LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BLOODSUCKING FREAKS (1976) ****

FORMAT:  4K UHD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

BLOODSUCKING FREAKS  (1976)  ****

Director Joel M. (Night of the Zombies) Reed’s masterpiece is still as jaw dropping now as it was when it was first released.  It features extreme nudity, gore, and healthy doses of S & M, proving once again, that they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.  

The plot has the Great Sardu, (Seamus O’Brien) and his little Latino midget Ralphus (Luis de Jesus) putting on an Off-Broadway torture show.  The first night he crushes a woman’s skull and cuts off another girl’s hand.  Ralphus finishes the act by cutting out her eyeball and eating it.  When a hoity toity theater critic is left unimpressed, Ralphus gets out his blow gun and kidnaps him.  Sardu tries to impress the critic by running 500 volts through a girl’s breasts before putting her to work in the bathroom, (where he says, “Her mouth will make an interesting urinal!”).  When the critic still doesn’t cotton to Sardu’s “art”, he decides to kidnap a world class ballerina and incorporate ballet (!) into the act.  They tie her up and brainwash her by having Ralphus bang cymbals nonstop.  When they give her too much hot cymbal action she passes out and they get a doctor to revive her.  In lieu of a fee, they let him torture one of Sardu’s girls.  He rips out her teeth one by one before performing “elective neurosurgery” on her, in which he drills a hole in her skull and sucks out her brains with a straw!  Pure genius.  Sardu then throws the doctor to his caged crazy women he keeps on hand to sell on the black market, and they promptly rip his heart out and rub it all over themselves.  

Meanwhile, Sardu convinces the ballerina to perform by cutting off her rival’s feet.  In the film’s best scene, he puts a woman in a guillotine and makes her hold the rope connected to the blade in her mouth.  Ralphus whips her until she screams out, letting go of the rope and the blade comes down and decapitates her.  THEN Ralphus gets himself a little head, if you know what I mean.  When the ballerina’s football player boyfriend and a crooked detective comes looking for her, all hell breaks loose.  He tries to rescue his true love, but since she’s effectively brainwashed by Sardu, she brains him with a sledgehammer.  The detective shakes down Sardu for some of his white slavery cash and since he keeps his money in the cage with all his crazed cannibalistic cuties, they kill him and break free, massacring everyone until the last shot of a cannibal chick chomping down on a severed penis hoagie.  

It’s that kind of movie folks.  

So, what did we learn from all of this?  

1.  If your uptight ballerina girlfriend wants to perform in an Off-Broadway torture show, LET HER.  

2.  When putting on an Off-Broadway torture show, you have to throw in some kind of upscale theatrics like ballet because your audience will not respond to sadism alone.  

3.  Brains CAN be sucked out from a straw.  

4.  If you don’t have a dartboard handy, a woman’s ass is an acceptable substitute.  

5.  Most importantly, if you keep a lot of cash on hand from trading women on the white slavery circuit, do NOT stash your cash in a cage full of hungry naked cannibal chicks.  Get a piggy bank instead.  

AKA:  The Incredible Torture Show.  AKA:  The House of the Screaming Virgins.  AKA:  Heritage of Caligula.  AKA:  Sardu, Master of the Screaming Virgins.  AKA:  Sardu.  AKA:  Sardu, Master of the Theatre of the Macabre.  AKA:  Heritage of Caligula:  An Orgy of Sick Minds.

QUICK THOUGHTS:

Bloodsucking Freaks (although the print Vinegar Syndrome used for their restoration retains the original title, Sardu, Master of the Screaming Virgins) has always been one of my favorite sleaze flicks of the ‘70s.  I pretty much said it all in my original review years ago.  This time around I was mostly just enjoying it yet again, as I hadn’t seen it in a while.  Taking in the wealth of T & A, gore, and of course, the wonderful performance by Luis de Jesus as Sardu’s demented eyeball-eating henchman, Ralphus, it’s about as close to Grindhouse Heaven as one can get.  This is one of those movies that start off so great that you think they won’t be able to keep up that kind of breakneck pace throughout the rest of the picture.  Somehow, it keeps all the human dartboards, guillotined head sex, and Kung Fu ballerinas coming at a steady clip.  Oh, and after owning this movie on virtually every home format known to man, I hope that this will be the last time I’ll have to upgrade it for my collection again. 

