Abominable Advent Calendar Day 25: Blood Beat (1983)
Crapsterpiece Category: WTF Were They Thinking?
Heads up: Deer gutting, killer orgasms
Blood Beat is a Christmas movie, in the sense that the story happens at Christmas. It’s also very, very weird. It’s billed as a horror movie, and there are certainly murders, but it’s more of a supernatural, psychological, psychedelic thriller than a horror flick. And did I mention it’s weird?
College-age siblings Dolly and Ted bring Ted’s girlfriend Sarah to their rural Wisconsin home at Christmas to meet their mom, Cathy, and her boyfriend, Gary. Cathy frowns when she meets Sarah; the two feel like they’ve met before, but neither can remember where or how, and they feel uneasy around each other.
The siblings, Sarah, Gary, and Uncle Pete go hunting, and they’re about to shoot a deer when Sarah yells out and runs away, crashing into an injured man. She’s upset and goes upstairs to lie down, and dreams of finding samurai armor in a chest. This somehow—don’t ask how, because it’s not clear—triggers all sorts of weirdness to happen: Cathy goes into some sort of trance while she paints, as though she’s channeling; stuff starts flying around the house; and a samurai warrior spirit, summoned each time Sarah has an orgasm, starts bumping off the neighbors.
Cathy is obviously psychic—she’s got magic literally coming out of her fingers, in the way only a cheesy ‘80s movie psychic can—and knows more about the origins of the samurai than she’s telling. At one point it appears that the samurai spirit is dispatched. But then it just takes on another form, the final battle begins, and Cathy’s family finds out she’s not the only one in the family with the magic touch.
Blood Beat is slow, the special defects are z-grade, and the acting leaves a lot to be desired. But some of the photography is quite good, and it’s not like anything else you’ve ever seen. It seems to be an attempt by a couple of French guys to make an art-house slasher. In Wisconsin. And it can be a cool watch if you’re tippling in the eggnog or just in the right frame of mind for bizarre Christmas fare.
