Like pumpkin pie and tryptophan comas, Blood Freak deserves a place in your annual Thanksgiving traditions. It’s not every day you see a movie about mad science turning a man into a turkey monster, but if there’s a day that’s perfect for such a flick, it’s that last Thursday each November. However, if you’ve never seen it, don’t wait until fall to gobble up this one-of-a-kind crap!
All mutton chops and good manners, Herschell (Steve Hawkes, who co-wrote, -directed and -produced with Brad F. Grinter) is a lost-soul biker who looks like the love child of Elvis Presley and Richard Kiel. After coming to the aid of a Bible-thumping beauty with the unsubtle name of Angel (Heather Hughes, Grinter’s Flesh Feast) on the highway, she invites him to stay at her groovy pad. Apparently decorated with the entire inventory of velvet paintings from that corner with the abandoned gas station, the place also is home to Angel’s polar-opposite sister, Ann (Dana Cullivan), for whom life is a constant drug party, despite her sibling’s penchant for spouting Scripture. Protests a sky-high Ann, “This Bible stuff is really a drag.”
Ann tries to push pot, then herself, onto Herschell, who rebukes both advances … until the next day when a bikinied Ann successfully seduces a shirtless Herschell by the pool. The dude’s muscled, and his might leads to a job offer by the girls’ father: “I could use a husky man like you on my poultry ranch.” Aside from picking up freshly laid eggs and shaking them, Herschell is tasked with playing guinea pig for a chemical experiment that turns him into a mutated man with a giant turkey head and sends him on a murder spree. Why, God, why?
That answer is simple, because a chain-smoking Grinter sledgehammers the story’s moral lessons with the occasional story-stopping lecture toward the camera, like a rednecked Rod Serling. In his final host segment, Grinter discusses the sin of putting chemicals into our templed bodies, all while hypocritically sucking down a cancer stick that causes a deep coughing fit. That he and Hawkes didn’t feel a need for a second take says a lot about Blood Freak‘s place on cinema’s ladder of technical prowess, which is to say it resides on the lowest rung. The Florida homemade morality tale is such a piece of gobsmacked entertainment, I wouldn’t want it standing any higher. —Rod Lott