Blood Mania (1970): F

There is very little blood in Blood Mania. It would be like changing the title of Halloween to Coat Hanger Mania because of the one scene where Michael Myers is batting coat hangers out of the way when he’s trying to catch Jamie Lee Curtis in the closet.

This turd from the tail end of the grind house era begins with a blond woman with a noose around her neck running through the woods. She is in a nightgown that shows off her nipples and she’s running from some solemn motherfucker who appears to be walking after her, even though she’s running full blast. She falls down, screaming, and the opening credits conclude. The scene is never referenced again and we never learn who the fuck those people were. No blood by the way.

When the actual film opens, we see that this spoiled and very sexually hungry babe named Victoria hates her life because she spends all her time caring for her terminally ill dad, who is a total bedridden asshole. When she isn’t spooning him warm milk or whatever, she’s trying to get laid. She somehow fucks this up despite being an aggressive and reasonably attractive woman. In this one scene, she jumps in the pool topless and tries to seduce the pool boy, who runs away frightened as if she was a rattlesnake. Show me a pool boy who would do this in real life and I’ll eat my hat.

She has this really creepy fixation with her dad’s doctor, this Hasselhoff looking fella named Cooper, who also avoids her advances as he avoids trimming his sideburns. Cooper needs money because he’s being blackmailed for performing some illegal abortions back in the day. So Victoria comes up with a plan: Cooper bones her whenever she wants and she’ll poison her dad, inherit the estate, and give ol’ Coop the money to pay off his blackmailer. All the poor guy has to do is take the money, bang this wealthy heiress, and call it a day.

When Victoria, kills her dad, there is a little blood, but not “mania” levels. She makes him smell some poison in his sleep and then she, probably excited by the impending Cooper penis, chills in her dad’s room fondling her exposed breasts while he writhes around and dies. His mouth is red. That’s the blood. He dies watching his treacherous daughter twist her nipples right next to his bedpan. Bummer. Mania.

Zinger on Victoria: Her younger, cuter, not crazy sister inherits all of dad’s stuff. Cooper still needs that money so he starts banging the sister on the side and gradually ignoring Victoria, which leads to all sorts of obligatory grind house topless scenes, 60’s porn music, and more mania-less blood; Victoria smashes her little sister’s skull open with a lamp and then starts working on a painting. The gore/violence is, of course, cheap, unconvincing, and all around unpleasurable for everyone involved.

Cooper comes home and sees what’s happened. He starts to dispose of the corpse and then in the span of like sixty seconds, some crazy shit happens. We see that Victoria’s painting is of Cooper holding a skeleton and, suddenly, the ghost of the dead sister appears in the corner of the room. End of film.

You can’t have high expectations when you watch something like this. If you are ever in the mood to watch soft-core pornography with a ghost of a plot, check it out.