Kulay dugo ang gabi

I'm late to the game on this one, having just discovered it as referenced on the commentary track for Film Detective / UCLA's The Vampire Bat Blu-ray. Apparently, the producer of the latter had a yen for The Blood Drinkers. As countless others have noted, watching this flick is a visually beautiful, sumptuous experience. If you're a fan of Bava's Planet of the Vampires or Michio Yamamoto's Bloodthirsty Trilogy there's an excellent chance you'll get into Blood Drinkers.

If you're interested in a great review that delves into why this is such a cool flick, check out Bleeding Skull dot com. The low IMDb average indicates that a lot of people just don't get it.

An evil genius vampire whose minions include a hunchback, a midget, a hot chick with sunglasses, and a rubber bat tries to save the life of his vampire lover by transplanting her with the heart of her long, lost sister. The sister, inconveniently, is still alive. Plays at times like an Ed Wood movie, at others like a classic, albeit low-budget, horror film. Made in the Philippines, which lends jungle atmosphere, interesting architecture, and enough catholic iconography to satisfy the Pope. Badly dubbed in English, including the fact that three completely different characters are, evidently, supposed to be mute and make the exact same, "Uhn, uhn, uhn," noises in the exact same voice, which is blissfully confusing. Features one singing cowboy scene, Captain Kirk-style martial arts, and a musical score that sounds like it could be library tracks but nonetheless is very effective. The film is sometimes black and white, sometimes color, and sometimes tinted a garish magenta, which actually works to heighten the atmosphere at least part of the time. Anyone who has read this far and is still interested will not be disappointed.

Dr. Marco (Ronald Remy) - a bald, acne-scarred vampire wearing Bono shades - tries to resurrect his dead girlfriend Katrina (Amalia Fuentes), but to do this he needs the heart of her twin sister Charito (also Fuentes). Charito's love interest Victor (Eddie Fernandez) tries to stop the bloodsucker from stealing his woman's heart - literally!

I can't totally hate on a horror film that features a rubber bat with glowing eyes, a hairy-faced hunchback AND an evil dwarf, but The Blood Drinkers is not a good film. Advertised as 'the first color horror picture produced in the Philippines', this is a cheap, shoddily assembled piece of schlock that doesn't even make good on its claim: SOME of the film was shot in colour, but much of it is merely black and white with a colour tint added in post.

The story plods, the acting is terrible (well, the dubbing at least), and Gerardo de Leon's direction is sloppy, the whole thing being somewhat confusing and incredibly cheesy at times (particularly the overuse of a smoke machine to try an add an eerie atmosphere). The worst scene, or the best depending on your point of view, is a fight between Victor and Marco's henchmen (the hunchback and the dwarf), with the little fellow delivering some particularly ineffective punches and being repeatedly thrown to the ground. Sadly, the bulk of the film isn't as funny and proved quite tedious.

3.5/10, generously rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

N. B. Aspiring suitors should never underestimate the aphrodisiacal effect of a water buffalo when serenading a young woman.

Atmospheric vampire of story about a vampire who comes to a small town in order to secure a heart for the girl he loves. Its an eerie little film, a bit silly at times, but entirely watchable. It won't scare you but it will keep you watching (its more vampire drama than horror film).

Its a stand out little film that has the feel of a specific time and place that is uniquely its own. Set now, we see cars and trucks and guns the film has a decidedly Gothic feel and at times seems to be set in the 1860's rather than the 1960s. There is a religious nature in the film adds more weight to the proceedings. The film builds up a nice sense of good versus evil and of God vs the devil, even though we sympathize with our villain. Few films have a villain as well drawn as this one does, you hate him but you like and understand him.

The most memorable thing about the film, aside from the bald vampire, is that much of the film was shot in black and white and then tinted red or blue depending upon what was happening in the scene. Even though its odd to see at first, it does begin to add something to the film when you realize that the tints actually correspond to certain events in the film, and that people in the film react as if aware of the tinting. I didn't get it when I originally saw the film on TV (which apparently had the wrong scenes tinted) nor did I pick it up on the first go through of the recent Image DVD. It was only after listening to the commentary track that I really was made aware of how the right tints actually help the film seem creepier.

Not a classic, but a its a good little thriller.

"Dr. Marco" (Ronald Remy) is a vampire who wants to revive a woman he loves named "Katrina" (Amalia Fuentes) back from the dead. In order to do that he needs to perform a heart transplant and the only acceptable donor is her twin sister "Charito" (also played by Amalia Fuentes). In the meantime, Dr. Marco must keep Katrina alive and so he has people killed so that their blood can be given to her. Naturally, these deaths cause concern among the local populace which makes it quite a bit more difficult for Dr. Marco to complete his operation. Anyway, what I found remarkable about this film was the unique technique of using red-tinted film to signify the presence of vampires. Rather interesting indeed. Likewise, the heavy use of smoke to imitate fog wasn't too bad either. On the other hand, being originally produced in Tagalog and dubbed into English caused the dialogue to seem a bit flat. Additionally, the heavy influence of Roman Catholicism was probably a bit too strong in my opinion. But this was a movie made in the Philippines so perhaps this was customary during this specific time period. In any case, this wasn't a bad movie but the overall production values seemed to be somewhat lacking. That said I rate the movie as slightly below average.