Bloodbath (1975) User Reviews

I give it a grapefruit out of Nnnnnnnngh

[Bezenby · 5/10 · 5 December 2018]

A bunch of burned-out, washed-up ex-pats live out their existence in a Spanish Coastal town, ignoring the natives and bitterly waiting for better days that never come. The locals practise weird rites and old crones walk the streets. Kids are found drowned or worse. Strange hippies descend on the town to seduce the ex-pats. There's barely and plot and the ending just raises more questions.

Dennis Hopper plays Chicken, a burned out drug addict with the manic personality of Dennis Hopper. Chicken keeps seeing his mother everywhere and has all sorts of crazy crap going on in his head. Carroll Baker plays a washed-up actress whom we first see having a pee into the sea after a drunken night out. She keeps waiting for a call to go back to Hollywood. Some other guy plays an ex-RAF officer waiting out his days getting drunk with his wife. Oh, and then there's the middle-aged gay guy firing out snide remarks left right and centre.

We get to see this lot living some sort of budget-level Fellini type lifestyle almost independent of the locals. The hippies seems to spark of some sort of killing spree by someone, but don't be fooled into thinking you're going to get any resolution from this one because while there are a few bloody murders, we never really get to find out who did them. Or why, for that matter. It's all very arty and surreal.

What makes it watchable is Dennis Hopper being insane and Carroll Baker trying to outdo him by being the same. In fact, I've never seen Baker more animated. She even lets out a blood curdling scream at a dinner table when she isn't the centre of attention. Her character is continually on the move while reminiscing about past times (she even relates an encounter which sounds exactly like something Harvey Weinstein would do!) while getting progressively more drunk and depressed.

What's it all about though? No idea. There's some gory deaths here (including a kid being crushed and a nasty impalement up the jacksy for one character) but...can't help with any explanations.

All I can say is "WOW"

[phurrballs · 6/10 · 12 September 2007]

This flick is for the Hopper obsessive fan. When you have seen all his other work, then you have no choice but to see this. I agree with the other reviewer, much of what you see him "acting" like, is probably close to the real Hopper. This was done right after Apocalypse Now, he went from that film to do this one. The movie itself is horrible. No real story. Bad sound and picture. Even some really horrible dubbing of Hopper's voice which leaves me scratching my head because the dubbed voice matches exactly to what Hopper is saying, but it clearly is not him speaking. It is not all dubbed, but a few parts are and it was a disappointment because I happen to be one of those obsessed fans who not only loves his eyes and smile, but loves his voice. LOL So, if you have seen all of his work, then watch this (if you can find a copy of it). My fave movie of his is Kid Blue, good luck finding a copy of that too, however it was on TV not long ago. I being the obsessed person I am, have a copy of ALL his movies, even the really really bad ones. :)

Interesting & Odd - Boomer Review

[dinatekno · 5/10 · 18 December 2021]

Those of us over 50's should come to this film for the Carroll Baker and Dennis Hopper combo alone! The rest of it reminds me of stoner parties with drunken friends. Only these people are oblivious to the world around them and forced into a hell created from the dregs of their own self-absorbed dependencies and psychosis.

Forgotten Hopper classic.

[Infofreak · 26 June 2001]

Lovers of gonzo movies must sooner or later stumble across the wild and wonderful career of Dennis Hopper. His most interesting and "out there" period is also his least discussed. The so-called "lost decade" from roughly The Last Movie to Apocalypse Now. During this time he wasn't constantly working but he did make movies like Kid Blue, Tracks, Mad Dog Morgan and The American Friend, all due for reassessment. For my money the great lost Hopper performance can be found in Bloodbath (aka The Sky Is Falling), an obscure but worthwhile Spanish horror film. I use the term "performance" loosely because when watching his demented behaviour here you often get the feeling that much of what's on screen was probably similar to your typical day-in-the-life of Dennis in the Seventies! Hopper as Chicken hallucinates frequently, mumbles, rambles, freaks out, shoots up, makes love, quotes Hassan I Sabbah, and terrorises a poor girl by breaking a raw egg in her face and making her sing "Shortening Bread". Yup, it's that good. There are also some nice supporting roles from the zany ex-pats, especially the lovely Carroll Baker (Hopper's costar in Giant!) as a sad, faded Hollywood beauty queen still waiting for "that call" from the Studio.

