Director: Drew Rosas
Screenplay: Drew Rosas
Starring: Nick Summer, Mike Johnson, Sarah Luther, Emily Treolo
Release Date: 2010
BLOOD JUNKIE is another entry in an expanding sub-genre of retro splatter epics that have followed in the wake of GRINDHOUSE. Like HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN, MACHETE, and HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, the filmmakers have attempted to recapture the look and style of B-level 80’s exploitation fare. HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN came off as a Troma flick taken to the nth degree, with its gritty photography, insane violence, and shrilly idiotic characters. MACHETE looked like something that would have been produced by The Cannon Group at the height of their cheesiness, and would have probably starred Charles Bronson back in the day. BLOOD JUNKIE appears to be modeled after the Z-grade backyard “epics” that were among the first movies to be released direct to video in the late 80’s, many of which were distributed by companies like Troma, who released this flick. I actually thought this movie was really shot in the 80’s before my roommate informed me otherwise, so I’ve gotta give the filmmakers props for that. Style-wise, the movie most resembles J.R. Bookwalter’s 8mm opus THE DEAD NEXT DOOR. That’s where the comparison ends, however, as unlike that movie, BLOOD JUNKIE doesn’t reek of festering dogshit.
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| It was a tubular time, filled with bodacious babes... |
It’s 1989, and Teddy (Johnson) and his best bud Craig Wilson (Summer) are two rad dudes cruising for babes at the local 7-11. Just their luck, two bodacious teenage babes with plenty of booze money show up and our two hapless heroes invite them on a trip to an old abandoned camping ground for a weekend of unprotected drunken sex. Hey, man, it’s not like anything could possibly go wrong! It’s not like there’s some cannibalistic freak who wears a gas mask and sucks people’s blood through the hose like a freakin’ vacuum is lurking out in those woods. Shit, that sounds like something out of a bad horror movie...
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| Our two most non-heinous heroes... |
Which is exactly what BLOOD JUNKIE is. A terrible, godawful late-80’s horror movie. Shot just last year for a scant $6,000, the movie looks like a relic of a by-gone era. The picture is grainy and washed out, with faded colors and natural lighting, the clothes are all tacky and out-of-date, the music sounds like it was recorded on a Casio keyboard, and the acting, dear God, the acting! This shit looks and sounds completely legit, and aside from a brief scene in a convenience store where we can clearly see a display of pre-paid phone cards and energy shots, the attention to period detail in this movie is absolute perfection. It is so good at being bad that I’d almost say that’s the movie’s downfall. Like I said, when I first popped this sucker in I thought I was watching an actual old-ass, shitty movie, and I was not very enthusiastic. It wasn’t until I discovered that this was made recently that I was able to enjoy the movie for what it is, which is an entirely un-subtle parody of the very movies it’s pretending to be.
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| Totally not a screen grab from MY BLOODY VALENTINE. |
What really makes this movie work are the performances of its’ two leads, in particular Nick Summers as Craig Wilson. I feel like the word “Motherfuckin‘” needs to be added between the words Craig and Wilson, because Craig Wilson is one badass motherfucker, in the most pathetically inept sense of the word. Sporting an epic mullet, a badass mustache, and a criminally short pair of biking shorts, Craig Wilson is the foul-mouthed, shit-talking, one-liner spewing heart of this flick, “…traveling at badass speeds down the highway“. He epitomizes all of the inherent cheesiness of these kinds of movies. He’s like that one friend everyone has who’s always looking to get wasted, is always completely full of shit, and who has all of the best lines.
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| Women can't resist him... |
After him and Teddy invite the girls to go camping we’re treated to a montage of their pre-party celebration party, a scene which takes all of the clichés of the 80’s power-montage into a whole new bizarre level of parody. But their enthusiasm is totally sincere without ever winking at the audience, which leads to me somehow actually caring about these shitty characters in this shitty movie. There are several scenes following this that take advantage of the period setting, including a nice gag where Teddy tells Craig his mom’s cassette collection sucks, only for one of the girls to put in a tape that’s equally as shitty, yet everybody in the car dances and bobs their heads like it’s the raddest thing in the world.
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| Move over, Ash! Craig Wilson is the new cult horror hero in town. |
Once they get settled into the woods the movie plays out the usual slasher movie tropes, with several characters engaging in pre-marital fornication before deciding to wander out into the woods to find an old abandoned glue factory which just happens to be the home of the titular “Blood Junkie”. Which leads to my only real complaint against the movie. Aside from a pre-credits sequence in which the Junkie attacks a hobo, the movie is over halfway done before it falls back into horror movie territory, and when we finally get there it’s actually the weakest part of the movie, due to a none-too-subtle tonal shift into the blackest depths of despair that closes out the movie. It’s like the filmmakers had so much fun taking the piss out of the period they set their movie in, they forgot they were making a horror movie, and then made up for it at the last second by ending it in the bleakest way imaginable.
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| This is gonna be waayyyyy better than our trip to the Camp Crystal Lake Indian Burial Ground and Pet Cemetery! |
But in the end that’s a minor quibble. For one, the movie is only 74 minutes long, so the long wait isn’t even really that long. Besides that, the first two-thirds of the movie are so much fun, and to be honest the ending of the movie actually helps the it work on repeat viewings, revealing actual honest to God subtleties in the screenplay that hint at the outcome without ever spoiling it. I never thought I ‘d say this about a Troma movie made in the last decade, but I really enjoyed this awesomely shitty movie, and if you too enjoy movies that are really good at being really terrible, I say go to your nearest video store… oh, wait, those don’t exist anymore. Well, hop onto your nearest online retailer, and give this disc a spin, or a stream, or whatever the Hell non-analog mode of media consumption you young‘uns are constantly hollering about . And tell ’em Craig Wilson sent ya!
My Rating:
7/10
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