Blood Rites is one of the more unusual films on the video nasties list. A period piece that isn't nazisploitation for once. It's the oldest movie of the list. Easily one of the tamest (except for one scene). Filled with dreadful acting, as is par for the course at this stage. But...I'm loving it. And I don't know why.
3 sisters are invited to a reading of their father's will on an island estate near New York City. Their husbands tag along because a film like this needs cannon fodder to wipe out. They arrive on the island to revisit the home they grew up in as children and find it being ran by a maid called Ruth and two others, one being a handyman who, to put it mildly, is troubled. Before his estate can be settled they find themselves being wiped out one by one. The island is remote and hard to get to meaning the killer is one of the small group. A group about to get a lot smaller.
This is 71 minutes of utter camp that you can't help but enjoy and it's yet another bizarre entry on the nasties list. Most of the violence is offscreen or shot so confusingly that it's impossible to see what's going on. As far as I can see it's one 5 second moment that caused all the problems, as one of the husband's is disembowelled in a moment that cannot be taken seriously. It's basically someone sawing through clay. What makes it memorable though is the weird unsettling atmosphere that pervades throughout the movie. The extremely disorientating camerawork (Purposely done? I'm guessing not but it works). That bizarre moment of sexual tension between brothers is a definite eyebrow raiser early in the film. The rabbit scene. The feeling of sleaze that bleeds through despite the relative lack of sex or nudity. Then we have that eerie soundtrack, music that makes even a mealtime scene feel odd. Music that saves the film tbh.
The copy available on youtube is terrible quality, looking like it was sourced from an 8mm reel or a third generation VHS copy but it actually added to the fun of revisiting this because it's the same quality as the people watching in the early 80's during all that nasty hysteria would have had. I was only 4/5 at the time and missed out on that wonderful fans for film fans so it's nice to experience a frisson of all the fuss. Some films don't need to be rereleased in 1080p or 4K and this is one of them.
Ok. That was fun. A lot more fun than some of the shite on the list so far. I'm looking at you Beast In Heat.
Next up, more fun courtesy of Tom Savini and his glorious SFX. The Burning.
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