Psychotronic Movie of the Week: I Drink Your Blood (1970)

"Let it be known sons and daughters, that Satan was an acid head. Drink from his cup. pledge yourselves, and together we'll all freak out."

One of the most infamous psychotronic films of all time, I Drink Your Blood is one of those rare gems that just delivers and delivers and delivers, from the very first frame right up until the very last. There's just so much going on in this Satanic cult, post-Manson hippie gore exploitation movie that it would take an essay to fill you in on everything which awaits you. But I'm posting this for those who haven't seen it yet, I don't want to ruin one moment of it, so I'll resist the temptation to list all of the inanity that's packed into these 83 batshit crazy minutes. 

There's really nothing else quite like it. It was released by Jerry Gross' Cinemation Industries and paired up with I Eat Your Skin, an obscure 1964 voodoo zombie film, for the double feature circuit. The result was an ad campaign for the ages. 

There are some stellar performances here, most notably from Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, who plays Horace Bones, the leader of the cult, Jadin Wong as Sue-Lin, and George Patterson as Rollo. Lynn Lowry (The Crazies, Shivers, Score) says nothing but looks beautiful throughout in her film debut. It's really well made, written and directed by David Dunston, who had a brief and otherwise nondescript career in the movies, but what he gave us here is something very special, one of a handful of the greatest psychotronic/grindhouse/drive-in movies of all-time. 

A definitive special edition DVD of I Drink Your Blood was issued by Grindhouse Releasing in the early 2000s which is now out of print, grab it if you can. Until then, dig this DVD rip which is currently residing on YouTube. 

 

Psychotronic Movie of the Week: Skidoo (1968)

A preview of our coming attraction,...

1968 - Paramount Pictures - D: Otto Preminger S: Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Alexandra Hay, Groucho Marx, Frankie Avalon, Fred Clark, Michael Constantine, Frank Gorshin, John Phillip Law, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Caesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Arnold Stang, Slim Pickens, Richard Kiel, Harry Nilsson. 

Now here's something completely different. And by different, I mean different compared to,... well, just about anything I've ever seen. Long left stashed in the Paramount vaults and only wondered about by those who missed it in its initial run, this is Otto Preminger's misguided attempt at one of those "generation gap" films that were becoming more and more prevalent around 1968.  The plot is comedic mash-up of hippiesploitation and a gangster movie. Jackie Gleason is a retired mobster living a legit life with his wife (Carol Channing) and their hippie daughter. One day, a mob boss (named "God" and played by Groucho Marx!) sends a couple of guys over to pull Jackie out of retirement for one last hit on a snitch (played by Mickey Rooney). Resistant at first, he eventually relents and gets put in the same prison as Mickey so he can do the hit. But before that can happen, someone slips "the Great One" some LSD, Gleason trips balls, and his whole worldview is blown away. In a sense, it almost becomes a PRO-drug movie if you can believe it! While he's in the slammer, his house becomes a playground for his daughter's hippie friends, and eventually Carol Channing, dressed in full pirate regalia leads the kids in a siege of God's boat. Oh, and did I mention there's musical numbers? Or that it was endorsed by Timothy Leary? Yeah, this is one strange piece of celluloid - worth watching for its jaw-dropping absurdity, the parade of famous Hollywood actors who somehow signed on for this, and its time-capsule quality, but mostly because the scene where Jackie Gleason trips in his prison cell is positively epic. 

And now, our feature presentation!

I Can't Tell The Boys From The Girls (MP3)

The generation gap was a truly colossal chasm in 1969, as evidenced by this snippet of a Dear Abby column, which is guaranteed authentic!

Lester Flatt  -  I Can't Tell The Boys From The Girls

Where Life's Such A Groove You Blow Your Mind In the Morning...

In 1969, Hugh Hefner called upon the Sir Douglas Quintet to play live on his Playboy After Dark show, so Doug and the guys showed up and delivered this electrifying performance of Mendocino, providing some pretty solid evidence that Doug was the greatest hippie ever.  Admittedly, the competition may not have been all that stiff, but the clip really is a great deal of fun to watch.

Wino Hippie Free To Lead Demonstration (Atlanta)

Is this the finest paragraph ever concocted by the Associated Press or what?
"An estimated 600 hippies and winos were expected to march. That is, if enough hippies are awake by 9a.m. when the march is planned, and if too many winos aren't still in jail."

Associated Press, Rome (Georgia) News-Tribune, Oct. 1970. Go here to see some vintage photos of the Atlanta park where the hippies and winos were planning their protest.