Classic Horrors Club

David E. Durston wrote and directed episodes of Playhouse 90 in the mid-1950s through 1960, before branching into movies. After four films, though, he shifted to hardcore gay pornography with movies like Boy ‘Napped (1971) and Manhole (1978.) He died in 2010 of complications from pneumonia.

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With as lurid a title as I Drink Your Blood (1971), I’d put off watching it for about as long as I could. Of course, over 50 years later, it’s not as shocking as it sounds. In fact, no one in the film even drinks blood, but its original title, Phobia, didn’t quite fit as nicely with the other feature with which an ad executive proposed pairing it, I Eat Your Skin, so the title was changed.

Then, when the MPAA gave it an X-rating and theaters were likely to pull it from their schedules, the distributor, Cinemation Industries, gave them permission to edit it any way they pleased as long as they showed it. Director David E. Durston later claimed this resulted in hundred of different versions of the film depending where you saw it.

These days you can stream I Drink Your Blood on a mainstream channel like Peacock in what I assume is its original, unedited version. Carrying a severed head or removing a hand with an electric knife are charming and innocent in 2024. They are also the least effective scenes in a film that’s surprisingly full of others that are more effective. It’s not a bad movie at all.

It opens with a good old-fashioned satanic ceremony like those so popular in the 1970s. This hippie cult’s members are nude, of course, and chase a local girl who watches them through the trees. Although they cut off a chicken’s head (the hardest part of the film to watch), it could be argued that these trouble-makers aren’t the ones who perform the most vile act in the story.

Sure, they wreak havoc and terrorize the few villagers of Valley Hills that remain while construction is being completed on a nearby dam. I’m not condoning their actions. However, young Pete Banner (Riley Mills) may be as demented as them when he injects their meat pies with the blood of a rabid dog. After dinner, the cult members become zombies foaming at the mouth…

…and I Drink Your Blood becomes a straightforward take on Night of the Living Dead (1968.) It’s edited with short scenes that switch back and forth between the action, giving the illusion that the movie is moving faster than it really is. However, at 83 minutes, it never seems slow anyway. I settled into the time and place and remained undistracted throughout.

Much of the dialogue is an odd mix of funny-strange and funny-ha-ha. For example, the often shirtless cult leader, Horace Bones (Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury), tells one of his male followers, “You’re beautiful, but if you’re not careful, I’m going to skin your ass alive.” Later, cult member Sylvia licks the captured grandfather, Doc Banner (Richard Bowler) and says, “You’re pretty yummy for a dirty old man!”

Sylvia then drops a pill into his mouth and says, “Have a breath freshener, handsome!” That’s the other piece that’s important to the story: drug use. The cult members pop pills left and right. Sylvia tells Pete when he asks what the L-word (LSD) does to you, “Boy, you really don’t know anything. Well, it makes a person crazy.”

So, yes, the drugs can cause “complications” for humans with rabies, like the devil taking over the body causing a craving for raw flesh. Nevertheless, it’s not so bad that the monsters can’t be destroyed by simple gunfire with the calvary arrives. “Well, what can you say? At least they’ve been put out of their misery because death by agoraphobia is misery.”