11/21/06: Blood Freak (1972)We don’t like Thanksgiving, but we always enjoy recommending
Blood Freak as the alternative to watching football. This oddity barely made it out of Florida as the most moralistic horror movie ever made about a giant killer turkey. Steve Hawkes stars as nice-guy drifter Herschell, who stops to help out a woman with car trouble. This lands him at a drug-infested party being thrown by her sister. (The nice girl is Angel; the bad girl is Ann.) Angel tends to drone on about the Bible, but Herschell still prefers her to Ann. He also rebuffs a slut who’s in an open relationship with a creepy boyfriend.
There’s plenty to goof on with
Blood Freak, but this opening party scene truly sums up the banality of decadence. Things get less banal, however, as the scheming Ann lures Herschell into marijuana addiction. His new job at a turkey farm also goes awry when he’s fed a gobbler that’s been dosed with an experimental drug. Herschell is soon a giant walking turkey (or, more accurately, a guy with a big turkey head) who can only be saved by the power of prayer. Until then, we get to enjoy the sight of a homicidal giant turkey going after drug dealers. We’re all winners in that kind of confrontation -- unless you’re an actual turkey. Then you get your head cut off in the name of art.
Actually, it was more fun writing about
Blood Freak back when we used the film as a Thanksgiving gag in the ’90s—and, um, the ’80s. By the, ahem, second time, we were telling readers that they’d have to dig through the more musty video stores in their neighborhood. That’s how we discovered the film on VHS. We didn’t know what the box copy meant when it described the main monster as a “capon of doom.” We looked up “capon” when we got home, and rushed back to the video store to rent the movie.
Today, though, you can easily find enthused write-ups of
Blood Freak. You can probably go to the mall and find the movie on DVD. The overachievers at
Something Weird have put out an impressive digitally remastered edition. (The film still looks and sounds like crap, but that’s an important part of the experience.)
The DVD is also loaded with turkey-themed extras, including the 1951 short
A Day Of Thanksgiving. This likable all-American propaganda features the Johnson family facing a holiday without turkey. The kids do a fine job of learning to appreciate the true meaning of Thanksgiving. This includes little Dick Johnson mulling over the greatest truth of all: “I’m glad it’s fun growing up in America.” That’s no joke. We get to discover things like
Blood Freak.
Make it your own: So we’re recommending
the turkey-themed DVD even more than the actual movie. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe you can even rent it at your local big video chain before Thursday.
And here’s an additional thought about
Blood Freak’s narrator, who’s played by the film’s co-director. You’ll find a lot of hipsters goofing on how the guy has a coughing fit while puffing on a cigarette and lecturing us about how our body is a temple. That’s pretty funny, but not as funny as this MTV special we once saw about AIDS. The guy from Smashing Pumpkins was extolling the virtues of condoms, since people naturally take measures to safeguard their health. Then the camera cut to a guy from Soul Asylum taking a drag on a cigarette.
