Hermanas de sangre

My review was written in June 1987 after watching the movie on Sony video cassette.

"Blood Sisters" is a relatively new horror film (lensed last year under the generic title "Slash"), but relies on an old-hat format that genre fans tired of at least five years ago. Pic bypassed theatrical distribution for home video use instead.

Filmmaker Roberta Findlay's script mixes one part "The Nesting" and one part "Hell Night": seven pledges to Kappa Gamma Tau sorority ar escorted to a spooky old mansion by sorority sister Linda (Amy Brentano), where they have to spend the night without getting scared while searching for objects (a la scavenger hunt) as their initiation assignment. Of course frat boys have rigged up the place with practical joke tricks.

Per a helpful prolog sequence, she was a brothel 13 years ago where a prostitute and her customer were killed by shotgun blasts. Sure enough, the traumatized little boy (locked in a room by his prostie mother during childhood) has grown up and is killing the pledges one by one. Adding a supernatural element, the girls, to varying degrees, see hallucinations in the mansion (especially in mirrors) of the ghosts of the dead prostitutes and their customers.

PIc consists mainly of the girls wandering around the house searching with flashlights, picked off in gory fashion. There is plenty of nudity and softcore sex (including the requisite lesbian scene) but no scares and little of interest. As a snotty pledge, Maria Machart is the prettiest actress in the cast, but none of them have challenging roles. Special effects are minor.

For a sorority initiation, a group of pledges and there pledgemaster must spend the night in a haunted bordello. A killer also happens upon the scene. Slow moving slasher film with no appealing characters, little logic, poor effects & music score, and slack direction. A total failure in all respects. Rated R; Nudity, Sexual Situations, and Violence.

Blood Sisters (1987)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A group of sorority sisters head to a house that has been abandoned for thirteen years. It turns out that a boy murdered his prostitute mother and one of her lovers in the house. Soon the girls are seeing strange visions and begin getting murdered.

BLOOD SISTERS is another low-budget movie from cult filmmaker Roberta Findlay, which really doesn't have too much going for it. I'm willing to bet that fans of the director will enjoy being able to see her working during the slasher era but she admits on the DVD bonus features that there really wasn't much motivation for her to create a good movie.

It's clear Findlay was working on a low-budget and this means all the gore is missing and the death scenes take place off screen. You know, I've always wondered why people bothered making these types of films if their budget wouldn't allow for special effects. Instead of gore we've given countless nude scenes, which help the sleaze factor but even this gets boring after a while. The performances are mostly laughable and there certainly aren't any scares.

BLOOD SISTERS is certainly a forgettable movie that has some mildly amusing moments.

While these things may seem like fun new additions to the slasher movie subgenre, this film flat-out fails to deliver on all counts.

It begins with a psycho kid blasting a fat hooker and her trick with a rifle at a whorehouse, before cutting to modern times (13 years later) at the Kappa Gamma Tao sorority house. After wasting time at a bar and with a sex scene, sister Linda (Amy Brentano) takes seven pledges to the now abandoned brothel for an initiation scavenger hunt. The house has been booby trapped by fun-loving frat guys (who look like they're reaching their 40s), but ghosts and a psycho killer show up.

Director/scripter/cinematographer Roberta Findlay, whom I believe is one of the most prolific female filmmakers of all time, handles some of the supernatural scenes reasonably well given the budget (a standout being an interesting ghost/mirror sequence), but, with its low-grade cast of unknowns, dark/dreary atmosphere and derivative storyline, BLOOD SISTERS isn't a bit of fun to watch. And I still have no idea why the house is full of ghosts of people who used to work there since only two murders were actually committed.

Guys just wanting to see sexy babes cavorting around in little clothing may be equally disappointed by the selection of actresses on hand. A few of the actresses are attractive, but aside from Marla MacHart, there are really no stunners here, though some of them do appear topless from time to time. In addition, it's is so slow-moving that it takes nearly an entire hour until the first murder!

A group of sorority sisters plan their initiation at a brothel where a horrific murder took place thirteen years prior. What they didn't expect was that the killer has returned to knock off anyone who dares enter the house.

The movie starts with a young boy who enters a bordello of some sorts and uses a shotgun to kill two people who are about to have sex. Fast forward 13 years later to Edmonson College where we see a sorority of girls who have set up a pledge initiaition at the same house where the murder took place. The initiation is that the new pledges have to spend the night at the infamous brothel house for the night. As the evening goes on, a few of the pledges see ghosts wandering the halls and rooms. Pretty soon, someone begins killing the pledges leading to the killer reveal and an unsatisfying ending.

Blood Sisters is one of the those "so bad it's good in a very bad way" low budget horror films from the 80's. I thought it was poorly done with an extremely low budget (of 50K), but it tried to be an entertaining horror film with some supernatural/ghostly scenes of the deceased stalking the rooms of the old house. The acting was bad all around and felt like they were university students who were grabbed off of a campus and offered $100 each to run around and scream for the movie to be completed.

My biggest issue with Blood Sisters is that it drags on and on a bit too much even for my liking. There are too many scenes of the ghosts in the rooms of the house and flashbacks of occurrences from years ago which seem to be filler for the movie. When the killer of this movie finally shows themselves, I'm already feeling a bit bored with the whole thing. The killer reveal is done decently, but viewers can tell a mile away who the murderer is when it is finally revealed. The ending is veruy blah as well.

Blood Sisters was in a DVD collection set that I purchased years back. I was way more interested in the other two movies that came with this for sure. This one is a lame late 80's slasher that does have a bit of effort and heart deep in there.

3/10