Welcome to my new short series called Hippie Hotties where I plan to talk about a hippie-era movie that stretched the limits of free love and sex by showing off some sexy nudes on the big screen. This era of experimentation led to some pretty far-out films, so let's take a look!
Today's film is an exploitation horror flick that is based on the Manson Murders! I Drink Your Blood was directed by David E. Durston in 1970 and Durston did explain that he had a difficult time coming up with a good plot for this movie...which does come through. That being said, the film has A LOT of nudity to enjoy. Cults love sex and nudity! That's basically a fact.
The plot follows a Satanic hippie cult that becomes obsessed with eating human flesh after they eat meat pies injected with dog blood. I don't know why this wouldn't make them want to eat dogs, but maybe the filmmakers thought dogs were a step worse than humans. Anyway, they become cannibalistic and wreak havoc on people. Cult leader Horace Bones - sweet name - conducts Satanic cult rituals in the woods when a local girl named Sylvia (Iris Brooks) who befriended one of the cult members checks out the ritual secretly. She tries to run away when someone spots her, but the cult finds her and beats her so now she is traumatized as she goes back into society and tries to warn people about the cult. When someone tries to protect the girl by confronting the cult, they give him LSD and attack him as well. This cult is vicious, y'all! The cult then tries to get revenge
This exploitation film was thought to be inspired by the Manson family, although filmmakers said that the story itself was based on a reported incident in an Iranian mountain village in which rabid wolves attacked a school and infected plenty of people with rabies. That idea was coupled with the horror of the Manson cult and footage from the trial that was being reported on while the film was being written.
The film was made over the course of 8 weeks in Sharon Springs, New York, and the cast was mostly amateur and was shown in small theaters as a double feature midnight movie with the 1964 film I Eat Your Skin (also known as Zombies). I Drink Your Blood has the honor of being one of the very first American movies to receive an X-rating based on violence - not even based on nudity! That's how violent and scary this cult revenge film was after the Manson murders.
This film had mixed reviews, but The New York Times gave it a positive one saying that this was actually a well-made exploitation flick. The legacy of this film is that it is now a classic and it even inspired later films such as George Romero's The Crazies and David Cronenberg's Rabid. It was going to get a remake in 2009, but it was canceled, so we all still have to wait for it.
How exactly is this a "hippie" film? Well, the hippie cult aspect, obviously! This film does a good job of showing the way that public opinion on hippies had soured. A lot of scholars and historians consider the Manson murders to be the "end" of the fantasy of the flower children. Granted, plenty of people thought that the hippies were ridiculous, but they were seen as mostly harmless. They might steal your money because they are poor and want to buy grass, but no one thought that a group of hippies in the desert could murder a Hollywood starlet in a horrendously gruesome way. The Manson Family were a nightmare to everyone - even hippies who now had their lifestyle tarnished by these crazies. In that way, this movie capitalizes on the idea that the hippies are now dangerous and terrifying which is what makes this movie such an interesting time capsule. Of course, this movie is only the first of many more films to come that portray hippies being horrifying! A lot of exploitation hippie flicks in the early 70s put this spin on hippiedom, including last week's Hippie Hottie film Mantis in Lace. The difference here is that I Drink Your Blood has more basis in reality (kind of), making it a little scarier.
Watch one of the Satanic hippie rituals here:
