Yet another schlocky ’70s
horror picture that attempts to blend hippies with Satanism, Blood Sabbath hits the crap-cinema
trifecta: amateurish, boring, incoherent. Anthony Geary, later to find his
pop-culture niche as long-running character Luke Spencer on the ABC soap General Hospital, stars as David, a
confused Vietnam vet who wanders aimlessly through a forest until he’s nearly
raped by a quartet of hippie chicks. Later, David meets the quasi-supernatural
Yyalah (Susan Damante). She’s an earth spirit or wood nymph or something. David
and Yyalah dig each other but can’t have sex, Yyalah says, because her kind dies
upon mating with beings with souls. Naturally, this revelation prompts David to
seek advice on how to discard his soul. He speaks to a priest who responds to
David’s request with a temper tantrum, and then David chats up a witch whose
coven conveniently knows how to perform soul-removal ceremonies. Seriously,
this is the plot. Very little of what happens in Blood Sabbath makes sense, and the acting is abysmal. Compounding
matters is the cheap costuming and hairstyling, which looks like it was done by
technicians from a high-school drama club. The cinematography is competent, but
that doesn’t count for much since the action occurring inside the pleasantly
composed frames is disjoined and silly. For instance, the movie features
countless scenes of topless and/or fully nude coven members dancing in the
woods; one suspects the producers got a bulk discount by hiring the entire
staff of a low-rent strip club. About the only mildly entertaining thing in the
movie is the opening credit that promises an appearance by “Dyanne Thorne as
Alotta, Queen of Witches.” Rest assured, however, that tame and fleeting scenes
including the future star of the porn-ish Isla
series are not reason enough to endure this misbegotten flick.
Blood Sabbath: SQUARE
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