Awesomely Bad: Brides of Blood

I had to go through quite a few unworthy movies to get to one that I felt I could write more than a sentence or two on. Turns out watching bad movies is harder than I thought. After quite a few tries, I finally got to a true Mystery Science Theatre quality bad sci-fi called Brides of Blood. While the other movies were just bad, Brides of Blood was bad with potential, which in turn made it good. Which in turn made it Awesomely Bad (kinda like a non-non-non-heinous from Bill and Ted). Brides of Blood is either the first or second (depending on which source you trust) in a series of "Blood Island" movies that have little to nothing in common plot-wise, but share a common theme of being poorly written and acted. I didn't know about the whole series going in, but did manage to watch the last in the series (Brain of Blood), and I feel that Brides of Blood is a much more enjoyable film to watch solo or with a group of trash talkers.

The basic premise of the film involves three Americans traveling to Blood Island (should've known it was a bad idea from the name alone); Jim Farrell is a supposed Peace Corps. pacifist who wants to enrich the primitive islanders lives, Dr. Paul Henderson is a doctor who wants to study to effects of radiation on flora and fauna (due to the islands proximity to the Bikini Island testing grounds),and Carla Henderson (Paul's wife) is a whore who wants to fuck her way through the boredom of life as a doctor's wife. Things start to go wrong as soon as they arrive at the island when they are informed by one of only two natives on the island who speak English that they have reverted back to primitive ways since Peace loving Jim's "last visit". This "last visit" lends some credibility to Brides of Blood being the second film, but in Mad Doctor of Blood Island (the other candidate for first in the series) John Ashley, who plays Jim in Brides of Blood, plays a completely different character. This doesn't seem too out of character in the whole "Blood Island" series, since the final film (Brain of Blood) seems to have absolutely nothing to do with Blood Island.

The primitive ways of the island eventually reveal themselves to be the practice of sacrificing two really hot Filipino girls at a time to some sex deprived monster. And by sex it seems they mean completely devouring a body. How they came to a mutually beneficial agreement or the reason monster sex involves no actual sex but lots of blood and death is never quite clear, but who am I to get caught up in semantics. But a strangely calm acceptance of a monster and sacrifice aren't the only things amiss on Blood Island. It also turns out that some of the trees are alive and really like the taste of Filipino kids, there are vicious moths and cockroaches running rampant on the island, and there is a unusually suave English-speaking half-Spaniard man that lives in a small fortress home with an army of midgets who do his bidding whom watches and reports on the island and its inhabitants.

While all this craziness is going on, garnering little more than an arched eyebrow from the islanders or it's Don Juan caretaker but sending any woman into absolute hysterics, our pacifist Jim Farrell is trying to get the natives to build an irrigation system and the good doctor is..umm...looking at stuff in jars and being all scientific by talking about radiation and stuff. He's really a bad doctor...not an evil doctor, I just mean he doesn't seem terribly good at his job. Then again, our Peace Corps pacifist Jim doesn't make a very good pacifist and doesn't seem like he's too keen of the peace thing either as he spends the entire movie trying to get the natives to kill the monster, mostly because he's fallen in love with the hottest girl on the island who also happens to be his personal translator. No one seems to pay much attention to the fact that the monster is clearly just poorly painted latex, the killer moth looks like it's made of construction paper and has a visible wire, or that the sexy Spanish/Filipino/American/Italian whatever the hell he is suffers from unexplained migraines and has "episodes" and starts to disappear whenever the monster comes. And Mrs. Henderson is still a whore.

Final Verdict: So the movies plot is paper thin and even seems to contradict it's own established story (assuming that The Mad Dr. of Blood Island is indeed the first), the acting is so very 60's/70's sci-fi that it's hardly worth mentioning because this is pretty much de rigueur for the times and genre, and the special effects are so low-tech that when they pull off a decent one you're actually impressed. So what. This is exactly the kind of movie I love spending time with. Bring in a friend or two with a bit of wit and you've got your own commentary worthy of Mike Nelson, Crow, and Tom Servo. It's just good ole bad sci-fi and a 3/5.