Movie Details
| Title: | Blood Freak | |
| Director: | Steve Hawkes, Brad F. Frinter | |
| Year: | 1972 | |
| Genre: | Horror | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.22.07 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.22.07 | Terror Thursday | gobble gobble gobble.... gobble gobble gobble AHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! ... AHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! ... AHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! ... AHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! Don't do drugs, kids. So I had a pretty good time with this movie tonight. Lots of laughs at how bad the movie is. The scientists are both great but I think I like the non-bearded one more. It makes complete sense now why I had no clue what Micah was talking about when he mentioned the guy telling not to do drugs then coughing really bad (it's not in this print) and god DAMN does that mask not look anything like a turkey. fun times. |
| 11.26.05 | Alamo Downtown | This Screening is part of event: Turkeython 2005 Anyone that's been to an all-night movie marathon will surely agree that it's a very unique experience. Throughout the night, several things happen. The sheltering womb-like atmosphere of the darkened theater takes on greater significance, stretching the midnight hours into a timeless span where the outside world ceases to exist. The movies themselves compress and expand like living breathing things controlled by their quality and pacing. A really great film flies by in seemingly less than 40 minutes but a terrible film will blunder and wheeze for hours upon hours, letting your mind wander to thoughts of your comfortable bed at home, that glorious feeling of closing your eyes and falling into deep sleep, and all of those people in their own beds right now that were sane enough to stay away from this torturous experience. You might think that watching six films back to back would really test your endurance, but think back to this in the midst of that fourth film and it's really not. When it's programmed right, the films fall like dominos and you step out into the fresh silent air of a new morning on a bit of a high, ready for some breakfast and then some sleep. There's also a sense of camaraderie between those most hardcore of audience members who stick it out in the cold dark hours while those around us stop nodding off long enough to leave in a state of delirium. I may not know your name, dude two rows behind me with the shirt that says "mono," but we are still brothers. Anyone that's been to an all-night movie marathon knows about that which I write. It's a real experience that helps some movies and hurts others. A good example would be the infamous screening of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet parts 1-4 as a precursor to the final film in Quentin Tarantino's all-night '80s horror movie marathon as part of QT6 (full coverage here). It must sound like such a non-event to those that weren't there but for those that were... we know, man. We know. And so this particular addiction to which I was first exposed back in July and got hooked on at QT6 now drew me to Tim League's latest answer to the Alamo Drafthouse's Thanksgiving Weekend blues: The first annual Turkeython. Turkeython '05 consisted of four gems of cinema plucked for their unfortunate "turkey" status. While it may have been billed as bad movies all night, Alamo regulars know better than to think that these films were actually looked down upon. Sure enough, one of the first things that Tim mentioned in his introduction was that, although these movies aren't winning awards or anything, they are certainly beloved here at the Drafthouse and he would defend the honor of any one of these so, for the sake of all that is holy, don't talk at the screen! They then proceeded to show their latest "don't talk or we'll take your a$$ out" spot, this time taken from Gremlins where a bunch of loud annoying little green late-night snackers get blown up en masse. Point taken. Trailers: -Theater of Blood ("They died spectacularly...grotesquely...horribly") -The Town That Dreaded Sundown (Ben Johnson vs. the Phantom Killer) -Carnival of Blood ("Begins where Hitchcock stopped!") -Curse of the Headless Horseman ("Rated PG" narrated over a shot of a decapitated head) The first film of the night might also be the most fitting. It seems to take the whole turkey thing to extremes. It's a story about a muscle-bound do-gooder who gets hooked on the pot and then, after eating scientifically-tampered turkey, wakes up with the head of a giant bird, proceeding to go completely homicidally insane... but not before having his way with several women turkey-style. The movie, of course is Blood Freak Aside from being a morality tale about the dangers of drug abuse and scientific turkey tampering, Blood Freak is also a study in how all actors are not created equal. They sure do make em special down there in rural Florida, as Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida attests, and Blood Freak proves a solid example of how Georgia and Tennessee don't hold a candle to the massive backwoods lawn art trailer trash that Florida spawns in its sticky humid swamps and lowlands. This is a phenomenally sweaty movie, filled with hot girls who can't act, old codger farmers who can't act, and good ol' boy hippies who... can't really act. My overriding thought as I watched star/producer/co-writer/director Steve Hawkes stumble around blindly in his giant turkey-head appliance was that it must be sweltering in there. The guy deserves some sort of credit just for baking his brains in a giant artificial turkey, even if his muscle-bound arm is weird and scabby. At least I think it was a turkey. It really didn't look like one, but three distinct gobble sounds repeated on the sound track over and over whenever he was on screen so I assume it was. The esteemed filmmakers also only had one or two different screams recorded, repeating each at least eight times one after the other whenever someone was supposed to die by turkey-headed mayhem. Frenzied laughter caught hold in the theater when this economic "technique" became painfully evident. I think it peaked around x5 or x6 but by x9 it was pretty over. Since this was a holiday event, there should really be some learning involved. Things I learned from Blood Freak -even low-budget exploitation films from the '70s have lame "it was all a dream" resolutions. -If a scientist pays you to eat something, don't do it. -if you wake up on a table saw with your leg being cut off, try to scream the exact same way each time. It's better that way. |
