Film starts right off with a nude (male and female) devil worshiping sequence and rapidly gets worse (or better depending on your view). A bunch of devil-worshiping hippies (with a leader named Horace!) come into a small town. They beat up a local girl and her grandfather and give granddad a dose of LSD. Pete decides to avenge his sister and grandfather by infecting rabies into a bunch of meat pies and then giving them to the hippies to eat (!!!!). The hippies do, get rabies and one hippie woman sleeps with a bunch of construction workers and infects THEM! Soon a small bunch of uninfected people are fighting for their lives.
Historically this IS an important film--it was the first film to get an X rating for violence alone (there is nudity but it's within an R rating). It was cut to ribbons to get an R. Now we have the uncut version available. At best it's a mixed blessing.
For starters the acting is terrible across the board--the hippies especially act like a bunch of retarded school children. And the script has some lines that had me gaping in disbelief. Here are a few examples--After giving her boyfriend a big kiss a woman says, "Roger I'm very upset"; "There's no one in the town because of the damn dam!"; "Rape is a little out of an engineers domain"; a man is shot down and someone says, "I have to call the Red Cross--we're in a state of emergency". Then there's the gore effects which are, to be nice, primitive. There is a LOT of blood and violence here but it's all so obviously fake it's hard to take seriously.
Still I was never bored and I was constantly amused by the acting, script and pretty poor production values. Also you do have to give credit to these people--they had no budget and were just out to make a gory horror film. They DID succeed. Also the cast (male and female) are very attractive physically. So--not a forgotten horror classic but I'm glad it's available in it's uncut form. Worth seeing for horror fans.
By the way--there's no drinking of blood.
Historically this IS an important film--it was the first film to get an X rating for violence alone (there is nudity but it's within an R rating). It was cut to ribbons to get an R. Now we have the uncut version available. At best it's a mixed blessing.
For starters the acting is terrible across the board--the hippies especially act like a bunch of retarded school children. And the script has some lines that had me gaping in disbelief. Here are a few examples--After giving her boyfriend a big kiss a woman says, "Roger I'm very upset"; "There's no one in the town because of the damn dam!"; "Rape is a little out of an engineers domain"; a man is shot down and someone says, "I have to call the Red Cross--we're in a state of emergency". Then there's the gore effects which are, to be nice, primitive. There is a LOT of blood and violence here but it's all so obviously fake it's hard to take seriously.
Still I was never bored and I was constantly amused by the acting, script and pretty poor production values. Also you do have to give credit to these people--they had no budget and were just out to make a gory horror film. They DID succeed. Also the cast (male and female) are very attractive physically. So--not a forgotten horror classic but I'm glad it's available in it's uncut form. Worth seeing for horror fans.
By the way--there's no drinking of blood.