Cinema Misfits

Early on in Blood Freak the following scene takes place.  Hershel, the film’s hero/victim/turkey man is sitting in a leather chair talking with two women.

Hershel: Mumble.  Mumble.  (unintelligible)  Mumble.

Even though it’s impossible to understand what Hershel is saying, it must be fairly interesting since the two women hang on every word he has to say, or anyway, mumble.  He might even be talking about something that’s important to the  film’s plot.   As the scene drags on, however, this seems less and less likely, if for no other reason than there doesn’t seem to be a plot.

Woman #1:  (unintelligible)  Garbled.  Garbled.

Hershel:  Mumble.  (unintelligible)  Mumble.

Hershel shifts in the leather chair, and the CREAK OF LEATHER is almost DEAFENING.

Woman #2:  (unintelligible)  Garbled.  Garbled.

What is actually being said in the scene will probably never be known, but the combination of the drug party going on around Hershel, along his phobia of someone suggesting he might be afraid to do something, makes the following dialogue a likely possibility:

Woman #1 offers Hershel a hit off a joint.

Hershel:  No thanks.  I do it the natural way.  I get high on life.

Woman #1:  What are you?  (pause)  Afraid?

Hershel:  No man.  I just march to my own drummer.  Dig.  I don’t mess with that shit.  But say I’m afraid, and yeah, I’ll throw all my values right out the window.  I’ll ignore everything I stand for.  Me?  Afraid?  I’ll show you who’s afraid.  Come on, let’s slam some junk.  Or snort a little White Horse.  Anyone into freebasing?

Then again, given the way the story eventually plays out, an exchange like the following can’t be ruled out either:

Woman #1 offers Hershel a hit off a joint.

Hershel:  No thanks – I’m into Frankenfood.  I wanna get in on the ground floor of this happenin’ thing and be a part of it.

Woman #1: Are you serious?  What the hell have you been somkin’?

Hershel:  Nothing.  I get high on genetically-altered, chemically-saturated, hormone-injected turkey.   It’s also a cool way to make a little extra money on the side.  Some turkey farmers wanna know if their modifications have any side effects on people who eat their turkeys.

But  it’s  really any body’s guess what’s being said by the actors.  Possibly in an effort to make an incoherent movie (made even more incoherent by erratic sound levels)  slightly more comprehensible, the filmmakers intermittently splice in a guy who helps walk the audience through Hershel’s strange journey.   The guy’s always got a cigarette going and stares straight at the camera.  He comes off as sort of a cross between Edward R. Murrow and Jack Kerouac.

Murrow/Kerouac Guy: We live in a world subject to constant change.  We never know how or when we will meet a person who will become a catalyst or will lead us to one.

To be perfectly honest, he doesn’t really clear up  a whole lot story-wise, but it’s a nice change of pace to be able to understand what someone is saying.  Later on we get:

Murrow/Kerouac Guy: As he plays his game of wits and ego, his comments could be what cause the chain of events and  moments of horror and agony that were far greater than his experiences in the hell of Vietnam.

As you can probably tell, it’s not long before the Murrow/Kerouac Guy becomes more difficult to understand than the characters with garbled dialogue.  His words could be replaced with mumble, unintelligible, garbled, and it would make more sense than what he’s actually saying.

Murrow/Kerouac Guy:  The paths of life are predictable and we repeat them again and again.  Right on.

Surprisingly, street drugs and genetically-altered turkey turns out to be a bad combination, and it’s not long before Hershel finds himself transformed into a poultry/human hybrid.  With no one to turn to, he looks up his girlfriend, and as anyone would do under similar circumstances, gets down to some hot and heavy cross-species sex.

The following is an abbreviated version of the scene, made even shorter by the removal of all the mumbleds, unintelligibles, and garbleds.

Girlfriend: You know, I got a guilty feeling that I caused all this.  What would it be like if you stayed like this — if we got married.  What kind of life would we have together?  What would the children think?  My God, what would the children look like?

Hershel:  Gobble.  Gobble.

Girlfriend:  Would they look like their father?

Hershel moves toward the woman.  He joins her on the bed.

Girlfriend:  What are you doing?

Hershel:  Gobble.

Girlfriend: Hershel.  Hershel.  Oh my god, Hershel.  What are you doing?  What are you….  Hersheeelllllll!

This tender interlude is followed by a series of brutal murders in which Hershel cuts the throats of his victims, hangs them upside down, drains the blood from their bodies and then drinks it.  The killing spree continues for three or four murders before the  film gets down to some truly disturbing imagery: hallucinatory turkey nightmares.

Hershel imagines a turkey being caught, having it’s head chopped off, and cooked for dinner.  The golden skinned bird sits in a pan and is set upon by ravenous, pack-like humans dressed for Thanksgiving dinner who tear the turkey apart, hands reaching in, ripping away a wing, a drumstick, a fistful of white mean.  The horrific carnage occurs in an instant, and then…

Hershel suddenly wakes up in a field.  At first he’s not sure what’s happened.   Human body?  Check.  More importantly — human head?  Check.

It turns out that the killing spree, the Thanksgiving nightmare, and the turkey transformation were all the result of a bad trip, or considering Hershel’s drug of choice, bad tryp-tophan.  The Murrow/Kerouac Guy shows up one last time to try and explain the abrupt, unconvincing  happy ending , but as he takes a final puff on his cigarette, he begins to cough uncontrollably and is unable to finish his thought.

Blood Freak isn’t for everyone, and possibly only for those who can read lips, but  the next time Thanksgiving rolls around, try popping it in the DVD player.  After watching the film, you might find yourself experiencing a surprising  level of empathy with the turkey cooking in the oven, and if nothing else, Blood Freak might drive away a few unwanted relatives.  As for final thoughts, they can best be expressed as:  Garbled.  (unintelligible)  Mumble.  Mumble.