Last night I went on Tubi looking for a grindhouse movie, and damned if I didn't find one in Blood Sucking Freaks. This 1976 film fully delivers as exploitation horror, depicting various means of torture including thumbscrews, guillotines, and electrocutions. And, delivering as promised on its title, the film features an especially memorable scene involving a mad physician drilling into a woman's skull and gleefully sucking out the blood and cerebrospinal fluid with a straw. He gets his comeuppance, though, as the good doctor is torn apart after being thrown into a cell full of long-captive nude women who have turned feral. He's an outlier, as the victims in this film are almost entirely women in the nude, and so the misogyny is pervasive and undeniable.
The violent vignettes are tied together by a very loose plot in which a demented dramatist named "Sardu" attempts to gain exposure for his Grand Guignol-style act. To this end, he eventually kidnaps a famous ballerina affiliated with the Kennedy Center (the one now chaired by President Donald Trump) and brainwashes her with his sadomasochism gospel. As he subjects her to various forms of psychological torture, his assistant Ralphus—a little person with an impressively tall afro—dances and claps with a leering grin. If it's not already obvious, Blood Sucking Freaks is a wholly rebarbative experience. That said, the film maintains a goofball tone all throughout, which by turns helps mitigate the mean-spiritedness (a bit) but also amplifies the carnivalesque madness.
Yet Blood Sucking Freaks also contains some genuine flashes of artistry. The film culminates in the ballerina giving a public performance in which she elegantly kicks a bound critic to death, which makes for a rather sublime and unexpected viewing experience. Where else but in a 1970s grindhouse movie are you going to see a ballerina leaving a theater critic in a bloody mess?
When I heard that name "Ralphus" given to Sardu's assistant, I must confess that I thought of World Championship Wrestling, where a schlubby bald man of that same name served as the personal security guard of future WWE legend Chris Jericho back in the 1990s. In the obligatory post-movie Googling, I learned that Jericho, now running out the clock on his career in AEW, is a huge fan of Blood Sucking Freaks. In fact, Jericho considers Blood Sucking Freaks one of his favorite movies, and he's even written a song about it. I find this to be a very telling revelation. It's one thing to appreciate a film like Blood Sucking Freaks as a product of a unique cinematic ecosystem at a particular time, but it's quite another to say it's one of your favorite movies. I mean, the movie involves nearly constant sadomasochistic violence against captive nude women, the dad jokes flying as liberally as limbs. I would ask Jericho, Just how much has this film shaped your sensibilities as a person and a performer? Perhaps the answer would explain some of the questionable gimmicks, storylines, and projects Jericho has attempted in the long sunset of his career.
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| Chris Jericho, singing for his band Fozzy (Credit: Lisa, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) |
As a further aside, I'll note that when I heard one particular swell in the musical score as the mad physician is introduced, I was reminded of hip hop artist Necro, whose track "Evil Shit" uses a portion of the organ music from Blood Sucking Freaks to great effect. Having revealed my enthusiasm for exploitation movies, professional wrestling, and Necro's raps in the course of this brief article, the reader may now be posing serious questions about my aesthetic sensibilities.
Execrable or not, I have no choice but to appreciate Blood Sucking Freaks, as it is an archetypal grindhouse movie. In fact, were I compelled to identify a single movie as representative of exploitation horror as a whole, I might pick Blood Sucking Freaks. With just one screening, it has forced itself into the mix with movies like I Drink Your Blood and Maniac that could also win the ignominious distinction of quintessential grindhouse horror flick. But with that, let me be clear: I'm not saying Blood Sucking Freaks is one of my favorite movies, or even good. Unlike those other aforementioned grindhouse classics, I'm never going to watch this turd again.