BLOODBATH (Silvio Narizzano, 1979) **

[Bunuel1976 · 5/10 · 15 August 2011]

One of the undeniable pleasures of compulsive movie-watching is discovering obscure stuff such as this one which not only managed to rope in a surprising number of talents but the end result is so oddball as to make one wonder how it ever came to be written, shot and distributed!; indeed, in comparison to the stream-of-consciousness nature of the film under review, the same director's would-be arty Western BLUE (1968; which I have just watched) seems like a walk in the park!

For leading man Dennis Hopper (called "Chicken" here!), it was no big stretch to play this after his self-directed THE LAST MOVIE (1971) and TRACKS (1977) – what is more, he seems to have kept his APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) look for it – nor, for that matter, appearing as a junkie. For his co-star, too, Carroll Baker – here sending up her own image of a has-been Hollywood diva (dubbed "Treasure" in her case!), it was basically a continuation of her "Euro-Cult" outings of a few years earlier. Way-past-his-prime Richard Todd, however, must have kicked himself for accepting to appear in such a 'depraved' film, where he has to call his hard-drinking suicidal wife a "bitch", gay hanger-on Alice a "whore", and is even seen ogling an Oriental girl about 40 years his junior! Todd's wife is Faith Brook, an unknown name to me but, looking up her resume' to IMDb, she has been featured in films as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock's SUSPICION (1941), Joseph Losey's THE INTIMATE STRANGER (1956) and Anthony Mann's THE HEROES OF TELEMARK (1965)! With respect to the transvestite, apparently the actor was himself so inclined, since he went by the name of Win(ifred) Wells: actually, it was the latter who supplied the script and that of another strange Narizzano film i.e. the Italian-made REDNECK (1973)!

What plot there is essentially develops into a quartet of couplings: Hopper with a good-looking blonde, Baker with a bland-looking macho (who's almost always stark naked), Todd with the afore-mentioned Asian and Wells with a black stud (unflatteringly referred to as "Turd")! For what it is worth, a fleeting character in the film announces herself as "Carrie Nation", but whether this was a direct nod to the pop group at the center of Russ Meyer's BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1970) is hard to tell under the circumstances! Anyway, all four protagonists come to a sticky end: WWII vet Todd goes willingly before a firing-squad, spurred on by his girl, in full official regalia(?!) – his wife is thus left alone; Wells is gored by a bull in his lover's shack (how the animal came to be there is anybody's guess); Baker is drowned in a pool following an orgy; and Hopper stumbles dead on the beach, having shot up once too many (he frequently hallucinates about his parents, with whom he seems to have had an oedipal relationship – worshipping his mother while hating his evangelist father).

The rest is a semi-improvised wallow in hedonism: this Spanish production bore the original title LAS FLORES DEL VICIO – which, translating to THE FLOWERS OF VICE, links it with Jose' Ramon Larraz' no less outrageous THE COMING OF SIN (1977); the BLOODBATH moniker, then, is hilariously misleading and, for the record, the film is also known as THE SKY IS FALLING (an appropriately bleak line in a song Baker is constantly crooning). In fact, it is overflowing with local color in the form of peasants' toil-ravaged faces and solemn religious rites, to say nothing of violence – animals being nonchalantly slaughtered or beaten and, in the best (if tellingly irrelevant) sequence, the Bunuelian image of a child getting trampled by a crowd (even if we had already witnessed the discovery of the same kid's drowned body!). That is not forgetting the expected moments of Hopper lunacy: notably, squashing a handful of eggs early on squarely in the face of his black lover and then forcing her to sing a traditional 'from the old plantation' tune(!) and a remarkable dialogue exchange by the sea-side between him and his latest partner, which I quote verbatim: "You look beautiful like that" – "What?" – "I said 'You look beautiful like that'" – "I can't hear you" – "I said 'I wanna rape you'!" – "Then you should!"

