A married man, Larry rents a room in a beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills for his extra-marital trysts. Unfortunately, the brother and sister (Bridget and Jason) he rents it from are selecting victims to drain of their blood for the brother’s medical condition which requires fresh blood to be regularly transfused into him. The female sexual partners of their new tenant provides more victims for them.

As you can guess, this isn’t your typical horror movie. It’s a wild concept and it’s executed (pun not intended) beautifully. The obvious comparison here is with George A Romero’s masterpiece, Martin in which the vampire tradition is given a shot in the arm (again, pun not…you get the drift) and brought up to date. I also kept thinking of the fantastic film, Daughters of Darkness.

Another cultural event from the time of the film’s release is that a new disease was rearing it’s ugly head and ravishing the gay community- AIDS. There’s a extra layer of meaning here because of this just as there is with John Carpenter’s The Thing that appeared in the same year.

The film also gets more and more surreal and leads us into some VERY dark places (I’m not going to ruin anything). Lets just say maybe this is why it was pilloried during the Video Nasties witch trials.

The hedonism depicted in the film seems out of time and purposefully so. Is this a cautionary tale regarding the sexual freedom of the 70’s seen through the Reagan-era lens of the early 80’s? Is the movie railing against the swinging scene of the past when the idea of ‘family values’ was becoming more popular again in Republican America?

Linnea Quigley stars as a babysitter which is another reason to seek out this film.

Highly original, highly recommended.

4 out of 5 stars