Las flores del vicio

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. :)

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.

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.

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?...

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.