BLOOD FREAK was a horror movie produced in Florida in 1972. That in itself isn't overly remarkable, but the film was produced as an attempt to take the Gospel to young people by lacing Christianity into a gore movie about a man who turns into a mutant half-turkey who feeds on the blood of junkies! While I admire the attempt to evangelize through a medium young people would accept, the results are still so goofy that I'm not sure how much actually got through the saga of a blood-thirsty half-man with the head of a bird -complete with real turkey gobbling sounds looped in! It's so surreal that it's trippy, and this in a movie meant to warn kids away from drugs as well! Star Steve Hawkes had done a couple of Tarzan movies and gotten badly burned during the last one. Legend has it he was recuperating in a Florida hospital when he was approached to appear in BLOOD FREAK. I don't recall getting all that much Gospel material out of the movie, honestly. My main take-away was that even when it's happening to pot heads, seeing people being mutilated is unpleasant. On that front, I will note that the film features some pretty realistic mutilations. One fella (obviously played by a real amputee) has his leg table-sawed off and the results are quite realistic. Countering this is the fakest-looking monster in movie history, and production values so threadbare as to shame a UHF kiddie show. The same year's A THIEF IN THE NIGHT was rather more effective, although BLOOD FREAK is so loopy as to have it's own quasi-charm, I suppose.
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