Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)

One of the ugliest movies ever made, in terms of both aesthetics and content, Bloodsucking Freaks is a celebration of gore, objectification, rape, and torture that was allegedly conceived as a satire of Grand Guignol-type splatter flicks. Whether some viewers find Bloodsucking Freaks amusing is a matter for therapists who will need to spend many years unraveling the issues those viewers have. For purposes of this space, it’s sufficient to say that Bloodsucking Freaks is so amateurish, gruesome, unfunny, and unpleasant that no rational person need ever give the picture a moment’s thought. The story concerns a psychopath named Sardu (Seamus O’Brien), who runs a “Theatre of the Macabre” in New York City. Sardu kidnaps women, hides them in a torture dungeon beneath his stage, and then mutilates them onstage during performances, often with the help of sadistic dwarf Ralphus (Louie de Jesus). Theatergoers unable to accept that what they’re seeing onstage is real help make Sardu’s show a cult hit until a critic gives the show a bad review, at which point Sardu and Ralphus make the critic the latest prisoner in the dungeon. Mayhem ensues. Listing a few of the atrocities in Bloodsucking Freaks should explain why this X-rated crapfest lacks anything resembling entertainment value. A woman’s hand is cut off, and then Ralphus gouges out her eyeball before eating the eyeball like an hard-boiled egg. A corpse is chopped into cutlets and served as a meal to naked women jailed in the dungeon. A woman’s teeth are yanked out, one by one, so a psychopathic dentist can orally rape the woman without fear of getting bitten. A woman’s skull is shaved, and then a man drills a hole in her skull so he can suck out the contents with a straw. All of this is rendered with cheap-looking photography, jumpy editing, silly acting, and substandard production values. It’s fair to assume that the filmmakers wanted Bloodsucking Freaks to be shocking. Instead, it’s boring and crude and pointless, noteworthy only for representing some absolute nadir in the American cinema’s long history of failing womankind.

Bloodsucking Freaks: SQUARE