Incense for the Damned

The picture concerns about a bunch of friends ( Patrick Mcnee , Johnny Sekka..) , as they are looking for a English young student (Patrick Mower) who is seduced into an old cult carried out by a beautiful vampire (Imogen Stubbs) and being disappeared while was researching in a Greek island . There happens various unsolved killings and the police blame him as perpetrator of the creepy murders but his friends and the fiancée whose daddy is the University Principal (Peter Cushing) no believing his culpability but is spelled by a blood-sucking vampire .

It's a mediocre British terror film with suspense , action and vampires but a little bit boring and slow-moving . However , it contains some spectacular and glimmer Greeks outdoors , besides set on Oxford University . Patrick McNee ( Avengers) interprets smartly , as always . The great Peter Cushing plays correctly the starring's dad but his acting is secondary , also Edward Woodward (The wicker man) acts in a minimum role . Patrick Mower (Devil rides out)as charmed young is good and Johnny Sekka (Naked prey) in a quite secondary role is nice . The movie is regularly directed by Robert Hatford Davies , author of some other Horror film as ¨Corruption¨ (with Peter Cushing) , ¨The Fiend¨ (with Patrick McNee) and Blaxploitation movies as ¨Black Gunn¨ (Jim Brown) and ¨ The Take¨ (Billy Dee Williams) . This director due to disagreements with producers signed the film as Michael Burrows and the motion picture was shelved during years until its cinematic exhibition.

"Oh, this looks good" I thought scanning the DVD slick of 'Bloodsuckers'. Horror legend Peter Cushing, 'The Avengers' Patrick Macnee, Edward Woodward just before 'The Wicker Man', plus Patrick Mower, who was in 'The Devil Rides Out' and Alex Davion from 'The Plague Of The Zombies', two of the best and most underrated Hammer movies. Well nothing could prepare me for how poor it turned out to be! Even the worst Hammer movie I've seen is ten times better than this. It's confusing AND boring, with way too much narration and production values that make it look like an episode of 'The Champions' or some other half forgotten 60s/70s TV show. Cushing is hardly in it, Woodward even less (one scene), and the highlight is a donkey chase! I'm not kidding! The disc I watched included a 6 minutes deleted scene of a psychedelic drug orgy which wasn't used in the final cut. Too bad because it's better than anything that was used. Director Robert Hartford-Davies ('The Yellow Teddybears') apparently disowned this movie and I don't blame him one bit!

An Oxford don (Patrick Mower) goes to Greece to study mythology. Suddenly he disappears and nobody hears from him. A bunch of his friends and fiancée travel there to find him. They discover he is traveling all over Greece--and wherever he goes there's a murder. He's also under the spell of beautiful but deadly Chriseis (Imogen Hassell)...

This DOES have some good points. The initial story is intriguing and there is some beautiful location shooting in Greece and a few exciting fights here and there. Also Peter Cushing and Patrick Macnee are in it--they're not given much to do but they're both very good. Also Mower is pretty good and Hassall is VERY good (and beautiful).

But the plot gets increasingly confusing (and sillier) as it goes on. When they threw in the vampirism it was badly handled and just too ridiculous to take seriously. There were obvious production difficulties--quite a few scenes just have narration. Also Madeleine Hinde is just horrible playing Mowere's fiancée.

Basically though--it's boring! I dozed off a few times...and didn't miss a thing. And, as a horror movie, it just doesn't work. It plays more like an action film or a travelogue of Greece.

Not totally worthless (because of Cushing and Macnee) but not really worth seeing. I give it a 4.

Blood Suckers is a bit of an oddity really. On the surface it looks like yet another typical British horror movie from the early 70's. A little bit of the occult, some nudity and starring Peter Cushing. But, in all honesty, it's not that typical at all. Despite having a pretty impressive cast – Patrick Macnee (The Avengers), Patrick Mower (The Devil Rides Out), Edward Woodward (The Wicker Man) and Cushing – it doesn't really utilise them very well at all. Cushing is in it at the beginning and end but doesn't really register; Patrick Macnee is killed half way through, Woodward has an uninteresting cameo role, while Mower seems to sleep-walk through his role. Technically the film itself is, at best, a little haphazard. It appears to have been edited together using a hack-saw, while the storyline could charitably be described as a little confused and unfocused. In fact it begins with the kind of voice-over that is normally used to cover for the fact that a lot of material was not filmed; seemingly the film ran into some difficulties so this may explain this.

Having said all this it is a little unusual and that does garner it some points. The story of the are-they-or-aren't-they vampires is a little different, if admittedly not all that successfully told. The varied locations do offer something a little different to the norm too, although it does feel more like an action-adventure than an actual horror film a lot of the time. So, it's a mess but a mess not without some interest. Also, on the DVD release I saw, the deleted scene was an extended psychedelic orgy which was completely removed for some unfathomable reason; it would have easily have been the best sequence in the film proper if it had been included.

Got to say I agree with much of Wayne's comments on this film and the note that the director refused to be associated with the screened version doesn't surprise me. This film was shown on TV in the UK in 2004 and I have to say it has to be the worst quality film I have seen on the box. It seems to be made up of the film shot by the director covering the story, inter-cut with stock travelogue shots of Greece. The lighting is such that the black character's facial features are lost in a lot of scenes. The acting from the supporting cast is wooden and even the stars are on the verge of rabbit-in-headlights unease. Not a pleasant evening's viewing!