Hoy hoy muchachos, it’s Burl, here with a review of a
little-known American-Mexican horror picture called Blood Screams! It was originally known as The Bloody Monks, which makes it sound a lot more like one of those
Blind Dead pictures than it actually
is, ha ha!
The movie opens with a scene set hundreds of years in the
past, in which a cruel, gold-hungry plutocrat tosses an endless succession of
monks from the top of a tall monastery tower! Then it’s the present, and we
join Karen, a young American lady traveling by train through Mexico! Frank, a
magician and moustacheman played by Russ Tamblyn, who’s well known from pictures
as diverse as The Haunting, War of the Gargantuas and Django Unchained, has glommed on to her
as an unwanted companion, but she would prefer to chat with the brooding Hymie,
a young fellow who looks like a Mexican Wayne Gretzky!
Hymie gets off at the town where the monks plummeted, which
is his hometown – he’s here to figure out the mystery of what he saw as a boy
when he found his father dead of a slashed throat – he recalls seeing something
so horrific it put him into a fugue state, but he can’t remember just exactly
what it was! Karen follows him rather than stay with the jerky Frank, and of
course gets caught up in the supernatural shenanigans which are plaguing the
town! She also begins to have bad dreams which involve things like Hymie with
an oatmeal face or zombie monks busting through the walls like unholy Kool-Aid
Men!
There’s lot going on here: the Mystery Of What Hymie Saw,
the zombie monks, the murderous ghost of the cruel hacendado, a witch (played
by Isela Vega from Bring Me The Head of
Alfredo Garcia), a young American bartendress who is apparently under her
thrall, a friend of Hymie’s who has secrets of his own which may or may not be
connected to the missing gold and the murder of Hymie’s father, and of course
the unstoppable Frank, who jumps off his train and spends the whole movie
making his way cross country to catch up with Karen! It’s a lot to pack into
seventy-five minutes!
Blood Screams also
offers some of the worst acting on record, particularly from the young lady who
tends the bar! We also get some overly bright cinematography (which I suppose
is preferable to overly dark, ha ha), dialogue that sounds like it’s meant as
placeholders for the real dialogue, and some of the worst Special Makeup
Effects since Bad Meat! All of this
conspires to give Blood Screams a
very community theatre feel!
I do have to single out one performer, however: Russ
Tamblyn! Not only can he do magic tricks, he can act! He also uses his skills
as a dancer and tumbler to do some quite risky train stunts, ha ha! These are
shot in such a way that there’s no mistaking that it’s actually Russ doing
these things and not a stuntman, and I have to say I admire the actor and his
can-do attitude!
On balance, while it’s certainly a complete zagnut, it’s an
enjoyable one, so I’m going to grin, shake my head softly and give Blood Screams two completely pointless
witches!
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