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Now, I can't say how apparent it is to strangers on the Internet, but if anyone has the misfortune of meeting me in real life, they'll know that I'm a huge square. I tuck in my shirt. (Even on Casual Fridays. Sorry, I don't believe in wearing long sleeve button-up shirts untucked, but will allow a few exceptions. Am I talking about clothes again? Yes.) I pay my taxes. I avoid jay-walking when possible. I've never even smoked a doobie. (Even though it's legal here.) What all this has to do with movies is anybody's guess, but let's entertain a hypothetical here. If a gang of dirty hippies rolled up into my town, how would I react? Probably indifferently, what they do is their business. What if they were a gang of devil-worshipping hippies? Again, what they do is their business. What if they started antagonizing the townsfolk? Would I do anything then? Yes, I would. I would very likely soil myself and then call the police (on the hippies, not on myself). Would I, I dunno, give them a bunch of meat pies tainted with rabid blood? Unlikely, but I probably wouldn't feel too bad if somebody did that in this chain of events.
This is roughly the plot of I Drink Your Blood, in which a gang of devil-worshipping hippies roll into a small town, rape a local girl, rough up an old man and give him acid, and then fall into a rabid, murderous frenzy after being fed contaminated meat pies by the old man's vengeful grandson. The obvious inspiration for the subject matter would have been the Manson murders, and the film was released as part of a double feature with I Eat Your Skin a year after Manson's conviction to capitalize on that publicity. (When combined with the similarly titled I Spit On Your Corpse and I Spit On Your Grave, one can extrapolate a tetralogy wherein a cannibal finishes up his meal and buries his victim unceremoniously after. Pointing out the movies have nothing to do with each other would only spoil the fun.) And this ripped-from-the-headlines quality lends the film a reading as a nightmare for a certain reactionary element in society, wherein the counterculture threatens to upend all that the mainstream holds dear. There are similarities to Night of the Living Dead in that respect, but while George Romero admits the result was somewhat accidental on his part (he's said many times that he cast Duane Jones simply for being the best man for the job), I Drink Your Blood is more calculated in its effect.
That the gang's most important members (Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, who is Indian, George Patterson, who is black, and Jadin Wong, who is Chinese) are people of colour leans into this interpretation, but it's worth noting that these actors are also the most charismatic in the cast, which challenges the audience's sympathies. (Would you rather root for the lame-o kid who spiked the meat pies and his grandpa or these cool, groovy dudes and chicks?) Chowdhury, a dancer by training, is especially magnetic, and brings a physicality that makes him compelling both before and after the rabies-induced insanity. And while he's certainly othered, as far as American movies go, it's a pretty unusual role for a South Asian actor, and his Indian heritage isn't made a point of the way Patterson's blackness and Wong's Asian heritage are. The latter has a scene that brings to mind a famous photograph that would have very much been in public awareness at the time, and despite how insensitive it arguably is, the movie is piling up two-fisted images fast enough at that point that there's no denying to generates the necessary jolt in the viewer.
At this point the movie is at a fever pitch, having shifted to a vision of societal collapse not unlike the Romero film, with the heroes at one point holing themselves up in a none-too-secure-looking house while evading a mindless, violent mob. How the movie reaches this scale I won't exactly reveal and I didn't bother to research whether rabies can in fact be spread in the method employed in this movie, but will hint that the movie's use of a certain plot device subverts the usual kind of threat present when exploitation movies pander with sex scenes. Despite not being polished in the obvious sense, the movie also finds neat stylistic touches, as when it likens the buzz of an electric knife to the thrum of the electronic drone prevalent on the soundtrack. (The scene in question features Lynn Lowry, making her debut here. She has no dialogue, yet her off-kilter presence and distinct features make an impact.) This is far from the most violent movie on the Video Nasties list, and wasn't even the most violent movie released up to that point (Herschell Gordon Lewis had made more graphic movies in the preceding decade), but the fact that it places the violence in a context of societal upheaval, as well as its energetic delivery, give it a sense of real transgression. I'm obviously against censorship and the like, but I can understand why this ended up in a list of banned movies.
