Bloodlust (1961)

NOVEMBER 29, 2007

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

Bland Guy: “Theres no ammo!”
Other Bland Guy: ”There’s gotta be, THESE guns are useless without it!”

Ah, Bloodlust; a film that apparently takes place in a world where certain guns don’t require ammo. I should note, for no reason other than the fact that whenever I review a movie without mentioning a particular actor someone gets on my ass about it, that Bland Guy #1 is Robert Reed, aka Mike Brady. That’s all I have to say on the matter.

Mill Creek bills this as an early example of a “Teen Scream” movie, but none of the teens die, so I can’t quite say it counts. The only corpses are that of older folks and bad guys (also older folks). But it’s kind of fun, in that “Oh man, can you imagine back when this was considered top notch entertainment” type of way. It’s just the umpteenth ripoff of "Most Dangerous Game", with a Powers Boothe-y guy stalking humans on his island, which Reed and his pals come across while sailing with a drunk. There’s a fairly decent use of foreshadow (they are skeet shooting off the boat in the first scene) and even some gore.

Plus this guy looks like Julian Riching’s character from Wrong Turn.

On the other hand, the acting is uniformly terrible, and the aforementioned ripping off of the Connell story leaves little excitement to the proceedings. There’s also a strange sequence where we watch the bad guy looking around the jungle for the heroes, and then they pan up to a tree showing the heroes watching him, accompanied by “Dun dun DUNNNNN” music. Are we supposed to fear for the bad guy here?

And what the hell is the meaning of this???

This makes me think that in every other movie ever, when they say THE END, they mean for EVERYTHING, but the Bloodlust filmmakers would like to assure you that, while their film has concluded, everything else, including other films, continue to exist.

This one was watched on MST3k, and I’m sure the episode is a hoot. The whole thing’s on Youtube, maybe I’ll check it out in a bit. I’d like to hear Servo let out a few trademark “hmm?”s during certain scenes. Still, as "MDG" ripoffs starring future TV icons go, it’s one of the top 10 or so.

What say you?