Terrible

[philmd · 2/10 · 30 June 2023]

I've tried maybe 3 times to sit through this over the years and hadn't managed it. I bought the blu ray box set Villages of the Damned from Vinegar Syndrome which contains this and 2 other Spanish horrors so decided to make a determined effort to watch this as 'The Sky is Falling' all the way through. I wish I hadn't bothered. Drug fuelled hippies, odd symbolism, awful soundtrack, poor acting, unintelligible plot - this film has it all. Carroll Baker has appeared in some classic giallos but is wasted here. Dennis Hopper has made some good films but this is definitely not one of them. The thoroughly unlikeable homosexual character does meet an unhappy end via a bulls horn up the jacksie but not really a highlight.

Running some 13 mins longer than the UK pre cert version there may be some extra violence and animal killing as well as dialogue.

Don't waste your time or money.

Quite Simply The Worst Film I have Ever Seen

[archer75 · 1/10 · 2 November 2006]

I didn't get it. It was a film I saw as a teenager and I remember how bad it was.

It seems that everyone was enjoying an hedonistic lifestyle, the upshot being, however, that you ended up dying because of it.

My lasting memory is of Richard Todd (what was he thinking) walking quite happily to the firing squad, just to impress the girl.

Plan 9 from outer space might be a bad film, but this is so much worse. This will never have the cult following of Plan 9 and I hope, in a perverse sort of way, that this film gets deleted and is never seen again.

Like a bad acid trip— or maybe a good one, depending on where you're coming from

[drownsoda90 · 7/10 · 17 March 2015]

This bizarro cult thriller has a bunch of languid American expatriates dwelling in a dreary Spanish village on the sea. Among them are a hippie junkie with mommy issues (Dennis Hopper), a has-been Hollywood glamour queen (Carroll Baker), and a jaded gay man (Win Wells). The presence of a religious cult infiltrating the community has dire consequences as the American outcasts meet their individual demons.

"Bloodbath," also known as "The Sky is Falling" and "The Flowers of Vice," is, in a word, obscure— it's been rarely seen in North America, and is often quietly shuffled in with all of the really odd career choices Dennis Hopper made in the late seventies/early eighties in a substance abuse stupor. While this is a fair categorization, what's not fair is that this film deserves an audience that has no reasonable access to it.

For fans of bizarre, surrealist thrillers and horror films from the bygone acid era of the sixties and seventies, "Bloodbath" is quite an experience. Narrative cohesion here takes a backseat, while the individual stories of these characters weave in and out of fantasy and consciousness. While on one hand we have a sort of surrealist thriller, or even a giallo, we also very much have a tragedy, and that's one of the more interesting things about the film. Remnants of American culture are tormented by their own failures, and their successes. The fluid unspooling of the narrative framed in the context of the religious cult festival is strangely sublime.

Dennis Hopper plays up his role as the drugged-out hippie tormented by his upbringing; Carroll Baker, who oddly enough co-starred with Hopper in 1956's "Giant" alongside Hollywood royalty Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean, arguably outshines him, and is fantastic in the role of a forgotten Hollywood starlet; the role is half-truth for Baker herself, and she uses this to her advantage. The fact that these two wound up together in such a production so many years later, both ostracized from the industry, would be a weird twist of fate in any other film, but it's almost an inverse normalcy here.

Overall, "Bloodbath" is a strangely eerie and thoroughly bizarre endeavor. It is a film that admittedly has a limited audience, but it is a pleasantly befuddling ninety minutes, and is prime viewing for anyone who has an affinity for some of the seventies' weirdest offerings, complete with child sacrifice, drugs, and tragic beauty queens. Definitely an "out there" flick, but for fans of bizarro thrillers, it's definitely worth seeking out. 7/10.

Great in idea

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 28 January 2024]

The Flowers of Vice is also known as Bloodbath and The Sky Is Falling. It reunited Dennis Hopper and Carroll Baker 18 years after Giant. He plays a drugged out of his mind painter and poet named Chicken and she's a washed up alcoholic actress who people call Treasure who have both come to a small Spanish town. There's also a retired British Air Corps captain called Terence (Richard Todd) and his constantly drunk wife Heather (Faith Brook) and a gay man who has seen it all, Allen (Wim Wells, the director's long-time partner).

