Blood Sucking Freaks – 1976
Join The Fun!… Human Dart Boards… “Home Style Brain Surgery”… Dental Hijinks!
Director
Joel M. Reed

Writer
Joel M. Reed

Producers
Alan G. Margolin
Joel M. Reed

Cast
Seamus O’Brien – Master Sardu
Viju Krem – Natasha D’Natalie
Niles McMaster – Tom Maverick
Dan Fauci – Sergeant John Tucci
Alphonso DeNoble – Creasy Silo (as Alphonso)
Ernie Pysher – The Doctor
Luis De Jesus – Ralphus
Helen Thompson – Master’s Assistant
Saiyanidi – Master’s Assistant

Review by Sven Soetemans

Unspeakable sickness…,
Oh yeah, this definitely is one title for all you sick puppies out there to see! “Blood Sucking Freaks” is Troma’s most sick-spirited and exploitative movie and Joel M. Reed’s only intention clearly is to shock and disgust. But I must confess that it works, too, since this is easily one of the most memorable stomach-turning movie experiences I ever beheld. The plot centers on the deranged psycho Sardu, who runs the “Theatre of the Macabre” where audiences are exposed to the torturing and dismemberment of young women, only they don’t know that what they see is real.

The theater simultaneously is a cover for Sardu’s more profitable business: the trading of white female slaves. He’s assisted by the perverted midget Ralphus (who does a little dance every time something vile happens) and an insanely unorthodox doctor. Somewhere hidden between all the sickness, there also is the ultra-thin plot line of a famous ballerina who’s kidnapped by Sardu and her athlete-boyfriend trying to trace her. The menu of atrocities is far too long to list and features for example the dissection of a girl with a rusty bone saw and an amateurish brain operation! The weak make-up art is the only thing that keeps this 70s movie from being the sickest film ever made, actually.

Still, I noticed that many other reviewers labeled “Blood Sucking Freaks” as ‘funny’ or even ‘hilarious’… Let me tell you that this is not a funny seventies film and people probably only claimed so because they don’t know how else to respond to an exploitation-adventure like this. This is women unfriendly (I’ll never understand what drives some women to star in films like this), aggressive and nauseating cinema. I’m glad that I saw it but I can’t give a proper explanation why…

Additional content warning: the guillotine sequence is super-sickening and has an extra depraved twist at the end.