You see a title like Blood Mania and think 'well, there should be some blood, and some violence, maybe some horror, and definitely mania.' Well, there is none of that. but oddly enough when I tried to find another title, perhaps one that was given to the film that wasn't made to beef up sales, there's none of that, either. Instead the movie is like a psychedelic soap opera concerning a skeezy doctor guy played by Peter Carpenter (who also co-wrote and produced the film) who has a 50,000 'tax problem' from giving abortions, and has to pay back the debt, and (one of) his lovers, sultry but cold Maria De Aragon, hatches her own plot to kill her bed-ridden a-hole father and then collect the inheritance... which is not the case, color us shocked.
I might be fine with the film not being, you know, horror, if it had something else to bring to the table dramatically. It doesn't even have that; this is, perhaps accurately, a reflection of what a "drive-in" movie was like at the time, and released in a box-set along with other Crown International pictures. At a drive-in the convention was that people would go to make out and/or have lots and lots of sex. I imagine that Blood Mania could make for a good drive-in movie in that context, as if you tune out for a while you won't miss much (say, for all of those scenes of soft-core sex, albeit nice to look at with the hot bodies of De Aragon and Reagan Wilson, pretty lifeless). Not least of which is one sort of 'montage' of walking around between Carpenter and Peters in their 'courtship' phase, and it just goes on and on and on.
I mention psychedelia because while no one really "trips" or smokes pot, there is in the music that rip-off flavor of something like Jimi Hendrix Experience. If only the director had more imagination then maybe it could have been a wicked melodrama - as it is whatever he tries to bring to the table is just not working throughout: dull characters, dull situations, over the top music, and not much blood really. If you need to tune out one night it's a good pick, but do NOT expect it to be horror, unless you're one of those people that considers the 2011 The Roommate to be horror. Or need to see copious oobs and don't want to scamper over to the internet.
I might be fine with the film not being, you know, horror, if it had something else to bring to the table dramatically. It doesn't even have that; this is, perhaps accurately, a reflection of what a "drive-in" movie was like at the time, and released in a box-set along with other Crown International pictures. At a drive-in the convention was that people would go to make out and/or have lots and lots of sex. I imagine that Blood Mania could make for a good drive-in movie in that context, as if you tune out for a while you won't miss much (say, for all of those scenes of soft-core sex, albeit nice to look at with the hot bodies of De Aragon and Reagan Wilson, pretty lifeless). Not least of which is one sort of 'montage' of walking around between Carpenter and Peters in their 'courtship' phase, and it just goes on and on and on.
I mention psychedelia because while no one really "trips" or smokes pot, there is in the music that rip-off flavor of something like Jimi Hendrix Experience. If only the director had more imagination then maybe it could have been a wicked melodrama - as it is whatever he tries to bring to the table is just not working throughout: dull characters, dull situations, over the top music, and not much blood really. If you need to tune out one night it's a good pick, but do NOT expect it to be horror, unless you're one of those people that considers the 2011 The Roommate to be horror. Or need to see copious oobs and don't want to scamper over to the internet.