Filmed in Mojacar, Almeria, Spain - a small seaside village of Spaniards, British and American expatriates - this movie is filled with menace from the beginning. The town just seems strange, Hopper and his friends feel more dead than alive and there's a group of hippies that may be gorgeous but who worship the killings of the Manson Family. It's not like the village was any less strange what with all the animal sacrifices - this may as well be Italian - taking place on Easter weekend. Soon, the foreigners begin to die, one by one, killed by the young people who seemingly will replace them. Maybe, who can say, because this movie feels as if it doesn't want to tell you any answers and I feel as if I am trying to explain it all by what I have written. It may destroy your patience but I am a huge Hopper and Baker fan, so I was excited to see a movie they did that for so long was impossible to get.

Directed by Silvio Narizzano (Die! Die! My Darling!) and written by Gonzalo Suárez, this ends with - spoiler warning - the villagers trampling a small boy to death. He was the son of Americans who lived in the village. They ran El Saloon and had grown close to the director and crew, so they got their son a role getting killed at the end of an art film.

Early Dennis Hopper film.

[Pacey-8 · 7/10 · 16 June 2001]

Pretty bad Hopper movie. About a bunch of hippies who live on a small island, and who indulge in drugs, sex and homosexuality. Quite graphic in the depictions of heroin usage, sex scenes and gay sex for its age. Not really worth watching - and to make matters worse, the now out of print video features and extremely poor quality transer.

Psycho-delic silliness a decade too late

[melvelvit-1 · 6/10 · 1 December 2016]

An American junkie (Dennis Hopper) living on the coast of Spain hallucinates a series of fatal sexual fantasies for himself and a motley group of expatriates that include a has-been movie star (Carroll Baker), a former WW II pilot (Richard Todd), his neurotic wife, and a flamboyant homosexual. An interesting idea got lost in a vague, rambling story that might have played better back in the psychedelic 60s and even though it all comes together (sort of) in the end, it reely isn't worth the wait. Unless, of course, you're as crazy about Carroll Baker Eurotrash as I am.

Raquel Welch's Eurotrash SIN (1971) and BLOODBATH both take place in European coastal towns far removed from civilization and the primitive villagers are a sinister, symbolic presence in each. There's food for thought when, dressed in black, the "townies" in both movies practice bizarre pagan rituals that include animal sacrifice and also serve as an eerie Greek Chorus/comeuppance for the protagonists. Definitely a demented double feature for Eurotrash aficionados everywhere!

Deliberately and effectively weird murder thriller in an exotic setting!

[BRAINIAC-2 · 7 January 2002]

A junky (Dennis Hopper), a retired Hollywood actress (Carroll Baker) and several other misfits live in a run down Spanish village. Suddenly they begin turning up dead! A strange and violent film, almost like an Italian "giallo" as if it were directed by Andy Warhol! I dug it!

"The Flowers of Vice"

[lazarillo · 4 April 2012]

A bunch of jaded Anglo-Americans are hanging around a dusty, seaside rural Spanish village for some reason. There is a religious festival going on, but the self-absorbed characters are oblivious (and equally oblivious to the daily tragedies happening around them like a child in a well or a retarded youth being trampled during a parade). Each of these tourists hooks up with a local object of sexual attraction. The washed-up expatriate American glamour actress (well played by washed-up, expatriate American glamour actress Carroll Baker) goes off with a young white "muscle man". Her camp gay friend finds an African-American stud. A British WWII vet ditches his drunken, embittered wife for a young Asian-looking girl. And a junkie played by Dennis Hopper gets together with a young blonde Spanish girl (Inma DeSantis).

This Spanish-Italian co-production could be considered a giallo I guess as the characters all meet their comeuppance in what (sometimes) appears to be foul play, but who is killing them or why is kind of beside the point. It's kind of just instant karma or the "flowers of vice" (as this is called in Spanish) coming to fruit. This movie kind of reminded me of Alberto Cavallone's deranged surrealistic masterpiece "Man, Woman, and Beast" (which was also set during a rural religious festival) or one of those late 60's/early 70's drugged-out "head" movies like Dennis Hopper's own "The Last Movie" where the people behind the camera were no doubt consuming more pharmaceuticals than the people on screen.

