I Drink Your Blood

‘I Drink Your Blood’ is an early exploitation film that was released to be paired with ‘I Eat Your Skin’ for drive ins in 1970. This is the tale of traveling satanic hippies that come across the ghost town of Valley Hill. After gang raping a town girl, they squat in an abandon house and ensue in their satanic rituals. Angrily, the grandfather of the girl finds out, stands up to the hippies, but is overcome, beaten, then fed LSD to. After their fun, the hippies send off the acid educed gramps with his wary grandson. As the grandson is explained to what ’that crazy L stuff’ does by his sister, he decides to take action against the truculent hippies for dosing his grandfather. How does a young kid get back at a group of satanic hippies you may ask? Easy, you just dose their meat pies with blood from a rabid dog you shot.

'Let it be known, sons and daughters, that Satan was an acid head.'

‘I Drink Your Blood’ turns from a sleazy satanic exploitation flick to a survival zombie film with rabid, foaming at the mouth hippies, wielding axes and causing mayhem. The violence is brutal but the gore effects are pretty poor and the acting is abysmal such as many films of this nature. The plot itself though seems to keep you interested enough, and it is fairly paced. At times the obnoxious synth soundtrack can be overbearing, but what can be expected from such a low budget, seemingly on the fly project. The real beef I have with this film is the use of animal cruelty. Many grind house and exploitation films were made to shock or give audiences something they couldn’t see anywhere else, and animal cruelty was used through many films. Luckily it isn’t as in your face as some of the Italian cannibal flicks of the 80‘s, they kill a chicken, some rats, and a dead goat at the end is shown, just be forewarned. I’ll never understand why filmmakers felt compelled to film such atrocities, but I tend to cringe and fast forward through them. If you haven’t gotten into grind house or exploitation films before, and are interested, this seems to be a staple, and isn’t a bad place to start. So remember, if you don’t want to end up like these guys, don’t drop acid and pray to Satan, and don’t feed anyone meat pies filled with rabid blood.