Blood Cult (1985)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s It About: A series of brutal murders in and around a small college town in some Midwestern state leads an aging sheriff to uncover the evildoings of a blood cult that worships the demon dog Caninus. 

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• The first-ever direct to video movie! Banned on two college campuses for being so shitty.
• Holy fishdicks, this went straight to video because it was recorded straight on video. This is going to be my Heavy Metal Massacre.
• A shower scene with no nudity! Hooray!!
• I image this was banned on two college campuses because their entire student bodies committed suicide in the middle of watching it.
• Killer POV. Very original.
• If the killer is going upstairs to murder this chick in the shower why does he turn all the downstairs lights off?
• This chick should’ve brushed her teeth before they did a close up of her screaming mouth.
• The killer hacks a hole through the door with a meat cleaver. Then says fuck it and opens the door from the outside anyway.
• We get a true story crawl that explains this bizarre series of murders happened in 1985 even though this movie came out in 1985. The murders probably happened and this movie was shot and distributed three days later.
• I think the killer must have cut off this sorority sister’s head but it’s hard to tell because the lighting is so egregious.
• Is this guy seriously trying to stab this sleeping woman in bed and misses and hits her pillow??
  
  
• In the next shot there is no damage whatsoever to the pillow. I’m glad it’s safe. That knife must have been as dull as the wet VHS tape this was shot on.
• He just headbutted her with the other girl’s severed head. Ok, I’m down with that.
• This honestly seems like a hardcore America’s Most Wanted reenactment. Or some kind of ’80s sexual harassment video except murder instead of sex.
• The sheriff here is running for the senate? That’s some career path.
• This movie is equal parts unacceptable and fascinating.
• So this is more of a witch cult than a satanic cult, but I guess I’ll let it slide.
• Apparently the cult takes different body parts from different women then Frankensteins them together and then sacrifices that body. Now it’s all coming together.
• Who knew dismemberments could be so painfully boring?
• “Could this be some kind of Dungeons & Dragons game?” Haha! I fondly recall in the ’80s when people thought that D&D was some sort of dangerous satan game, even though it was just a couple nerds in the basement wearing torn, crusted sheets as capes. I never played it myself but I’ll never forget how my grandpa saw something about it on the news and he voiced his concerns to me because he heard that the D&D players were going in the sewers to have sword fights. When in reality they just smelled like sewers and had a different kind of sword fights.
• This farmer is very nonchalant at finding his beheaded dog.
• Oh and here’s a college cafeteria scene with lingering shots of the food. My pulse is pounding!!!
• Fingers in the salad! Use a fork next time!
  
• So far I’ve seen two Coke cans and an Arby’s bag. They must have donated blank VHS tapes for this product placement.
• I’ll say this, the movie is undeniably dull and there’s no character development or a reason to care about anyone or anything that’s going on, but at least it’s not confusing. A cult is killing women and the sheriff is trying to solve it and that’s it. Plus the directing and editing aren’t completely abysmal, which is unexpected. Although half the shots are unnecessary. And so are the other half.
• Here’s a 20-minute scene of the farm woman (whose dog’s head was chopped off) telling the sheriff that she hears noises in the woods. That could’ve been summed up in 90 seconds.
• Literally every scene in which the sheriff talks to his daughter her creepy molester boyfriend pops up and starts making out with her.
• The sheriff and the creepy boyfriend go stake out the woods and the sheriff decides to take a nap. Great stakeout, gunslinger.
• The sheriff has to walk at a slightly faster pace through the woods and it nearly kills him. Then there’s no way he’ll have the stamina to be senator!
• Finally the Blood Cult has come together. They must have spent a fortune on these robes.
• This movie is a lot like Coven.
• So instead of worshiping Satan like a normal, sensible cult, they worship a demon dog (or dog demon) named Caninus. I suppose they have much cuter meetings.
  
  
• If this ritual doesn’t work, will the Blood Cult rethink its beliefs? Probably not. It’s like praying for someone’s good health and they die anyway, which can happen over and over, then the one time the person does get well then “Amen, the Lord has heard us!”
• The coroner from an earlier scene is the leader of the Blood Cult! What a shocking twist! The sheriff is also shocked that someone else is in the cult but I can’t tell who it is and I don’t care.
• The sheriff’s daughter is a willing sacrifice!
• I really don’t understand why there’s a blue circle around this shot unless it’s supposed to be a dream sequence.
• It’s supposed to be a dream sequence.
• The fire that was raging at the dream ritual is still burning when he wakes up. The creepy boyfriend says, “It’s an old trash fire!” What?
• The sheriff is on a stakeout of the women’s dorm (there’s only one female dorm at this college). At least he hasn’t fallen asleep. But 99% of anyone watching this movie has.
• He’s eating more Arby’s and is so into that Big Beef ‘n Cheddar that he misses a killer go through the front door of the dorm.
• I think we’re at the climax but I’ve lost any and all interest in recapping this snoozefest. Let’s just pretend the cult was actually an eccentric dog grooming business called K9-Us.
• The killer attacks the creepy boyfriend in bed, and even though there’s no sound made the sheriff hears a glass breaking sound from way down on the street.
• So the sheriff’s daughter murdered the creepy boyfriend and that somehow “completes the sacrifice.”
• Even though this college is located in the middle of nowhere backwoods Midwest, the sheriff’s daughter flees into a city alley.
• So she jumps off a roof and her dummy body hits a dumpster and she dies. That’s the end. But there’s still an entire Blood Cult out there. Nice work, sheriff. 

Scare Level: You know how The Ring is about an evil VHS tape? That movie had a couple of scary moments. This movie isn’t scary whatsoever, but was possibly shot on a similarly evil VHS tape.

Gore Level: There’s enough gore to fill several large dog bowls. It really seemed like they tried their best with their extremely limited budget and talent. When your gore gets you banned from two college campuses, you know you’re doing something right. Actually, I had to check into that “banned” fact for myself, and it turns out that, according to this documentary on the making of Blood Cult (if you can believe such a thing exists) the director says that they were actually banned from filming their gory horror movie on two different college campuses. That makes much more sense.

Nudity Level: A big zero, which is always puzzling for a horror film set mostly on a college campus with primarily sorority girls as victims.

Best Line: Two people in bed, woman on the phone, “It’s my lunch hour and I don’t want to blow it.” Man: “Now you tell me!”

Best Scene: Any dismemberment scene, but I already went over that. Oh, thinking about evil VHS tapes reminds me of that short they used to show on HBO all the time back in the day called Recorded Live (which I remembered as video tape but was actually film) in which the film reel comes alive and eats that guy. It’s very effectively creepy, mostly due to the sound effects of the film monster. It has nothing at all to do with Blood Cult, but it’s great and you should check it out!

Worst Scene: Although this might be the best scene, but here’s nearly two minutes of a woman buying lunch.

Level of Hell: Can’t say I enjoyed it, but it was relatively harmless and I also like dogs.

Overall: It’s rare that we get to review a piece of movie history here at Schlocktoberfest, but since this is the first ever direct-to-video release and it’s a gory horror film and it was banned on college campuses just like Hard Ticket to Home Video is, it’s a natural fit. It really is a lousy, lousy, lousy excuse for a movie, but it also has a certain naive charm that you can’t help but like. Much like an adorable cockapoo that may or may not be a servant of Caninus, Blood Cult will grab the hearts of classic slasher movie lovers everywhere, and then reattach them to some other body parts, and then not really follow up on that.

Score: 4 Dollars Off a Cut and Grooming at K9-Us (out of 10)