4K UHD NOTES:

While this may not be the sharpest or most impressive 4K restoration that Vinegar Syndrome has done, it’s still crisp enough to make all the blood and gore pop, not to mention pick up the stray visible boom mike here and there.  Then again, you don’t want a movie like Bloodsucking Freaks to look TOO polished or it would lose some of its scuzzy charm.  Still, it looks pretty good in all its HDR (Head Drilling Repugnance) glory. 

SILENCE OF THE GRAVE (1976) **

I never turn down an opportunity to watch a Jess Franco movie, even if it turns out to be a rather middling one like Silence of the Grave. 

Members of a film crew congregate at the remote island home of a famous actress named Annette (Glenda Allen) and her mentally unstable sister Valerie (Montserrat Prous).  The mood of the party is quickly dampened when Annette’s son is kidnapped.  Eventually, the kidnapper resorts to murdering the guests one by one. 

Silence of the Grave offers a slight variation on the durable Old Dark House/Ten Little Indians scenario.  While it’s certainly watchable, it’s not nearly as tawdry or disgusting as Franco’s best stuff.  In fact, this is one of his tamest efforts, which doesn’t exactly help matters.  Even the murder scenes, when they finally do arrive, are mostly bloodless.  However, it has a sturdy enough set-up and is certainly more competent than dozens of other Franco films.  That’s not to say that a little sleaze or gore here and there couldn’t have livened up the proceedings. 

The biggest issue is that the plot frequently spins its wheels and at times, the pacing has a tendency to drag.  Fortunately for the Franco faithful, there are a few highlights to be had, so it’s not a total loss.  I liked the scene where Valerie sizes up the party guests and through her thoughts/narration, she clues the audience in on how much she hates each one of them.  The performances by Prous playing the cuckoo Valerie and Kali Lansa as the sultry housekeeper Laura are also quite good.  Silence of the Grave also has a lot of the cinematic hallmarks (pointless zooms, lazy camerawork, etc.) you’ve come to expect from Franco, which means die-hard fans of Uncle Jess may be able to find something here to enjoy.  The casual viewer, on the other hand, is undoubtedly sure to meet it with a disinterested shrug. 

AKA:  Slience of the Tomb.

THE 17TH ANNUAL VIDEO VACUUM AWARDS: AND THE NOMINEES ARE…

Okay folks, I know you have all been wondering, “Where the heck are the Video Vacuum Awards this year?”  Well, they took a little longer this year, mostly because I was still catching up on 2023 releases due to the fact that I spent most of that year watching Tubi for my Tubi Continued… column.  The other reason was because I didn’t want to take away from the pageantry of the Oscars and steal all their thunder.  Now that the hubbub around that awards show has died down, let’s start with the nominees…

(NOTE:  Some films that have been nominated have not been officially reviewed on the site yet, but they should appear in the next few days or so.)

Best Picture

Creed III

Godzilla Minus One

M3GAN

Oppenheimer

Poor Things

Worst Picture

Amityville Death Toilet

Bikini Hackers

Cocaine Shark

1962 Halloween Massacre

Savage Vengeance

Best Director

Gerard Johnstone for M3GAN

Michael B. Jordan for Creed III

Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things

Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer

Takashi Yamasaki for Godzilla Minus One

Best Actor

Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Ryunosuke Kamiki in Godzilla Minus One

Jason Momoa in Fast X

Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer

Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things

Best Actress

Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer

Taissa Farmiga in The Nun II

M3GAN in M3GAN

Cailee Spaeny in Priscilla

Emma Stone in Poor Things

Best Action Movie

Creed III

The Equalizer 3

Fast X

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Mission:  Impossible:  Dead Reckoning:  Part One

