scene) her brains sucked out up a straw.
Another holds a rope in her mouth, that holds up a guillotine blade above her neck, as she has her backside caned (another scene that looks real as far as the caning is concerned).
One has electricity run through her via nipple clamps.
Two others are used in a board game between Ralphus and Sardu and end up having their fingers cut off as betting chips.
But perhaps the most blackly comic is a woman's bare backside used as a dartboard. Don't ask where the bullseye is!

Stage 'acts' include a finger crushed in a vice, a head clamp, a women whipped and made to crawl naked on all fours before having her hand sawn off and her eyeball pulled out (which is just Ralphus picking what looks like an egg of her closed eyelid).

The effects are crude and cheap and, sure enough, look crude and cheap.
But the biggest damage to the gore/sadism scenes is not the actual effects (hey, we've all seen better but we have all seen much worse) but the truly lame performances from the actresses. Despite the nasty, painful things being done to them their facial expressions and above all their screaming is so under whelming that you would think they simply had an upset stomach or toothache. Only the screaming during the teeth pulling in any way goes with the act being carried out.

Performances in general are lacklustre. O'Brian does the best job as the twisted Sardu and carefully downplays his character where it would be very easy to go over the top. But when added to the rest of the very lifeless pacing and style of the film as a whole, it plays just a little too weak.
Sardu as a character is more interesting than the performance of O'Brian. Despite his sadistic acts he turns out to be a S/M Submissive who likes a good beating by Ralphus! Reed adds a nicely authentic touch to this fetish in a scene where Sardu switches his key chain to the left-hand side of his belt to signify to the leering Ralphus that he is submissive and ready. A sign normally used in the Gay S/M scene to let potential partners know if you are a Dom or a Sub.
He's given some nicely evil dialogue as well. As the poor woman/table shakes he shouts at her "Don't you dare ruin my dinner" and, gazing into the eyes of another unfortunate calmly states "Her mouth will make an interesting urinal".
The script, also by Reed, is in fact stronger on dialogue than plot. A nice line by Sardu to Ralphus, who's warming up the audience, is "I thought I told you to stop the Gestapo jokes"!

Talk of Ralphus (the other most famous part of the film) brings up some of the more outrageous acts in the film. The grinning henchman likes to fry up eyeballs, and have sex with decapitated heads. But again there is just no energy in his performance. I hope he put more life into his popular 42nd Street quickie "The Anal Dwarf", than he does here.

Viju Krem is pretty wooden and despite being a supposed famous Ballerina dances like she has lead shoes on and has been chugging down a few too many beers. Though her 'murder by ballet' scene is so damn unique you just have to smile.

Niles McMaster is stoic enough as the brawny hero, but he was better in "Alice Sweet Alice" (where he worked with the huge Alphonso DeNoble who also appears here as the man Sardu sells the women to) and is simply just satisfactory in his limited role.

The feral women are played a bit better and at least the actresses put some life into their scenes of screaming mayhem and cannibalistic flesh rendering.
An aftermath of a killing (of a victim who was lured into their cage) has one of the women rubs a still dripping (obviously animal) heart over her bare breasts with much pleasure. And it's a moving scene dear reader. A delightful bit of craziness that almost brought a tear to this 'Exploitation Hound's' jaded eye.

The films low budget is there for all to see, but mostly for the worse.
The low-fi look of the movie, as with all true Exploitation (and not 'pretend', well scrubbed exploitation for the masses like the new mega-budget "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" re-make), of course adds to the films down and dirty atmosphere. This type of film should only be made with a scraped together budget in fact.
But Reed and company should have understood that low budget does not have to equal low quality.
The "Theatre of the Macabre" is one tiny stage with a few fold up metal chairs in a black room and the cage the wild women are kept in is so weak and rickety a child could break its way out. And that no attempt is made to hide the fact that the cage door barely closes shows just how little care was taken with the production as a whole.

And here we have the film's real failing. Nothing here plays like Reed really cared. A rare thing in the low budget Exploitation scene. Either that or Reed is simply a truly awful Director. And given the content of the film, I really do mean a truly awful Director.
Here we have a film with almost non-stop torture, cruelty, death, blood, gore, depravity, full frontal nudity and a wild idea for a story…And yet it sits there in it's bodily fluid stained corner and does nothing.

It does not matter if the scene is a conversation or a grotesque act of sadism; they are all staged, acted, edited and filmed in the same lifeless fashion. There is no energy here, no warped passion, no manic intensity. It's flat, dreadfully, dreadfully lifeless and flat.
And how any film packed with so much dripping, moist, and yes hairy, exploitation elements could ever turn out so damn dull is one of the true mysteries of cinema.
If there is one film on this earth that, given it's content, should be anything but dull…It's "Bloodsucking Freaks".
But sadly, that's exactly what it is.

But to end on a more positive note...the finale freeze frame is a bad taste gem of the highest order!