YAKMALA!

My first encounter with Blood Freak was on some now defunct movie message boards. The thread concerned Yakmala films (although they didn’t use that name), and someone brought up Blood Freak. After hearing the premise, I was hooked as bad as Herschell.

Tagline: A Dracula on Drugs!

More Accurate Tagline: A Dracula on Thanksgiving!

Guilty Parties: Brad F. Grinter and Steve Hawkes. Grinter was a no-budget horror director who started out with Flesh Feast before degenerating into cheap nudies. He co-wrote, co-directed, co-produced and co-starred in Blood Freak, serving as the film’s asthmatically godlike narrator. Hawkes, an Eastern European slab of beef fresh from Spanish Tarzan rip-offs, co-wrote, co-directed, co-produced and starred as the title character. His performance can best be described as “befuddling.”

Synopsis: Herschell (Hawkes), apparently an Elvis impersonator who can’t decide between early biker King and late hair-farmer King, comes across Angel, a nice Christian girl who dresses like a stripper with low self-esteem, having unspecified car trouble by the side of the road. He follows her home, where her sister Ann is having a drug party with some unsavory characters who bear strange resemblances to Lucille Ball, Matthew McConaughey, Burt Bacharach and Veronica Cartwright. Angel preaches at him and gets Herschell a job at the local poultry farm. Ann seduces him and gets him to smoke some pot. As most people are in stories like these, Herschell is hopelessly addicted in no time at all. At the poultry farm, a pair of lab techs has Herschell eat some tainted turkey meat to see what will happen. Herschell passes out, grows a giant turkey head and becomes a vampire. Yes, you read that right. Let me say it again. Herschell. Grows a giant turkey head. And becomes a vampire. He spends the rest of the movie hunting down drug addicts and spearing them through the neck to drink blood that looks exactly like Tang. Later, he wakes up, realizing it was all a dream. Angel, who has been completely absent for nearly an hour, shows up to preach at him again, but the happy ending is that Herschell ends up with reformed tramp Ann. Meanwhile, the narrator (Grinter), sitting at a desk in front of chintzy wood paneling, explains what we’re seeing in a performance that makes Ben Stein look like Sam Jackson.

Life-Changing Subtext: Grinter and Hawkes intended this film as an earnest entreaty to the youth: “Only Jesus can save you from a life of turkey-headed cannibalism.” Grinter tries to accomplish this by reveling in sleazy exploitation, which brings ambiguity to the film (something echoed in Grinter’s ten minute nudism short, also on the Something Weird DVD of Blood Freak, and the less said about this short the better). The movie’s ambivalence is helped by the performance of the two sisters: the good one seems trampy and the slut seems wholesome (and with her penciled eyebrows, perpetually surprised). Additionally, Grinter smokes like the chimney of a paper mill through the anti-drug narration, further diluting an already thin metaphor.

Defining Quote: “But what would the kids look like?” –Ann, trying to get used to the idea of being married to a guy with a turkey head.

Standout Performance: Unfortunately, there is no cast list on the Blood Freak DVD, and the IMDB was no help, so other than Hawkes and Grinter, it’s impossible to know who played who. The best performance in the movie belongs to the lab techs responsible for Herschell’s transformation. Both of them look like sex criminals; Lenny has a beard and thick glasses and looks like he spends his time in rest stops with a briefcase full of horse tranquilizers and industrial lubricants, while Gene has the lacquered hair and piggish gaze of one of the bad guys in Deliverance. They manage to mumble every line, and Gene appears to be trying to stare at his own forehead the whole time.

What’s Wrong: A man. Grows a turkey head. And becomes a vampire.

Flash of Competence: This movie is paced extraordinarily well. Every time you think of bitching, something immediately happens. Granted, it’s something extremely stupid, but it is something. It’s just about eighty minutes and doesn’t feel any longer, which is a pretty darn impressive achievement in the field of bad cinema.

Best Jokes: Mr. E: “Herschell’s had a tough day. He had to drink his weight in Tang.”

Best Scenes: Just after his transformation, Herschell returns to Ann and explains what’s going on via notes. Ann faints a couple times, then tries to get used to the idea before uttering this film’s defining quote. The scene ends with Ann and Herschell getting busy, but thankfully, the lighting is so bad you can’t see anything. Earlier on, Herschell suffers painful withdrawl from pot, but his acting looks like an impression of William Shatner hooked up to a car battery.

Transcendent Moment: I’ve made big deal about the narration, but it’s there that the movie gets propelled into the stratosphere. In the very end, while Grinter is delivering his Ted Koppel-on-Valium summation (periodically glancing down at the paper in front of him), including repeated admonishments to avoid putting chemicals in one’s body, he is, of course, smoking. Then an amazing thing happens. He coughs just a little, but bravely pushes on, finishing the monologue. Then the coughing wins and for a moment, I was terrified that he’d spew a lung all over his desk. The truly wonderful thing is that it doesn’t cut (or, for that matter use another take, although I think a dolphin could count second takes used in the making of this film on its fingers). He’s done with the pertinent part, and yet the camera shows the whole coughing fit, which leaves me to assume he wanted it in there: the ultimate in Grinterian ambiguity.

This is probably my favorite terrible movie, and one I foist upon any connoisseur of trash. It’s so bad it’s not a masochistic ordeal but rather a light comedy that’s totally unaware of how funny it is, much like an old man sleeping peacefully on a lawn chair with one ball hanging out of his bermuda shorts.