Fashioned with a 'one take only' philosophy that makes Ed Wood look like Stanley Kubrick, Blood Freak is, in a word, in-freakin'-credible. I've seen my share of really bad movies but this one's a stunner. It's undeniably unique: an anti-drug gore film with a pro-Christian message, featuring a homicidal monster with the body of a man and the head of a turkey. He murders dope addicts to drink their blood, the only way he can satisfy his own chemical-induced addiction. Frankly, the flick left me completely stupefied when I wasn't cackling with uncontrolled mirth. Before experiencing this one-of-a kind horror I'd have normally refused to accept its very existence. After all... why in God's name would anyone make such a thing? What would possess them to? But seeing is believing.
A beefy nomadic biker dude with an Elvis 'do named Herschell (co-director Steve Hawkes) plays the Good Samaritan when he helps a pretty woman named Angel (Heather Hughes) with car trouble. He escorts her back to the house she shares with her foxy sister Ann (Dana Cullivan), where a pot party is in full swing. Though Angel is a scripture-quoting Christian, Ann is a party animal druggie with a brain the size of a walnut. She offers Herschell a little ganja but he seems more interested in Angel's views on God. Rebuffing Ann's advances, he accepts Angel's offer to let him crash at their house while he looks for a job. A friend of Angel's who runs a turkey farm offers Herschell a job starting the following week.
Which gives Ann more than enough time to work her wiles. She may be dumb as a box of rocks but she's a looker. Herschell doesn't really stand a chance. Soon Ann has him tokin' the Devil Weed and tumbling into bed with her. Trouble is, the pot she gave him is a particularly potent variety that has him hooked in no time. (Oh, say about 10 minutes.) Later, when Herschell reports for his first day at work, he finds out his new job is as a human guinea pig testing chemically altered turkey meat. The turkey farm scientists assure him it's perfectly safe to consume and offer to fix him up with some primo drugs to boot. Herschell tucks into his new job with gusto, eating most of a cooked bird without so much as a side dollop of mashed potatoes or even anything to drink. Afterwards he starts to feel sick, passing out in a field. When he wakes up, Herschell is a new man — one with a gigantic turkey head made out of papier-mâché and a thirst for blood. He kidnaps a couple of female heroin junkies, hangs them upside down from a ladder, then slices open their throats to (rather sloppily) drink the arterial spray... which, in the case of the 1st victim, actually jets out of her shirt rather than her neck. He also strangles an old man who witnesses one of the murders. Then he kills a relative of the old man, a fat, beer-bellied redneck, who attacks him in revenge. A regretful Ann, horrified by her boyfriend's condition, enlists a couple of hippy stoners to try to help poor Herschell by supplying him with drugs. He ends up undermining their efforts by cutting off the leg of a drug dealer with a buzz saw. All throughout these nonsensical proceedings a chain-smoking on-camera narrator (co-director Brad Grinter, reading from a script on his desk) occasionally chimes in, failing miserably at tying it all together. And would you believe it? — the thing actually has a happy ending!
Made for about ten dollars tops, Blood Freak is an incredibly stupid, completely inept piece of... er, filmmaking which by no sane law of the universe should even exist. But it does, and hardcore cheese lovers will want to seek it out for precisely that reason. It's just staggering how bad this movie is! It amusingly stumbles right out of the gate, repeating both the title and "Starring Steve Hawkes" twice within the span of a few minutes. The plot makes no sense, continuity is thrown to winds, and it looks to have been edited by Helen Keller. There's no point in critiquing the acting because there just isn't any to speak of. The attempt at a Christian message is apparently sincere, yet it throws in messy gore effects and even a brief shot of Ann's bare backside. The murder scenes are hysterical, especially the dismemberment of the drug dealer (apparently played by a guy with only one leg in real life)... Clutching the bleeding plastic stump, he screams at the top of his lungs for a full minute before expiring. The film's one attempt at an action sequence, the attack by the vengeful redneck, will leave you slack-jawed in utter astonishment. (For a fat guy he vaults that fence quite nimbly.) If you think you've seen the absolute dregs of American Z-grade schlock cinema (The Creeping Terror, Manos: The Hands of Fate, The Mighty Gorga, etc.) but haven't yet experienced Blood Freak, I'm confident that the world's only "Turkey-Monster-Anti-Drug-Pro-Jesus Gore film" should provide you with an entirely new perspective. Fans of 'So Bad They're Good' flicks will definitely want to gobble this 'un up — though it certainly helps if you're blitzed when you watch it.
