I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good movie but grossly overrated

A Masterpiece!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

After a narrator enjoys a cigarette and opines about "change", BLOOD FREAK begins. Motorcycle-enthusiast, Herschell (Steve Hawkes) stops to help a female motorist, named Angel, while two orangutans apparently play guitar solos. Taken back to Angel's pad, Herschell finds himself at a party for "The Worst Actors In The Universe Guild". Lines are delivered as though semi-sentient furniture is learning English as a second language. Preaching and drug-taking occur, while Herschell mumbles a lot, nearly collapsing under the tremendous weight of his pompadour. Angel's sister, Ann (Dana Cullivan), attempts to get Herschell to take a puff of a funny cigarette, unlike the narrator's unfunny smokes. Said smoking man returns to blaze up another cancer stick, while philosophizing eloquently. Then, before he knows it, Herschell is offered a job in the turkey business. Uh oh! Ann won't stop tempting Herschell, and soon enough, he's smoking those funny cigarettes in Ann's boudoir! Herschell's now "hooked on the hard stuff"! More guitars twang as Herschell heads for the ranch, unaware of the horror awaiting him and his gargantuan hair! The gobbling of doom is like feathered thunder! Angel's father, the turkey rancher, is also a practitioner of mad science. His assistants, including Junior Samples, offer some of their culinary wares to Herschell, who accepts immediately. Dear lord above! Herschell eats an experimental turkey, causing him to vibrate like he's swallowed a jackhammer! Once he stops convulsing, Herschell is the monster most fowl. In no time, the lumbering fiend strikes, while Ann keeps company w/ grooving hippies. Herschell kills a victim, and watery, red paint flows, as a woman witnesses it all, screaming the same, wretched scream in a loop! Dope takers are targeted, so that Herschell might have his revenge. More looped screaming! Will the blood-lust never end? Street people join the cast, moving as though they're in a motion picture of some sort. Adult situations happen throughout, for no real reason. If Al Adamson smoked funny cigarettes and owned a turkey ranch, this is the movie he would make! May this be the cautionary tale we tell, on that fateful Thursday in November... EXTRA POINTS FOR: The table-saw-amputated-leg sequence!...

No budget cinematic oddities such as "Blood Freak" are truly things to be treasured. You just don't see their like anymore. Only during this time in film history could one see a movie with a plot this trippy and this offbeat. As it's been said many times before, it can boast the distinction of mixing a pro-Christianity, anti-drug message with a tried and true horror movie premise of a monster on the loose and a generous dose of very tacky gore. And throughout this things' 80 minute run time, the co-director Brad Grinter (who'd directed Veronica Lake in her final film, "Flesh Feast") pops up on screen, cigarette in hand, to wax philosophical on the nature of fate and the importance of catalysts.Beefy non-actor Steve Hawkes - who was the other director of this epic - stars as Herschell, a Vietnam veteran / biker who makes the acquaintance of "good girl" Angel (Heather Hughes), a sexy but deeply religious gal. They go to a party where he meets her "bad girl" sister Ann (Dana Cullivan), who helps to get him drugs; in record time he's an addict. Meanwhile, he gets a job at a poultry farm where, among other things, he agrees to function as test subject and eat turkey that's been treated with an experimental drug. The effect? He turns into a shambling, gobbling, mutant turkey man with an enormous papier-mache turkey head. On top of that, he now drinks blood, which he obtains from the necks of various unlucky junkies.A deadly slow pace prevents this from being completely effective, but overall "Blood Freak" is the kind of thing a cult movie lover will want to have the experience of viewing. The audience must be patient, but fortunately this kicks into gear in its second half once Turkey Man is unleashed. Peoples' reactions to Turkey Man are pretty priceless, and Anns' dialogue is delicious, especially when she wonders what the children of her and Herschell would look like. The ladies in this are foxy, the rock score is groovy, and the very clunky nature of "Blood Freak" is endearing overall. One hilarious highlight comes when Turkey Man uses a buzz saw to sever a pushers' leg, and the guy howls in pain for almost a full minute. Grinter adds to the fun when he has a small coughing fit.A true curio, and worth watching for adventurous people.Seven out of 10.

I'm kinda torn on how to rate this movie. On one hand "Blood Freak" has some of the worst "acting" I have ever witnessed on film including a chain smoking narrator that constantly looks down at his script who at one point goes into a serious coughing spell that is not edited out at all. On the other hand this is a one-of-a-kind insane combination of drug propaganda, slasher films, monster movies and Christian evangelism that has never been repeated to this day. With both of these factors in mind I decided on a score between the two which is why I gave it a 5 out of 10.Steve Hawkes is Steve Hawkes as Herschell. Why they choose to show his name twice is a mystery but make no mistake that Mr. Hawkes is the star of "Blood Freak" as he looks like a combination of Lou Ferrigno and Elvis. Herschell is a biker riding the Florida highways when he meets free spirited Ann who becomes instantly smitten with the soft spoken brute. She takes him to a drug party where he meets Ann's sister Angel who represents the straight and narrow path. Her words of warning to Herschell seem to resonate with him yet after one toke he becomes instantly hooked. Yeah, that happens with marijuana a lot. With his addiction growing and the need to satisfy his fix overpowering Herschell agrees to an absurd experiment where he eats turkey meat that has been tampered with by two scientists that are probably the worst of the so-called actors in this movie. Sure enough the infected meat turns Herschell into a turkey-headed beast that must feed on blood. From here he goes on a murderous rampage of neck slitting and leg hacking that takes "Blood Feast" from simple anti-drug screed into a gory hack-n-slash. To say that somewhere along the line "Blood Freak" got lost in translation is an understatement. How this was supposed to bring more Christians into the fold after watching this is beyond me. For bad movie enthusiasts out there this is THE MOVIE that you must see at least once in order to give you a true barometer as to what is considered bad in the bad way and bad in the awesomely bad way. I only remembered to review this when I stumbled upon Steve Hawkes on an episode of "Fatal Attractions" using his real name of Steve Sipek and his dangerous lifestyle of living with multiple lions and tigers. It's good to know that he continues to live beyond the norm.

Well, I suppose that one CAN contract worse things from birds than the avian flu. For example, look at what happens to poor Herschell, a musclebound Vietnam vet, in the 1972 film "Blood Freak." When we first meet him, Herschell is hooked on painkillers and soon--shades of "Reefer Madness" (1936)--becomes PHYSICALLY addicted to some kind of superpot (patent BS, to be sure). After volunteering to eat some chemically laced turkey at his new poultry farm gig, he himself grows a giant turkey head and starts to maniacally slay young drug dabblers about town. Like his namesake, Herschell Gordon Lewis, he indulges in some pretty gory killings, including slicing the leg off of one drug pusher with a power saw. Anyway, to call this film a giant turkey would be too obvious...and far too generous. In truth, "Blood Freak" has to be one of the Top 10 Worst Films I have ever seen. It is horribly lit (whole segments transpire in near total darkness), acted, edited and directed, and with problematic sound, to boot. The "good" characters are annoying and the "bad" ones are obnoxious; actually, the only character I felt anything for was the real-life turkey who gets his head chopped off in one scene. What little pacing and suspense there are is periodically broken by the director, Brad Grinter, lecturing to us from behind a desk, a la Criswell, about the evils of dope and the implacability of fate or some such drivel; a message that might carry more weight if his film didn't practically demand pot smoking on the part of the viewer just to get through it! Anyway, in the pantheon of bad bird movies, this one makes "The Giant Claw" (1957) seem like high art.