Blood Freak (1972)

Herschell (Croatian-born actor Steve Hawkes who shared writing and directing chores with Brad F Grinter) is a big, muscular, strait-laced, happy-go-lucky Vietnam-vet biker with big sideburns and an Elvis pompadour.

One day while out riding, he offers a lift to a Bible-quoting Loretta Lynn clone called Angel (Heather Hughes) who is having car trouble and ends up at a drug party hosted by her bad drug-addicted nympho sister, Ann (Dana Cullivan).

Angel lectures them that the body is a temple of the holy spirit that they shouldn’t defile and when a girl comes on to Herschell – who the narrator reminds us is conservative and responsible – he calls her a tramp.

So her boyfriend and Ann plot to make him an addict and before you know it, Herschell is hooked on dope.

The girl’s scientist father owns a turkey farm and offers Herschell a maintenance job and a home – but the scientists use him as a guinea pig, serving him a whole drugged turkey. Herschell gets sick from then smokes more pot and passes out.

When he wakes, he has turned into a turkey-headed vampire monster with an insatiable lust for blood (and flared jeans) and goes after the drug dealers, cutting the leg off a screaming drug dealing rapist with a power saw. Angel, of course, cures Herschell with prayer.

The acting, makeup (especially the papier-mâché turkey head), and rock music soundtrack are all wonderfully horrible.

Shot in Miami, Florida and co-written and co-directed with spectacular incompetence by Brad F. Grinter (who also appears onscreen at periodic intervals to provide bizarre narration – at one point succumbing to an epic coughing fit on camera), Blood Freak is surely one of the most bizarre films ever commercially released.

Herschell
Steve Hawkes
Angel
Heather Hughes
Ann
Dana Cullivan
Narrator
Brad F. Grinter

Director
Brad F. Grinter