I Drink Your Blood (1971) on Netflix
Horace Bones leads a cult of Satanic hippies that descends on a small town. After the cult attacks Sylvia and her grandfather, her brother Pete looks for a way to strike back.
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- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb5.9/104,651 votes
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Trailer
Plot summary
Horace Bones leads a cult of Satanic hippies that holds a ritual in the woods. Sylvia, a local girl who has befriended the cult member Andy, watches in secret, is spotted and is caught by the cult. Pete, her brother, and Mildred, the town baker, find Sylvia the next morning and bring her to her grandfather, Doc Banner. The cult's van breaks down, so the members remain in the town, which is largely empty, and buy pies from Mildred. Banner confronts them and is beaten.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about I Drink Your Blood (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- David E. Durston struggled with writer's block for three weeks before reading a newspaper article about a mountain village in Iran, where a pack of rabid wolves attacked a schoolhouse occupied by 18-19 children and two teachers. A doctor who had visited the village showed him 8mm footage of infected children locked in cages and foaming at the mouth.
- I Drink Your Blood was one of the first films to be given an X rating by the Motion Picture Association of America for violence rather than for nudity.
- Producer Jerry Gross changed the film's title to I Drink Your Blood without consulting or informing director David E. Durston, who had intended to call it Phobia or Hydro-Phobia; the new title has no real connection to the film.
- For scenes involving rats, the production brought in trained rats and bought dead rats from a local medical center, painting them to match the trained rats' color. The trained rats later appeared in the 1971 film Willard and its 1972 sequel Ben.
- Tensions mounted between Sharon Springs locals and the filmmakers; after seeing Durston try to motivate actress Iris Brooks for an emotional scene, locals called the town sheriff, insisting he was abusing the cast and crew and should be arrested or replaced. Durston remained the director.
- The crew paid the town $300 to use the Roosevelt, an old hotel in Sharon Springs, New York that was scheduled for demolition within a couple of months, and according to Durston they practically tore it down themselves.
- Because scenes had to be altered to qualify the film for an R rating, the producer released the original film and asked each projectionist to censor it as they saw fit for their market. BoxOffice magazine reported in January 1971 that the Code and Ratings Appeals Board re-rated it R after the distributor agreed to cuts and inserted additional footage.
