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Sound’s like a vampire film doesn’t it. Go on admit it, you thought, like I did that this was going to be about vampires. But no, there’s not one pointy toothed pale skinned bloodsucker in the entire picture. There is however a satanic cult on wheels, a deserted town with a handful of yokels (so I suppose that the town can’t accurately be described as deserted) a bunch of randy workmen at the local dam building site and, just for good measure, a rabid dog. I’m sure you can see that this combination can lead to nothing short of greatness. Well, sorry to disappoint but, it didn’t quite climb to the dizzying heights of cinematic excellence. I think that it would be fairer to say it sat down, looked up at the foothills and decided that it was just too much effort. But enough of the rather dodgy analogies, lets get on with the review...
The film is about a wandering band of 8 or so Satanists, that happen upon a small deserted town (see above) and decide to move in. The few locals that are left are initially a little wary of the visitors but as the big neon “Don’t let us in we’re Satanists” sign was obviously on the blink, they let them stay at the local abandoned (and rat infested) hotel. Before they reached the town however, the band of wanderers had decided to have a little ceremony involving knives and chickens and were seen by one of the girls that lived in the town they were about to invade. They saw her, caught and attacked her but she got away to tell the tale. As you can probably guess the townsfolk find out what happened and things start to get a bit sticky. Actually ‘foamy’ would be a better word, but I’ll explain that in a little while.
Kids in films. Don’t you just hate them. They always manage to save the day. They just happen to know how to shut down the computer that is running amok as they had just studied that UNIX system in school. Or they are gymnasts and have learnt the move that can either get you a 7.5 at the annual interschool competition or knock a dinosaur out of the way. You get the picture. If I had my way I would make sure that the annoying little brats would get dismembered slowly, or sliced into tiny pieces or accidentally swallow a litre of Nitro-glycerine (thinking it was a lemonade) just as they were about to play on a trampoline. At least that’s what I’d usually think. Because in this film I think that the kid is the star. In my humble reviewers opinion the younger brother of the girl that is attacked at the beginning, is a genius. A legend. I doff my cap to him. Let me explain my sudden u-turn in thinking: The lad is somewhat peeved that his sister (and granddad) have been attacked so in order to exact his revenge he borrows his grandfathers double barrelled shotgun (I think this lad is about 12 so I’m not sure he has a licence) and goes off to find that rabid dog that lives in the woods that I mentioned at the beginning. And this is where his brilliance shined though. After shooting the dog he takes a syringe of the now deceased canines blood and takes it home with him. Now he’s not, as you may think adding this to a collection of animal blood in his fridge, nor is he trying to replace a long lost pet. The scheming little bugger had a far more nefarious plan for it.
The Satanist, like most people, need to eat. To this end they would go to the local shop and buy the home made produce. However, one morning the child star of the film was serving, and being ever so helpful sold them a dozen pies at a knock down price. What they didn’t know (here it comes…) is that little Einstein had injected the pies with the blood from the dead rabid dog. Genius. And so the film starts in earnest. The pies get eaten by all but one of the cult and one by one they start getting sicker and sicker. Then the foaming, moaning and insanity starts. This, I think is where the title of the film comes from as the infected all seem to crave blood. As you can imagine this film turns into your pretty run of the mill zombie film (although they aren’t actually zombies). People get stabbed, legs get lopped off, pitchforks are used in ways that I’m sure they weren’t designed for and there’s a lot of shooting. I remember mentioning the randy Damn workers further up the review, and these guys come into their own after one of the female pie eaters goes to the damn for a bit of how’s-your-father and manages to infect just about everyone (she must have been busy). So you can imagine that it’s not long before the town is infested with madmen running around looking as though they’ve been far too enthusiastic with the old toothbrush. But I can’t say much more about the film as nothing truly memorable, after the dog bit, happens (apart from a fun scene involving what looks like a small kidney being squeezed out of a mans stomach). The film just uses the tried and tested ‘good guys (plus the one bad guy turned good guy who didn’t eat the pie) must survive against massive odds’ recipe as many others have done before and since, and it doesn’t do it very well. I think that I can sum this film up in one word: Boring. Nothing happens. A bit of death, a few chases, some more death and then a lot of death. But that’s it. No twists or turns, not a lot of intentional humour and very little story. I really wanted to like this film but the effects were that poor that I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing. I’m not saying that I think every gun in every film fires real bullets, or that the actors really loose pints of blood, but I like enough realism in an effect to make me grimace and think ‘That looked like it hurt’. I didn’t need to hide behind my pillow once.
I was really disappointed with the conclusion of the film too. It seemed, like this review, to come to an abrupt end. I was left feeling that the story needed closure or at least more explanation. However, after watching the extras on the DVD I saw the deleted ending that I think would have finished the film in a far better way as it explained the result of something that happened in the final scenes of the film but that is completely ignored.
The extras on this MTI Home Video release are great. If you are a fan of this film or the director then you will not be disappointed with the recently filmed interviews with the director and some of the cast. There is also an easter-egg of sorts that isn’t overly well hidden but is not at first obvious. I commend this DVD for the inclusion of the interviews, deleted and extra scenes, and all the other presents that it has to offer as it makes the whole package that much better. Well done DVD people.
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