The Blood Let is one of those indie films that cares little about streamlining its horror plot, instead playing by its own quirky rules (or no rules). This makes for a film that delivers some pretty bizarre scenes and situations that range in tone: gory, creepy, funny, and just totally whacked.
Gus, a former cop hurt in the line of duty, now manages an old apartment building and is in therapy with some rather strange issues. And those issues make it even more of a challenge to deal with the challenging personalities of the eerie apartment building. There’s a chick who seems like a slut/cold fish, a drag queen with an apparent golf ball fetish…
…a homeless dude who raids the garbage cans regularly, and the owner, who is attached to an oxygen machine and cares only about Gus renting out every apartment, especially after a couple of tenants turn up dead.
So after several late nights of a weird couple standing outside the gates of the building asking to be let in (highly effective scenes), Gus finally agrees to rent to them. And the body count begins to rise. Turns out the new tenants are vampires! When the cops begin to suspect Gus is a killer, he has to dig deeper into the history (and scary nooks and crannies) of the building to learn the truth about the vampiric presence.
There’s so much weird shit going on here that it’s hard not to like the overall feel of the film. The vampires are camptastic. The female vamp has more blatant fun, but I wish the male vamp had been given more screen time as well because he is subtly superb in his devilish role.
There’s oddball humor galore, such as a big queeny gay bear garbage man finding a man’s head in the garbage but then easily getting distracted by a fabulous purse next to it.
There’s even a sudden martial arts catfight! Not to mention, the vamps are just creepy cool.
On top of that, there are so many trippy sequences it feels like something out of those low-budget, nonsensical 1970s horror films that fucked with my young mind. Things get darker, gorier, and oddly political (!). And at last, Gus takes off his shirt for the final battle. Wahoo! Is it weird that he looked to me like Steve Carell with a tight bod?
Those who prefer polished, mainstream horror will probably loathe The Blood Let, but if you’re into more off the wall stuff from the 1970s and 1980s, there’s some good indie fun to be had here.