I Drink Your Blood (Durston, 1970)
Now, I can't say how apparent it is to strangers on the Internet, but if anyone has the misfortune of meeting me in real life, they'll know that I'm a huge square. I tuck in my shirt. (Even on Casual Fridays. Sorry, I don't believe in wearing long sleeve button-up shirts untucked, but will allow a few exceptions. Am I talking about clothes again? Yes.) I pay my taxes. I avoid jay-walking when possible. I've never even smoked a doobie. (Even though it's legal here.) What all this has to do with movies is anybody's guess, but let's entertain a hypothetical here. If a gang of dirty hippies rolled up into my town, how would I react? Probably indifferently, what they do is their business. What if they were a gang of devil-worshipping hippies? Again, what they do is their business. What if they started antagonizing the townsfolk? Would I do anything then? Yes, I would. I would very likely soil myself and then call the police (on the hippies, not on myself). Would I, I dunno, give them a bunch of meat pies tainted with rabid blood? Unlikely, but I probably wouldn't feel too bad if somebody did that in this chain of events.
This is roughly the plot of I Drink Your Blood, in which a gang of devil-worshipping hippies roll into a small town, rape a local girl, rough up an old man and give him acid, and then fall into a rabid, murderous frenzy after being fed contaminated meat pies by the old man's vengeful grandson. The obvious inspiration for the subject matter would have been the Manson murders, and the film was released as part of a double feature with I Eat Your Skin a year after Manson's conviction to capitalize on that publicity. (When combined with the similarly titled I Spit On Your Corpse and I Spit On Your Grave, one can extrapolate a tetralogy wherein a cannibal finishes up his meal and buries his victim unceremoniously after. Pointing out the movies have nothing to do with each other would only spoil the fun.) And this ripped-from-the-headlines quality lends the film a reading as a nightmare for a certain reactionary element in society, wherein the counterculture threatens to upend all that the mainstream holds dear. There are similarities to Night of the Living Dead in that respect, but while George Romero admits the result was somewhat accidental on his part (he's said many times that he cast Duane Jones simply for being the best man for the job), I Drink Your Blood is more calculated in its effect.
That the gang's most important members (Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, who is Indian, George Patterson, who is black, and Jadin Wong, who is Chinese) are people of colour leans into this interpretation, but it's worth noting that these actors are also the most charismatic in the cast, which challenges the audience's sympathies. (Would you rather root for the lame-o kid who spiked the meat pies and his grandpa or these cool, groovy dudes and chicks?) Chowdhury, a dancer by training, is especially magnetic, and brings a physicality that makes him compelling both before and after the rabies-induced insanity. And while he's certainly othered, as far as American movies go, it's a pretty unusual role for a South Asian actor, and his Indian heritage isn't made a point of the way Patterson's blackness and Wong's Asian heritage are. The latter has a scene that brings to mind a famous photograph that would have very much been in public awareness at the time, and despite how insensitive it arguably is, the movie is piling up two-fisted images fast enough at that point that there's no denying to generates the necessary jolt in the viewer.
At this point the movie is at a fever pitch, having shifted to a vision of societal collapse not unlike the Romero film, with the heroes at one point holing themselves up in a none-too-secure-looking house while evading a mindless, violent mob. How the movie reaches this scale I won't exactly reveal and I didn't bother to research whether rabies can in fact be spread in the method employed in this movie, but will hint that the movie's use of a certain plot device subverts the usual kind of threat present when exploitation movies pander with sex scenes. Despite not being polished in the obvious sense, the movie also finds neat stylistic touches, as when it likens the buzz of an electric knife to the thrum of the electronic drone prevalent on the soundtrack. (The scene in question features Lynn Lowry, making her debut here. She has no dialogue, yet her off-kilter presence and distinct features make an impact.) This is far from the most violent movie on the Video Nasties list, and wasn't even the most violent movie released up to that point (Herschell Gordon Lewis had made more graphic movies in the preceding decade), but the fact that it places the violence in a context of societal upheaval, as well as its energetic delivery, give it a sense of real transgression. I'm obviously against censorship and the like, but I can understand why this ended up in a list of banned movies.