Leave it to the Catholic Church to produce something as terrible as Blood Freak, a ludicrous anti-marijuana horror film from Florida with no scares and limitless hilarity. The Church’s limited financial backing finances porno director Brad Grinter’s atrocious production, which meshes religious propaganda with bizarre asides from Grinter himself. This ragged middle-aged alcoholic sits before chintzy wood paneling, wearing a hideous purple velour robe, always smoking a cigarette while he delivers these insane speeches about “catalysts” and other chemicals, reading off a script in his lap. Our writer/co-director, ladies and gentlemen.

Steve Hawkes, credited as co-director, also portrays a pompadoured biker and Elvis lookalike named Hershell, who must choose between a deeply religious, wholesome lady or her lascivious, pot-addicted sister. Will this innocent yet clueless biker succumb to temptation from this raven-haired temptress and her Band-Aid tin full of tightly rolled joints? Of course he will, but not after listening to several minutes’ worth of Bible verse, delivered to an unresponsive audience during the most boring party scene ever filmed. Strangely enough, it’s through the foxy religious gal that Hersh gets his job at the poultry farm. Temptation lurks under lab coats and Coke bottle glasses, too; a pair of rogue biologists coerce our biker protagonist (now a hopeless Weed addict) into ingesting genetically altered baked turkey. Hersh’s hesitant at first, until they throw in some of their skank to sweeten the deal. Now thoroughly baked, he consumes the mutant turkey with a side of taters and gravy. All’s well until a Grand Mal seizure sends Hershell pitching onto lawn, twitching like an eel.

Without Grinter’s awkward asides jammed into the most random places, Blood Freak would be barely watchable until our stoner protagonist turns into a homicidal Were-Turkey. Then it’s nonstop laughs, ever mounting, compensating well for the nonexistent tension. There’s something unexplainably unnerving about cheap, sleazy productions like these, filmed on horrible stock with barely adequate lighting and a production crew that CLEARLY doesn’t give a crap about delivering a quality product. Also, the subliminal initial reveals of the turkey monster are kind of freaky. Once you see the monster clearly (a paper-mache turkey head on a man’s body, wearing jeans and a T-shirt) his presence inspires nothing but uncontrollable laughter. Then he begins his lethargic and tension-free rampage, wherein he ties young women upside-down, slits their throats and proceeds to drink from the bright red fountains. After a point, a stalwart young man ends up cornering the Were-Turkey in a wood shop, but ends up being throttled and mechanically dismembered for his troubles. One sound effect is used for every pained scream, by the way, in a gruesome scene that goes on, and on, and on, for a Tarkovskian length.

As Grinter, interjecting after the hero quickly overcomes his bloodlust through Jesus, starts coughing up a lung while lecturing about the evils of chemicals and drug use, one begins to suspect that the joke’s on us. How could anyone accept that ruined take? Was the budget so low that Grinter and crew could afford  just one roll of film for the nonsensical “narration”? Whatever the case, this is a gloriously bad film, bordering on sheer manic poetry.

Tags: Andrei Tarkovsky, Blood Freak, Brad Grinter, Catholic Propaganda, Steve Hawkes

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