Terror Transmission

Bloodsuckers From Outer Space – 1984 – USA – Shriek Show

This film is a rip roarin’ hooch snootin’ good time with egregious displays of sophomoric humor and enough bloody slapstick to delight low-brow gore mongers and the mentally challenged alike!

Filmed in Texas on weekends by a cast and crew made up almost exclusively of amateurs (and hicks!), Bloodsuckers is a fun little romp which sends up ’60s era sci-fi with liberal doses of zombie-comedy tossed in and some of the most charmingly wooden acting you will ever experience (outside of early John Waters pics and that callow Paris Hilton porno). Produced with a less than zero budget, filmed in entirely static shots, and hammed up by a host of bumbling yet intensely sincere actors, this Z-grade feature fares much better than the sum of its parts and muddlingly entrenches itself as a true classic of the “so painfully bad it’s actually good” genus of film. Fans of uproarious rubbish like The Dead Next Door or The Giant Spider Invasion, read on…

A blundering alien intelligence sweeps over the Texas plains and possesses the local-yokels, turning them into blue-skinned zombie/vampire hybrids with a penchant for dastardly diatribes and an unquenchable thirst for the sticky red stuff that flows through jerkwater Texan veins. The U.S. military (led by General Sanders) comes to the local research-science facility and pugnaciously enacts a “terminate with extreme prejudice” protocol. As the wind-born possessions reach plague-like proportions, our intrepid hero (Jeff) tries to outrace both infestation and imminent nuclear assault while squeezing in enough time for some destructive nookie and comedic kung-fu alien ass-kickings.

This film succeeds where so many others fail because of its penchant for self-effacing humor and several guffaw inducing moments courtesy of a cleverly juvenile script. Not all of the sketches work, but Dennis Lett’s performance as the war-mongering General Sanders is inspired, the amateur kung-fu fighting is an absurd treat and the film is chocked full of memorably idiotic lines and hilarious incongruities. The ridiculous effects and amateur hamming further catapult this into the “better as a group/binge drinking experience” category and the limp-wristed liberal vs. combative conservative parody ends up being a real hoot in spite of itself. It should also be mentioned that the film Return of the Living Dead (which followed a year later) liberally “borrowed” some of the more successful set-ups featured in this film such as the blundering nuclear assault and some of the highlighted mass zombie-attack sequences.

Terror-fiends with a soft spot for unpretentious, self-reflexive foolishness and bungled golden age sci-fi will find a lot to love here. Crack open a can of Pabst, put on your jack-ass caps and get ready for some big-time idiot fun, Texas style!

Jason’s Grade: C+