This one truly qualifies as an unexpected but incredibly pleasant surprise! Bill Rebane, the notorious director of widely acclaimed BAD movies such as "The Giant Spider Invasion" and "The Demons of Ludlow", actually managed to deliver a decent 80's slasher movie near the end of his career! "Blood Harvest" surpasses all of Rebane's previous films in terms of plot outline, character drawings, suspense, excitement and viewer's involvement. I would even go as far to call "Blood Harvest" an underrated and wrongfully neglected 80's slasher that deserves to have more fans! Country girl returns home from college to the little hillbilly town where she grew up, but finds her parents missing. For you see, her parents own the local bank and lately a lot of the farmers got disowned and evicted from their property, so the Robinson family isn't exactly popular anymore. The only persons still willing to talk to Jill are the Sheriff, albeit reluctantly, her best friend Sarah and the boy she was supposed to end up with if she had stayed in Hicksville. Oh, and a clearly deranged guy who dresses up like a clown and chants horrendous crooner songs. Apparently this guy's name is Tiny Tim and he was a fairly famous singer/ukulele artist during the 1960's. Thank God I'm not familiar with him at all. He calls himself Marvellous Mervo and his appearance scared the hell out of me. When multiple people start disappearing one by one, also including Jill's college boyfriend who came over for a visit, it's becoming apparent that somebody has a personal vendetta towards Jill. "Blood Harvest" is perhaps a bit slow in certain places, but widely compensates this through nasty and unsettling murder sequences where people are hung upside down in a barn, like cattle in an abattoir, and cut open from ear to ear. There's a good and genuinely creepy atmosphere and a couple of delightfully demented sequences, like when the crazed guy tries to make love to Jill when she's in a state of shock. That's quite sick! This film has a good soundtrack, decent performances from a unknown cast members, violence and nudity aplenty and a really profound directing job from Bill Rebane. It's a really cool and unjustly hidden gem of 80's horror and definitely comes recommended to fans of the genre.
Review of Blood Harvest
