96 Min. / Directed by Joel M. Reed / Troma
Bloodsucking Freaks centers on the exploits of Sardu, a shady theater owner with some bad ideas rolling around in his head. Sardu is one sick little bastard, and throughout the movie this guy dabbles in just about every act of sadism you can imagine. Sardu’s love is the theater, but he runs a white slavery ring on the side for the pretty polly. Sardu’s midget assistant, Ralphus, runs the daily workings of his operation, tasks which include: kidnaping ballerinas and theater critics, feeding the caged females in the basement, and doing happy dances when they’re called for.
This movie is one sadistic little ditty, but it kind of grows on you like some kind of strange illness. I think that director Joel Reed had much more of a spoof running in mind when he first devised this film, but in the heat of production things got a bit wilder than expected. Like most films released under the Troma banner it shares a love for mean spirited humor, but it goes one step further than most Troma films in that it delves heavily into sadism. Women have clamps placed on their nipples and are electrocuted. Women are beheaded. Women are slowly pulled apart. Women have their heads squished by clamps. Women are kidnapped. Women are used as furniture.
I think Joel was seeing this in a much funnier light, but the deaths of these people are sooo prolonged that you feel the overwhelming need to fast forward a few seconds into the movie in order to escape the constant wailing of these girls. Sure it doesn’t follow Herschell Gordon Lewis’s idea of a “quicky, gory death,” But who the hell listens to that guy? Damn golf-playing ingrate, what the hell….Anyway.
Despite what it sounds like, Bloodsucking Freaks is actually a fairly good comedy. Black, almost sickening comedy, but still comedy. Reed seems to be lampooning the stuck-up NY Theatre scene of the time but it’s hard to see what he’s getting at outside of that period context. Louis De Jesus as Ralphus steals the show most of the time with his madcap antics. If they ever figure out how to make a sequel to Bloodsucking Freaks they better get this guy back, because he is literally one of the best parts of this film. Besides the mind-numbing sadism. I’ve heard that Luis went on to become the star of such successful porno films as “Samurai Dick” and the “Anal Dwarf” series. Unfortunately our good man Sardu, well, actor Seamus O’Brien was supposedly murdered not long after the film was finished shooting.
By the time the crazy doctor shaves a girl’s hair off her head, drills a hole through her skull and sticks a straw in to suck the blood out, I doubt you will care about how horrible the acting is or how badly this movie was lit and shot. You may suddenly feel the need to vomit, but that’s what cinema is all about, now isn’t it?
2020 Update: Bloodsucking Freaks has subsequently been re-released on DVD and then given a high-definition upgrade in Blu-Ray releases from 88 Films in the UK and Troma themselves. Joel M. Reed has passed away and gone to the big S&M dungeon in the sky but his legacy remains.
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