Bloodlust

Image credit: VeryHelpful.net

With a title like Bloodlust you’d think that all of the drama would be thrown into this movie. Sadly aside from a few screams there seems to be absolutely no effort put into this film at all. It sucks a bit because, in the right hands, this could have been a really cool horror movie. 

Bloodlust tells the predictable, but scary tale of four friends on a cruise that discover a hidden island and sail ashore to investigate. Once there they learn that a rich man lives on the island and he offers them his home for the night. However, there’s something unsettling about the whole place and during the night they go snooping only to discover that they’re in the home of a madman who plans to release them into the jungle and hunt them down one by one. 

With all the craziness and sinister things this movie inflects, it’s really sad that zero effort was put into its making. The direction is so-so at best without anything done to build suspense, the script is bland and boring, and the performances were so uncommitted that the actors may as well have been stuffed and mounted on the madman’s wall. 

Image credit: Horrorpedia

One thing I will say in the film’s defense is that it’s great to see a movie where the damsels are not completely in distress. Although done it a clumsy way, the film does draw attention to the fact that one of the women does judo, which of course comes in handy when a big, testosterone-mad henchman starts advancing on her menacingly. A quick dodge and a slam and ha, bitch respect the lady’s space! 

Aside from that, Bloodlust is an example of a movie that has everything going for it, but is somehow made boring; a bit like Suicide Squad. 

Starring Wilton Graff, June Kenney, Walter Brooke, Robert Reed, Eugene Persson, Joan Lora, Troy Patterson, Lilyan Chauvin, Bobby Hall, and Bill Coontz 

Rating: M 

Year: 1959