Bloodsucking Freaks

Release Year: 1976

Director: Joel M. Reed

Review: 'Bloodsucking Freaks' takes exploitation to a whole new level.  The movie is about an S&M theatre owner who puts on gruesome torture shows for paying audiences.  The audience believes that what they are watching is trickery and applaud appreciatively of the bloodbath.  Unbeknownst to them, the theatre owner is a lunatic who enslaves women and exploits them for his show.  Desperate to be taken seriously he kidnaps a famous dancer to star in his newest disturbing production.  While watching this film I got the eerie feeling that I was supposed to be reveling in the grotesque, sexually infused brutality unfolding.  The basic pattern for any given scene was the following: Woman is degraded. Woman is sexually abused. Woman is tortured. Woman screams for several minutes. Woman dies. Evil guy laughs hysterically.  It all gets tied together with a disturbingly cheery little-person who carries out the awful deeds.  This is the bottom of the barrel of filmmaking and not something I'm willing to give any credit to.  It's not that I was shocked or disturbed by what I saw, I just didn't care.  At some point while watching this, you have to ask yourself if you are any different than the people in the torture show audience blindly consuming the deranged smut put in front of them.  Degradation and mutilation is not something I take pleasure in watching even if its just fantasy.
Rating: 1/5