Best Comic Book Movie

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

The Flash

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

The Marvels

Spider-Man:  Across the Spider-Verse

Best Direct to DVD/Streaming Movie

Albert Brooks:  Defending My Life

Lingerie Fighting Championships 37:  Back to the Mansion

Murderbot

Parasite Lady

Pillow Party Massacre

Worst Direct to DVD/Streaming Movie

Amityville Death Toilet

Bikini Hackers

Cocaine Shark

1962 Halloween Massacre

Savage Vengeance

Best Horror Movie

Godzilla Minus One

M3GAN

The Nun II

Pillow Party Massacre

Thanksgiving

Worst Horror Movie

Amityville Death Toilet

Cocaine Cougar

Cocaine Shark

1962 Halloween Massacre

Savage Vengeance

Best Horror Sequel

Axegrinder 666

The Exorcist:  Believer

Godzilla Minus One

The Nun II

Pet Sematary:  Bloodlines

Worst Horror Sequel

Camp Blood 666 Part 2:  Exorcism of the Clown

CarousH3LL

Doll Killer 3:  Audra’s Revenge

Evil Dead Rise

Subspecies 5:  Bloodrise

Best Sci-Fi Movie

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

The Marvels

Murderbot

Poor Things

Shin Ultraman

Best Sequel/Prequel

Creed III

The Equalizer 3

Godzilla Minus One

Lingerie Fighting Championships 37:  Back to the Mansion

Mission:  Impossible:  Dead Reckoning:  Part One

Worst Sequel

Amor Emanuelle

Evil Dead Rise

Camp Blood 666 Part 2:  Exorcism of the Clown

Doll Killer 3:  Audra’s Revenge

Subspecies 5:  Bloodrise

CHILDREN OF THE CORN (2023) *

Nearly two decades after helming Ultraviolet, Hollywood has finally let Kurt Wimmer out of Director Jail for this eleventh (and second reboot) Children of the Corn flick.  (Or… twelve of you count the short film, Disciple of the Crow.)  Now that I’ve seen it, I have to wonder how long Hollywood will put him away for this time. 

Well. the GMOs were SUPPOSED to make the corn grow in a small Nebraska town.  However, the crops started dying and now the adults have no choice but to bulldoze it all down.  This pisses off the kids in town because as we all know… children LOVE corn.  They soon turn evil and get revenge on those pesky adults.

I guess the commentary here is that the kids are trying to save their town (planet) by offing the adults who have screwed up the place for the next generation.  I mean, why else would you make the main Corn Kid look like Greta Thunberg?  However, it’s handled so lazily and clumsily that I had to wonder if I was reading into something that wasn’t even intended to be there in the first place. 

Watching this, you would never know it was from the guy who made the classic Equilibrium.  From the looks of things, any old DTV hack could’ve cobbled this together.  The gore is shitty too (the eyeball scene is fucking terrible) and the new He Who Walks (nee Behind the Rows) looks like a shitty CGI corn husk version of Groot.  The only good bit is a brief clip from the “It’s a Good Life” episode of The Twilight Zone playing on TV. 

How they got eleven movies out of an eleven-page story, I’ll never know.  There are so many unfilmed stories in Stephen King’s bibliography, and yet they keep cranking Corny Kid movies out.  Then again, whenever they make a new one, I watch them.  So, maybe I’m part of the problem.

I’d love to say that after eleven times, they finally got it right, but… Aw, shucks.  Is this ever bad.  It’s not even good in a corny way.  I mean there was a kernel of a good idea here, but it never popped.  In fact, I… (It was at this point in the review the Children of the Corn stealthily grabbed their farm implements, carefully snuck behind your faithful movie reviewer and murdered him for making too many bad corn puns.)

AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM (2023) ***

Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) finds the “Black Trident” that possesses him with an ancient evil and gives him enhanced powers.  He then goes around stealing precious resources from the sea that help him build an army.  Consequently, his actions cause global warming to rapidly accelerate, and it’s up to Aquaman (Jason Momoa) to stop him.  Of course, he’s gonna need all the help he can get, so he breaks his warlord brother Ocean Master (Patrick Wilson) out of prison to lend him a hand. 

