Bloodlust!

The description on the DVD box made this look like a forerunner of the SCREAM or Friday THE 13th movies (madman stalks teens) but if I hadn't read it first I wouldn't have guessed than anyone in the cast was supposed to be under thirty (including the head of the Brady Bunch). It didn't take long to figure out this was a MOST DANGEROUS GAME rip-off made on the ultra cheap. As such it seemed to me that the writing and photography were decent efforts but the direction wasn't up to realizing the potential of either. One or two touches (again, in the writing) were clever and took me by surprise and the accent on the gruesome reminded me of an old black and white horror comic, but all in all the movie didn't add up to much. A respectable failure. Oh, and it has the worst cardboard cave set I've ever seen!!

A group of youngsters land on a beautiful, seemingly deserted island while taking a detour on their boating trip. After exploring the wooded island for a few hours they run into a seemingly sweet older man who convinces them to stay at his house since it is getting dark and there are a lot of scary animals roaming the woods at night. The group all agree but there's just something not right about this older man. It turns out he is a crazy millionaire who lets victims loose on the island while he hunts them down and kills them to keep as "trophies". Really not a bad story (although not original) but the execution really is a bit silly. The dialog really is bad especially at the beginning. Robert Reed plays one of the youngsters in an early role of his. It is somehow amusing to hear his voice once you know him as Mike Brady. Although most of the acting was plastic, I thought the part of the crazy millionaire played by Wilton Graff, was pretty decent in what is clearly a role best suited for Vincent Price. A few of the bit parts were well played too actually. This is a remake of "The most dangerous game" that falls short in many places but I really didn't feel bored with this 68 minute movie.

This is a forgettable movie -- even the MST3K version is tepid compared to other episodes of that great show. But one scene stands out for me in this odd little film about an insane island-dwelling man who likes to hunt people. A man -- apparently part of his "stocked prey" program -- wanders up to our protagonists. He's dirty, clothes torn, beard overgrown, obviously been there for awhile. He wants to say something to the gang -- he's down on his knees, pleading with arms raised in supplication -- but all he says is "Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!" And you can tell this actor was really giving it his "Stanislavsky Method" all, and the director was probably yelling at him, "I want more torture in your 'Ahhs'!" In the end, he looks like a mute Al Jolson on skid row. It's worth watching the film for the giggle you'll get from this poor dope.

I've seen this movie in the MST3K version, and I have to agree with those who've previously said that it didn't deserve to be there. It was, as many have pointed out, a decent (although not a blockbuster, it didn't try for that) movie version of the short story "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell. This one was fun, and while it was not always perfect, it did come across as a worthwhile movie.

This is not to say that Mike and the 'bots comments weren't deserved - the movie is not spectacular, and there are parts that deserve the snide comments. But all in all, the movie itself did not deserve the MST treatment.

"Bloodlust" is another shameless repeating of "The Most Dangerous Game" premise (a groundbreaking classic from 1932), only it's a really dire and uninteresting one. This is a very bad film, but not even in an amusing way. Colorless characters, tedious and overlong speeches and no action at all. Two young couples strand on an island owned by an elderly, supposedly eccentric man. He explains that the military taught him to kill human beings and it quickly turned into an obsession. So, after he did his service, he bought himself an island where accomplices regularly provide him with new hunting-targets. The screenplay is incredibly stupid (for example, the four just politely listen to how they'll get killed instead of try and overmastering him) and the remote-island location is totally neglected. You haven't seen wooden acting until you witness some of the performances here and I was really surprised that the film only lasted 68 minutes... It seemed to take hours! There isn't much to say abut "Bloodlust!", except that you should never consider watching it. Not even when someone holds a loaded gun to your head and threatens to kill you.