Carroll Baker is surprisingly good (even if her role here is obviously not much of a stretch) and Dennis Hopper could always do this kind of stuff pretty well no matter what substance was in his bloodstream. It's also nice to see the ethereally pretty Spanish actress Inma DeSantis, even if she got rewarded for her presence here by getting to do a long, nude sex scene with a VERY sweaty, pre-detox Hopper (who French kisses a cough drop out of her mouth in a scene that is either very erotic or very disgusting, I'm not quite sure). This is a very strange movie, but I actually kinda liked it

I was living In Spain when this was filmed

[krh40 · 29 January 2005]

I was in Spain when this was filmed with my family. The film was shot in the town of Mojacar in the early 1970's. I met most of the actors and knew Silvio Narizzano and his partner Winn Wells personally since they lived down the street from our home. My parents owned a bar/restaurant called El Saloon and all the actors spent a great deal of time in their establishment during filming. My brother was cast as the mentally challenged child who was stomped to death in the plaza as a woman looked on from a balcony.

I clearly remember the shot, however I have never seen the movie as I was quite young at the time. I would like to obtain the movie (dvd, video). If anyway can tell me where to purchase that would be great.

Thank you.

Ninety minutes of great relentless weirdness.

[EyeAskance · 29 March 2004]

A decrepit little Spanish village is the setting for this terribly overlooked artsploitation gem, wherein a diverse grouping of screwball characters begin to serially meet mysterious and violent ends...among them, a faded Old-Hollywood bombshell, a poetry spouting drug fiend, a stuffy WWll vet and his unstable wife, a couple of muscular gigolos, a bitter, mincing queen, and two waifish young girls.

Prepare yourself for mind bending surrealism, gore murders, cryptoglyphic metaphors, and a standout scene which may be the most politically incorrect in any film made after the Great Depression. Stir in some gay sex and dead animals for good measure, and voilà...an indescribable head-trip that fans of freak cinema won't want to miss. It's surprisingly well mechanized in most technical aspects, and the off-kilter characters are aptly effectuated by an appropriately eccentric cast(Baker, de Santis, and Hopper, most notably).

6/10...recommended.

"We Are Bathed In The Blood Of The Lamb!"...

[azathothpwiggins · 9 June 2021]

BLOODBATH opens with a woman walking the world's ugliest pig. No, really, you've got to see this thing! Next, a woman pulls the head off of a chicken. We get the immediate impression that something wonky is going on here, since none of the locals seem to have been born with the ability to smile. That is, unless they happen to be leering maniacally.

In total contrast to this, a very non-twelfth century-looking woman appears, dressed in groovy threads. She enters a building where western music plays. Her name is Susanna (Alibe Parsons), and she's met by the heroin-filled, racial slur-spouting, Chicken (Dennis Hopper). They're part of a misfit group of expatriates, living together in this tiny, ultra-religious village in Spain, and they stick out like ballerinas in a bowling alley.

These two groups are set against each other, as scenes of a religious festival is intercut with the hedonistic frivolity of the foreigners. Does anyone see a catastrophic culture clash coming?

Enter the fun-loving ex-movie star, Treasure Evans (Caroll Baker). She's sort of a younger version of Nora Desmond, and another part of this oddball bunch of bananas, that includes an aging WWII General and a mega-flamboyant gay man. They're a family, clinging together in order to be themselves, in spite of their increasingly oppressive surroundings. We get the impression that none of them could survive alone.

When these exiles gather for a Good Friday celebration, their drunken revelry flies in the face of the solemn procession going on beside them. Things have been tense and creepy all along, and the atmosphere gets really thick from here on out!

Soon, the darkness, religious insanity, and death take over completely.

This is one of those wonderfully weird, disturbing films that could only have come out in the 1970's. Filled with bizarre situations and an overhanging sense of gathering, unstoppable doom, the horror bubbles up like a corpse in a bog!

Mr. Hopper is as good or better here than in many of his outings, playing it natural, and letting it fly! For those who've never seen him go absolutely berserk, well, he certainly does that here!

SOME NICE TOUCHES: Watch for the red telephone! And, what's up with the pregnant woman with the umbrella?...