The opening scene of Aquaman trying to balance fatherhood and being King of Atlantis is fun.  Think Mr. Mom for the superhero era.  There are other amusing bits along the way.  There’s a nifty desert prison breakout scene and a silly encounter with a Jabba the Hutt-inspired gangster fish (who was apparently played by Martin Short?!?) in an underwater pirates’ den.  The most effective stretch is when it turns into a buddy movie as Momoa and Wilson outrun giant insects on a jungle island. 

Director James (Saw) Wan isn’t afraid to let his horror roots show.  There’s a tentacle attack reminiscent of Deep Rising, sound effects stolen from Jaws and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and costumes straight out of Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires.  Like most of these things, it’s a little derivative (it uses the same plot as X-Men 2 where the hero is forced to make an alliance with the villain of the first movie), runs on too long, and doesn’t know when to throw in the towel.  That said, it’s hard to dislike any superhero flick where Nicole Kidman rides a robot shark or Dolph Lundgren argues with a crab man.  With this being the last film of the “DC Extended Universe” and Warner Brothers completely rebooting its big-screen comic book franchises, it’s almost a given we won’t see shit like this in the new DC Era.  And frankly, that kind of makes me a little sad. 

DC EXTENDED UNIVERSE RANKING:  

Batman v Superman:  Dawn of Justice: ****

Man of Steel:  ****

The Flash: *** ½ 

Aquaman:  *** ½

Wonder Woman:  *** ½

Justice League:  *** ½

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom:  ***

Shazam!:  ***

Suicide Squad:  ***

The Suicide Squad:  ** ½ 

Blue Beetle: ** ½ 

Black Adam:  **

Shazam!  Fury of the Gods:  **

WW84:  * ½ 

Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn):  * ½ 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DANGEROUS OBSESSION (1986) ***

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OPPENHEIMER (2023) ****

I know a lot of you have been wondering, “Where are the nominations for the 17th Annual Video Vacuum Awards?”  Well, I have been slacking, yes that’s true, but I also wanted to squeeze in a few more new-to-me 2023 films before I lock in the nominations.  Trust me, I should have the nominations out before that OTHER awards show hits airwaves.

One of the films I wanted to catch up with was Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s tale of the modern-day Prometheus, Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), who along with the brightest minds in the scientific community built the first A-Bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  Later, the government used his political leanings and left-wing associations against him during the war on Communism to drag his name through the mud.  And he kind of let them, mostly as a way of making up for his part in creating the bomb. 

Nolan’s film is a masterclass in efficiency.  Even though it’s three hours long, it feels much shorter (how many times do you hear me say THAT?) as it barrels along at a breakneck pace.  Which is fitting, as America is in a race to make the bomb before Germany.  It’s stunning how Nolan condenses and compresses each scene to only the most vital information to get you to the next sequence.  Even though much of the dialogue is dense and is full of quantum physics jargon, the performers all convey it all to the audience in a manner that gets the point across, even if you flunked physics in high school. 

Nolan goes back and forth between time periods from the creation of the bomb to its aftermath to the interrogation of Oppenheimer.  Like a good novel, it’s totally immersive and absorbing.  If it was told in a linear fashion, it wouldn’t have hit as hard. 

The performances from the all-star cast are uniformly great from top to bottom.  Murphy is particularly captivating as the dogged Oppenheimer, who rushed against time to make the bomb, and then is crushed when he sees what he’s created.  Florence Pugh has a small but memorable turn as his mistress, Emily Blunt is excellent as his long-suffering wife, and even the usually bland Josh Hartnett is quite good as Oppenheimer’s colleague.  Robert Downey, Jr. is terrific as Oppenheimer’s superior, who is so wounded by not being his intellectual equal that he sets out to take him down a peg.  Matt Damon is equally fine too as the general sent to wrangle Oppenheimer. 

What more can I say?  This movie is the bomb, yo.