Brides Of Blood DVD

In the late 1960s and early 70s, a bizarre alliance between the Filippino movie company Hemisphere and the American exploitation outfit Independent International yielded a series of weirdly interconnected horror movies, most of which work the word Blood into the title. The Filippino items are strangely fascinating vampire and mad scientist pictures with oddball colour effects and a mix of naive serial-style thrills and extreme-for-the-era sex and gore; the American efforts, from director Al Adamson, are shoddier, thrown together from offcuts of previous pictures, and... are lead-paced but nevertheless curiously appealing. Gaze in awe at mutant killer trees, slobbering hunchbacked servants, faded matinee idols, stripper-turned-actress heroines with concrete blonde hairdos, evil dwarves, John Carradine or Lon Chaney, footage cut in from completely different films, Dracula and Frankenstein meeting hippies and bikers, red filters when the vampires attack, chanting natives! Plus lots of exclamation marks! Plus lurid trailers! Adequately billed as "a brutal orgy of ghastly terror!", Brides of Blood concerns a landowner affected by bomb test fall-out who changes periodically into a lecherous fanged totem pole creature and "satisfies" himself by ripping apart naked native maidens staked out on an altar. With the aptly-named Beverly Hills and one of the silliest monsters ever seen. --Kim Newman [show more]

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