The Thirsty Dead (1974)

          When it begins, The Thirsty Dead seems like another sleazy American/Filipino coproduction about slavers abducting women for nefarious purposes—after all, the picture starts with a strip-club dance routine, then continues through assaults and a trek through a dangerous forest. Yet the picture takes a weird turn once the slavers and their hostages reach their destination, a remote city hidden inside a mountain. Wearing a powder-blue number that looks like a ladies’ nightgown, complemented by a giant metal necklace and a stiff-collared cape, Baru (John Considine) is the leader of a bizarre cult that occupies laughable sets reminiscent of the cheapest-looking alien planets from the original Star Trek series. Baru’s people elevate one of their new hostages, Laura (Jennifer Billingsley), to visiting-dignitary status because she sorta-kinda resembles a god whom the citizens worship. Taking the story even deeper into the fantasy-fiction realm, Laura discovers that the citizens drink the blood of various young women whom they abduct from the outside world, because nubile blood combined with a secret elixir creates a formula for immortality. Only some of the citizens are entitled to receive the elixir, however, so the castoffs of the secret society wither away in dungeons, aging until they die. Eventually, a revolution occurs as the powerless members of this secret society pursue revenge.

          Even with the loopy sci-fi concepts at the center of the storyline, The Thirsty Dead is boring, clichéd, and silly. The dialogue is stilted and the acting is worse, so the tacky costumes and sets are the least of the film’s problems, even though the narrative is basically coherent and the technical execution is passable. It’s also tricky to imagine the target audience for the picture. The Thirsty Dead has way too much bloodshed and cheesecake to qualify as family-friendly viewing, and yet the PG-rated picture isn’t rough enough for the grindhouse crowd. And even though the storyline might seem suitable for consumption by genre-flick nerds, The Thirsty Dead is way too stupid to properly stimulate anyone’s imagination. Having said all that, it seems imprudent to utterly dismiss the picture. Anything with ideas, no matter how idiotic they may be, has inherent merit, and the makers of The Thirsty Dead deserve minor credit for avoiding the ugly stereotype of portraying Pacific Islanders as primitive predators. Assigning vile behavior to fantasy characters isn’t much of an improvement, but at least it means The Thirsty Dead is not as numbingly racist as the usual American/Filipino fare of this era.

The Thirsty Dead: FUNKY

Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls (1973)

          Enjoyably ridiculous, the supernatural horror thriller Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls benefits from a unique performance by John Considine in the leading role. By his own admission, Considine received zero guidance from director Eddie Saeta, so Considine went big in his first take and stayed there throughout production. What’s more, because the actor knew going in how silly the script was for this project, it’s tempting to credit him with an appropriate sense of irony, as if every florid line reading or theatrical gesture is a wink-wink commentary on the inherent goofiness of the piece. In any event, Considine is fun to watch because his performance is so absurdly stilted, channeling every bug-eyed excess that John Carradine, Boris Karloff, or Vincent Price ever brought to a similar role, only without the elegance or nuance one associates with those actors. Adding to the picture’s considerable kitsch factor are the polished production values—clearly, Saeta and his crew thought they were making a proper horror picture—and the campy extremes of the plot. Whereas most shockers about mad scientists portray brilliant characters driven to extremes by obsession, this one offers the parallel image of a madman driven to distraction by a sort of incompetence. After all, the title character spends most of the movie trying to complete one task, so he’s a bit like that guy in your office yelling at an uncooperative copy machine.

          The nominal protagonist is Fred Saunders (Barry Coe), a businessman whose beautiful wife, Laura (Jo Morrow), just died. Determined to defy mortality, Fred searches for a spiritualist who can revive Laura, eventually meeting Tana (Florence Marly). She “represents” a magician named Dr. Death (Considine), so on some level, Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls is about a psychopath with a talent agent. Dr. Death’s trick is transferring souls from one body to another, so he promises to help Fred in exchange for $50,000. Thereafter, Dr. Death seeks a soul to put inside Laura’s body. Unfortunately, Laura’s corpse resists Dr. Death’s mojo, so he goes on a killing spree while searching for a soul with which he can reanimate Laura’s corpse Watching Dr. Death get more and more annoyed while this process drags along is morbidly funny. The picture also provides some domestic melodrama, because Tana becomes jealous of Dr. Death’s new sexual plaything, Venus (Sivi Aberg). Leading man Coe is beyond forgettable, and the same is true of starlet Cheryl Miller, who plays the hero’s secretary-turned-lover. So while Aberg is lovely, Marly is suitably deranged, and Leon Askin (who plays Dr. Death’s henchman) provides some unintentional laughs whenever he moves his bulky frame across the screen, it’s all about Considine.

Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls: FUNKY