BLOOD THIRST (1971)
Article #769 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-23-2003
Posting Date: 9-20-2003
Directed by Newt Arnold
Featuring Robert Winston, Yvonne Nielsen, Judy Dennis

A detective from New York is called in to investigate bizarre murders in the Philippines.

This US/Philippine co-production is a strange one, and a bit of an anomaly; it was apparently made in the mid sixties, but wasn’t released until 1971. It’s in black and white and runs about seventy-three minutes. I’m not quite sure what to make of it; it seems like an odd cross between the horror and spy genres, with the detective (who has the thickest lisp this side of Boris Karloff) tossing off comic one-liners (some of them not half bad), and talking to himself endlessly when not romancing women and interacting with an odd assortment of undercover cops. Nonetheless, the horror element is very real indeed, if somewhat confusing, and it involves a monster with a lumpy face and an Aztec cult. It’s all pretty cheap, and the plot stalls on occasion, but actually the thing had an intriguing little charm about it that helped pull me through. Nothing great, but a little better than you might expect, given its obscurity and somewhat bad reputation.