This is an odd movie to review, because I actually liked it - aside from one scene, but I'll cover that later - even though it had several flaws, there is a weird charm to it. Blood feels like a Herschell Gordon Lewis rip off, but not nearly as good as the movies he was already making a decade earlier. The editing is atrocious: full of jump cuts just as a scene is getting interesting. There are huge continuity errors. The lighting is no bad in one action scene, that it was literally just black. The acting is... strange... not bad, just slightly off, and exaggerated, like the actors had all been in plays, but nothing else. The gore effects were terrible. The makeup is overapplied in a manner that I see from cheap movies from this era, where people just look nauseatingly grotesque; I think the technique is taken from old, black and white, silent films, where it made more sense, but in color it just looks sickening.
The plot is a convoluted mess. I really think drugs must have been involved through the entire filmmaking process. I don't normally do this, but I'll lay out the entire plot, because given how short, and peculiar Blood is, I have to go into detail. A group moves into a house, in America, circa 1880. We have a husband (Lawrence), his wife (Regina), two scientists (Carrie, and Orlando), and a mentally impaired sort of lab assistant. The characters are given either too much backstory or not enough, and the unfolding of the biggest details aren't until the end, as if it's supposed to matter. I'll just address that now: Lawrence is a werewolf - not just that, a direct allusion to Lon Chaney's Talbot from the 1941 Wolf Man - and Regina is Count Dracula's daughter. I get it, the movie wants to be a monster mash, even name dropping Baron Frankenstein at the end. Carrie has a brother, who just shows up, only to be killed - okay. Lawrence spends a good chunk of the movie at his lawyer's office - fun - which I think the only reason was to have him meet a woman, who he then quickly develops feelings for... but it goes nowhere. As if all of that wasn't crazy enough, it's nothing compared to what is going on in the lab: Carrie, and Orlando are working on plants that Regina needs in order to treat her vampirism. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Carrie also has some kind of leg infection, but it is also never developed. That's the main issue with this movie, there are good ideas, and the characters are interesting, but it just never goes anywhere. Carrie, in particular was very sympathetic, and I wanted to know more about her.
Okay, the huge problem I have with this movie is a mouse appears to be cut in half with a meat cleaver. I'd like to think it was fake, but given that there was an edit right after, so Regina could eat a clearly-fake mouse, I'm going to conclude that it was real. If that's the case, fuck this movie. It really is a shame, too, because I was enjoying Blood until that point; it's the kind of low-budget, cult mess - like Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural - that I could watch when I needed another dark, nightmarish, acid trip of a film. I saw it once, and that was enough. I refuse to devote time to animal cruelty. It's just lazy filmmaking. Get a close up of the mouse, then a close up of Regina raising, and swinging the cleaver. Then you get a close up of a fake mouse. And she eats it.
Review by BronsonBlockedParent2022-07-01T06:30:55Z
This is an odd movie to review, because I actually liked it - aside from one scene, but I'll cover that later - even though it had several flaws, there is a weird charm to it.
Blood feels like a Herschell Gordon Lewis rip off, but not nearly as good as the movies he was already making a decade earlier. The editing is atrocious: full of jump cuts just as a scene is getting interesting. There are huge continuity errors. The lighting is no bad in one action scene, that it was literally just black. The acting is... strange... not bad, just slightly off, and exaggerated, like the actors had all been in plays, but nothing else. The gore effects were terrible. The makeup is overapplied in a manner that I see from cheap movies from this era, where people just look nauseatingly grotesque; I think the technique is taken from old, black and white, silent films, where it made more sense, but in color it just looks sickening.
The plot is a convoluted mess. I really think drugs must have been involved through the entire filmmaking process. I don't normally do this, but I'll lay out the entire plot, because given how short, and peculiar Blood is, I have to go into detail.
A group moves into a house, in America, circa 1880. We have a husband (Lawrence), his wife (Regina), two scientists (Carrie, and Orlando), and a mentally impaired sort of lab assistant. The characters are given either too much backstory or not enough, and the unfolding of the biggest details aren't until the end, as if it's supposed to matter. I'll just address that now: Lawrence is a werewolf - not just that, a direct allusion to Lon Chaney's Talbot from the 1941 Wolf Man - and Regina is Count Dracula's daughter. I get it, the movie wants to be a monster mash, even name dropping Baron Frankenstein at the end.
Carrie has a brother, who just shows up, only to be killed - okay.
Lawrence spends a good chunk of the movie at his lawyer's office - fun - which I think the only reason was to have him meet a woman, who he then quickly develops feelings for... but it goes nowhere.
As if all of that wasn't crazy enough, it's nothing compared to what is going on in the lab: Carrie, and Orlando are working on plants that Regina needs in order to treat her vampirism. Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
Carrie also has some kind of leg infection, but it is also never developed.
That's the main issue with this movie, there are good ideas, and the characters are interesting, but it just never goes anywhere.
Carrie, in particular was very sympathetic, and I wanted to know more about her.
Okay, the huge problem I have with this movie is a mouse appears to be cut in half with a meat cleaver. I'd like to think it was fake, but given that there was an edit right after, so Regina could eat a clearly-fake mouse, I'm going to conclude that it was real. If that's the case, fuck this movie. It really is a shame, too, because I was enjoying Blood until that point; it's the kind of low-budget, cult mess - like Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural - that I could watch when I needed another dark, nightmarish, acid trip of a film. I saw it once, and that was enough. I refuse to devote time to animal cruelty. It's just lazy filmmaking. Get a close up of the mouse, then a close up of Regina raising, and swinging the cleaver. Then you get a close up of a fake mouse. And she eats it.