Bloodsucking Freaks

Extraordinary in its tastelessness, Bloodsucking Freaks (alternate title: The Incredible Torture Show) is a B-movie gem from 1976-- consistently disgusting and entertaining. The plot concerns a "theater of the macabre" in New York's then-ultra-seedy Lower East Side. What the curious audiences who flock to the theater don't know is that the "performed" acts of degradation, sadism, and murder are, in fact, actually happening-- not to actresses but to captives. The concept provokes thought as a commentary on how movie audiences perceive violence. Sure he's no Michael Haneke or Alfred Hitchcock, but director/screenwriter, Joel M. Reed gives his erudite, vaguely queeny anti-hero/villain, Sardu (Seamus O'Brien) enough delicious monologues in which he flamboyantly justifies the "artistry"and meaning of his theatrical S&M, to add a texture of insightfulness to the film. Sardu and his cohorts, including the dwarfish manservant, Ralphus (Luis de Jesus) find new and inventive ways to torture their captives, all of whom are naked, buxom, feral women. Brain smoothies, thumb-crushing, guillotines, the rack, penis hotdogs-- it's all fair game. The violence is cartoonish and imbued with a dirty sense of humor, so that it rarely seems disturbing. That said, the attitudes of the movie and its characters towards women give it a genuinely seedy, unpleasant tone. The raw exploitation of women as torture objects is offensive and nasty in a 1970's grindhouse way. If Sardu weren't a masochist himself, and the feral captives hadn't exacted their revenge, the film may have been too much for the average feminist liberal with a soft spot for bad taste like myself. Ultimately though, Bloodsucking Freaks is a mostly equal opportunity offender, its black humor embellishing its abuse of nearly all of its subjects (male and female), the theater's fictional audience, and us, the real audience. Perhaps more authentically "torture porn" than anything Eli Roth or contemporary society could produce/tolerate, Bloodsucking Freaks has a perverse energy that makes it valuable and watchable.