Starring:

Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury as Horace
Jadine Wong as Sue-Lin
Rhonda Fultz as Molly
George Patterson as Rollo

Rabies-Infected Satanic LSD-Crazed Hippies! Best horror movie concept ever, or what? This cheapo 1970 horror movie is one of the most side-splittingly funny things I've seen in a long while. I think it was supposed to be serious, though. I mean, LSD-crazed hippie Satanists descending upon a small quiet country town in the middle of nowhere and terrorising innocent locals sounds pretty serious to me.

It was produced by a guy called Jerry Gross, an apt surname considering much of the goings-on.

We start out with dramatic footage of the above-mentioned hippies conducting a Satanic ritual around a bonfire in the nude, late at night in the woods. Their long-haired weirdo charismatic leader, one Horace Bones (I kid you not) gives a rousing pep talk to his followers: 'Let it be known to all the spirits that I, Horace Bones, was born into Hell! I am the first-born son of Satan!' His nekked followers gaze on him adoringly, and he pours some liquid substance into a large goblet. 'Let it be known, sons and daughters, that Satan was an acid-head,' he declares smilingly. 'Drink from his cup. Pledge yourselves. And together, we'll all freak out!' Everyone has a sip, and then they proceed to kill a chicken and pour the blood over a nude middle-aged Chinese lady member of the congregation.

However, another member suddenly spots a frightened teenaged girl hiding behind a nearby tree, who has been watching the shenanigans. 'Who is that girl? Stop her!' cries Horace, brandishing the dead chicken. Two naked male hippies go off in pursuit, chasing the girl through the woods, while another tells Horace 'She's OK, she's just a local girl.' 'Local girl, MY ASS!' Horace shouts angrily. The two nude hippies catch up with the girl and have their way with her. She stumbles home afterwards and collapses in the main road of the tiny (population 40) country town.

We next cut back and forth between scenes of the hippies enjoying themselves the next morning, cavorting about and playing pranks on each other and having a merry old time (mercifully now with their clothes back on), while the abused girl, in a state of shock and unable to speak, is taken home by her little brother Pete and attended by her family. When she recovers and is able to explain what happened, her Granddad tries to confront the hippies but they beat him up and force him to take LSD.

Little brother Pete decides to get revenge for his sister and grandfather. It just happens that he helps out at the local pie shop, which the hippies have taken to frequenting for their lunch. There's a rabid dog in town and Pete decides to shoot it, take some of its blood and lace the hippies' pies with the rabid blood. Well, you can probably just imagine how all that might pan out.

I didn't expect to enjoy this movie at all, never mind as much as I did - from the plot summaries I'd read, it sounded like a pile of crud and really stupid, and, well, it is. But, it is one of the most enjoyable stupid pile-of-crud movies I've seen. During the first few scenes, I thought 'Ho-hum...' but as it went along, it picked up and turned into really compulsive viewing. The acting and the story, as awful and hokey as they both are, actually do keep you watching and the whole thing is quite fun. I really liked it.

Be warned that it's pretty gross, though, what with people getting maimed in all sorts of horrible and graphic ways, limbs being chopped off and so on. One of my fave gross scenes is when the hippies move into an old abandoned rat-infested house and have boisterous fun running through the house gleefully shooting rats while giggling inanely, then put loads of them on long skewers and barbeque them for dinner. Nice.

The characters are actually well-drawn and are played nicely by a random collection of actors and actresses I'd never seen before or since. None of them came across as professional actors, and I think that gave the movie a bit of charm - much like 'Night of the Living Dead' where the actors were mainly made up of friends and neighbours of the filmmaker - so the characters seemed more like real small-town folks and real crazed hippies than polished actors.

I particularly liked 'Horace Bones' - he came across as an authentic deranged Charles Manson type and was quite convincing and gave a wonderfully hammy performance. (Funnily enough, the actor who portrayed him was actually a serious dancer and painter in real life - this was one of only a very few film roles.) 'Rollo', another of the hippies, is hilarious after he becomes infected with rabies and turns into a totally demented axe murderer - his permanently goofy bug-eyed and frothing-at-the-mouth facial expressions have to be seen and it looks like the actor had a lot of fun playing that character.

As you may expect, the direction, production and cinematography are all awful - it looks more like a home movie than a blockbuster. Actually the photography is not too terrible, but the crappy direction makes it look cheaper than it is. The soundtrack consists of tinny 60s-style music and bargain-basement sound effects. The special effects are fairly good for its day - cheap-looking but still pretty gory. I'm not as bloodthirsty as many horror movie fans and found some of the effects a bit yuck for my own liking, but true horror fans may find it rather tame compared to more graphic modern effects.

This is definitely not a movie for children - it's very violent and contains nudity and some simulated sex acts. The movie is rated either X (the original version) or R (a later edited version) in America but apparently it's still unrated in the UK, having been originally released in the UK in the early 1980s as a sort of 'video nasty' and roundly criticised by Mary Whitehouse at the time. I'm not sure whether my copy is the edited or unedited version, but I would guess it's the unedited one, as it's very graphic for both violence and sex/nudity.

Recommended as a late-night's fun viewing with friends (those with strong stomachs - keep the sick-bucket handy just in case!).

Also on Ciao as thereddragon.