Blood Sabbath

Boob Sa-butt, more like! If you like nudity, naked girls, and women with no clothes on then this film is right up your street. Our hero, David, is a Vietnam vet wandering the land with a guitar and not much else when he's set upon by naked, annoying hippy girls and before you know it he's being rescued by a water nymph and falling in love. Trouble is, the water nymph can't totally fall in love with him until he loses his soul. Why? I've no idea, but luckily there's a coven of witches nearby who just happen to be on the lookout for a soul. Makes sense to whomever wrote the screenplay, I guess.

You've also got the local fisherman guy, and the local priest who is now having an attack of the guilt after filling his boots with naked witch acolytes for years. What price will David pay for the witches services? How will his water nymph missus react? Does anyone come out unscathed from making pacts with witches? And will Dyanne whatshername get out her knockers and boogie for the lads? The answer to that last one is indeed a 'yes' and it's enough to make a bald man cry, if you know what I mean.

Look, Blood Sabbath is a strange, strange film. It should be kind of boring, but the frequent nudity and all round surreal nature of thing keep you going. David's a Vietnam vet, and I get the feeling that all this film takes place in some kind of purgatory or something, which would explain the annoying hippy people and the flashbacks to him accidentally shooting children. Either that, or I've watched far too many weird films and something bust up there in my brain, there.

Delirious mess of a witchcraft tale is watchable mainly as a showcase for the female bust. 'Nam vet drifter David(Anthony Geary, "Luke Spencer" of GENERAL HOSPITAL fame) is nettled by a group of reckless hippies who are having some sort of baby-oil orgy in the wilderness. By and by, he falls in love with a foxy water nymph named Yyalah, but she can't requite his affections "because he has a soul". The inimitable Dyanne Thorne(of the amazing ILSA films) turns up as a witch named Alotta (hmmmm...now there's a name you can have all sorts of fun with), who has plans of her own for David. This very druggie deep-woods tale of love, lust, and the supernatural culminates in a satisfactory bittersweet finale(and a closing credits crawl with that distinctly MARY-TYLER-MOORE lettering font), but getting that far along is a challenge and a chore.

An occasionally interesting, but mostly tiresome affair from the post-psychedelic burnout years(a place in time which I personally refer to as "the rattan zone"). If you're not a dedicated completest of 70s horror trash, you might opt to give this one a wide berth. I'm pretty sure it's inspired by, or very loosely based on Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's 19th century romantic fantasy novella UNDINE.

4/10

A passable load of nonsense lent a certain charm by the utter soppiness of the two main characters - a young man and his water nymph girl friend.

They are kept from getting together because he has a soul and so he seeks out an evil witch to take his soul away so that he can be with his water nymph forever. This seemed to involve a lot of topless jiggling by said evil witch.

The same weekend I bought this DVD I also bought Octopus II, She Lives by Night, and Boogeyman 2, and compared to them this was a masterpiece! Still I was glad I'd only paid £2.97 for it.

This film might stay with you a little longer than most horror movies from the 70's. It's about an ex-Vietnam soldier who doesn't care about the outside world anymore. He finds himself in the woods and near death. He is awoken by a very beautiful pond goddess (?) who cannot love him unless he gets rid of his soul. Of course he wishes to be with her and will do anything to get rid of his soul. He asks the loner woods guy what he should do. He, just like everyone else, warns him to stay away from this woman (Yyalah). But he won't give up. He even asks the local priest how to get rid of his soul (in a slightly comical way, I might add). He decides to go to an evil witch who annually sacrifices a child so that "the village" will have good crops.

Well, I won't spoil it for you, but as you can see, it deals with the supernatural and goddess/witch love. As people have mentioned on here, there is tons of pointless nudity that includes naked slave witches dancing around and worshiping the main witch.

The movie is slightly magical and doesn't seem to be as raunchy as it sounds. There's even nature frolicking scenes and happy music. The actor who plays David must be a bit of a nerd in real life because it shows in the way he acts. He punches in the air with joy when something goes right, or he uses big giant facial expressions as if he were in a play. His acting makes the movie seem a little weird. Yyalah is also quite beautiful, even though she wears a horrible wig the entire time.

I give this a 4/10 because the movie has something about that makes you like it and you can't put your finger on why.

The world's least convincing Vietnam Vet (Tony Geary) finds himself in the middle of a conflict involving a coven of hot naked chicks. Oh, and they all want to have sex with him/rape him (Oh no!)

Yes, that's the premise. Done while Vietnam was still in our psyche (and the hippie movement was dying, thank God), "Blood Sabbath" is one of those sleazy, strange horror/exploitation flicks that played in drive in theaters. As you can see from the premise, the movie is as dumb as it sounds. Nudity is abundant (not that there's anything wrong with that), dialog is stilted, Vietnam flashbacks are poorly done and have little to do with the ridiculous plot, and the movie in itself is a totally surreal experience.

Honestly, how do you rate a movie like this? It's bad, but it's so strange and stupid that it defies description. I honestly can't see an oddity like this being made today. See it if you want to see what independent horror was like before "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and after "Night of the Living Dead."

Awesome score by Les Baxter BTW.