One of the better post-Exorcist Satanic chillers of the mid-70s is definitely 1975’s RACE WITH THE DEVIL. Sort of a hybrid car chase thriller and occult horror, the film focuses on friends and business partners, Frank (Warren Oates) and Roger (Peter Fonda), who own a successful motorcycle dealership in Texas. Going on a skiing vacation with their wives, Alice (Loretta Swit) and Kelly (Lara Parker – Angelique on Dark Shadows), Frank and Roger decide to drive an RV up to Aspen, Colorado, and on the way stop in the country for some motorbike racing fun.
While Roger and Frank ride around the open fields on their bikes, Kelly and Alice take in the scenery, with Kelly’s dog, Ginger, acting particularly aggressive. Later that night, while Alice and Kelly are readying for bed, Roger and Frank spot a bonfire in the distance. Upon taking a closer look, they witness a large group of people in cloaks and masks dancing around the fire. Thinking it’s some kind of hippie orgy, the men soon realize it’s something much more sinister when this Satanic cult strips a young woman nude and stabs her to death right in front of Frank and Roger’s eyes.
Making a run for it, the two couples are pursed by the cultists, several of whom jump onto the RV and break the windows. Barely making it out alive, Roger and Co. drive to the local police station, where Sheriff Taylor (R.G. Armstrong) takes Roger and Frank back to the scene of the crime. There, they find blood and evidence of a camp fire; Frank also discovers the mutilated corpse of a dog hung from a tree. Meanwhile back at the RV, Kelly finds a strange note written in weird symbols stuck to the back of the vehicle. When Alice deciphers the note from a library book as having something to do with Satanic magic, she and the rest decide to head to the nearest city to seek outside help.
When Frank and the gang are nearly killed by a couple of rattlesnakes hiding in their RV, they burn rubber outta there only to be followed – and terrorized – by the locals, who try their best to kill them before they reach help.
A fun and surprisingly suspenseful little flick, Race with the Devil is exploitation at its best. Using the best elements from movies like Gone in 60 Seconds and Brotherhood of Satan, Race blends the genres extremely well and creates a fast-moving story that works on all levels. The cast is good, especially Fonda, whose Roger is sort of a domesticated version of Wyatt from Easy Rider.
If you like exploitation revenge movies with lots of cheesy gore and naked hippies, you’ll love the 1970 cult classic, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD. Late at night in the woods, Horace Bones (Bhasker Roy Chowdhury), leader of a Satanic cult, performs a ritualistic sacrifice of a chicken while surrounded by his naked followers. When Sylvia, a teenager who lives in the nearby town of Valley Hills, witnesses this act she’s caught by the cult, beaten, and raped.
Sylvia wanders into town the next morning in serious condition, and her grandfather, veterinarian Doc Banner (Richard Bowler), and younger brother, Pete (Riley Mills), are unsure of what to do. Mildred (Elizabeth Marner-Brooks), who owns the town bakery where Pete works, seeks the help of her boyfriend, Roger (John Damon). Roger is a construction worker who’s working on a dam project that has forced most of Valley Hill to relocate, creating a ghost town. When Horace gets wind of Valley Hill’s abandonment, he and his cult members decide to take up residence in one of the empty houses. Doc Banner learns of the cult’s squatting and goes to confront them with a shotgun, only to get himself beaten and drugged with LSD.
At his wit’s end, young Pete takes matters into his own hands by seeking revenge on the cult. The next morning two of the Satanists stop by Mildred’s bakery and purchase meat pies to take back to their house – unaware that the night before, Pete killed a rabid dog and mixed contaminated blood into the pies. It isn’t long until the cult members begin showing signs of infection, and things get worse when one of them sneaks away and has sex with several of the nearby construction men. Soon Horace, his followers, and the construction men become foaming madmen, turning the small town into a bloodbath of violent mayhem.
If you took Night of the Living Dead, blended it with The Crazies, and injected it with adrenaline, you’d get I Drink Your Blood. The film doesn’t apologize for being anything other than a twisted, gory, fast-paced orgy of outrageous violence. The plot is threadbare and the characters would be home in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but, as with the best of loony B-movies, I Drink Your Blood is high-grade cheesy fun.
On a much more subtle level is the 1966 UK chiller, THE WITCHES. After suffering from a nervous breakdown as the result of being terrorized by local witch practitioners while working in Africa, schoolteacher Gwen Mayfield (Joan Fontaine) relocates to the isolated British village of Heddaby. There, she’s hired by Reverend Alan Bax (Alec McCowen) to teach at the local schoolhouse. Gwen is quickly befriended by many of the townsfolk, including Alan’s sister, Stephanie (Kay Walsh), a headstrong journalist.
When Gwen’s eldest students, Ronnie (Martin Stephens) and Linda (Ingrid Boulting), begin a harmless romance, it causes a stir in town for reasons Gwen can’t understand. Gwen is later informed that Linda’s grandmother is rumored to be a witch and becomes suspicious that the woman is doing Linda harm. When Ronnie mysteriously becomes gravely ill, and Gwen discovers a makeshift voodoo doll of a boy with pins stuck in it, she begins to suspect Linda’s grandmother has cursed Ronnie. Gwen’s investigation eventually uncovers a hidden cult within the town, a cult dabbling in an ancient witchcraft that can grant immortality in exchange for a human sacrifice.
Made by Hammer Films and written by acclaimed screenwriter Nigel Kneale, The Witches manages to cast an eerie spell through most of its runtime. As the film’s protagonist, Fontaine is her usual sympathetic self, and she and Walsh have excellent chemistry together. The beautiful British countryside setting gives the movie a sense of otherworldly, organic magic that’s a nice juxtaposition to the story’s bleak themes. Although, in the end, I was expecting something a little juicer and more dramatic, especially during the rushed, anticlimactic ending. | I Drink Your Blood and Race with the Devil: B+ The Witches: B–