I DRINK YOUR BLOOD (1970)

This is one hell of a movie. The wacky as all get out story is about eight Satan-loving hippies who wander into a small town (more like a few houses and a store) and start raising Hell. After they brutalize a young woman and drug an old man, the old's man's grandson gets revenge by killing a rabid dog, putting the dog's rabies infected blood into some meat pies and the selling them to the hippies. Later that night, the hippies start foaming at the mouth and go completely batshit crazy. At first they start attacking each other, but then their violence spreads and some miners get infected and go on a rampage attacking everything.

For being 50+ years old, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD has more blood and violence than I expected (it was one of the first movies to get an "X" rating based on violence), but while it might have shocked audiences back in 1970 it's so low-budget and the special effects are so amateurish that it's impossible to take it seriously nowadays. That doesn't mean it's not an entertaining film, because it definitely is. As far as trash cinema goes this movie is a classic. The pace is very quick and I liked how it never dwelled on one theme for too long: at first there's the hippie Satan cult, then the revenge thing going on and then the revenge for the failed revenge which results in the rabies-infected hippies attacking various people in a wide varieties of ways until finally the miners are infected and suddenly there's a zombie horde assault on a house!

It's probably never going to be inducted into The National Film Registry, but IDYB does deserve a small spot in Cinema history. All fans for horror and trash should check it out.

I'd be interested to know how much of an influence this film was on John Waters.