Blood Beat (1983)

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Director: Fabrice A. Zaphiratos

Screenplay: Fabrice A. Zaphiratos

Cast: Helen Benton as Cathy; Terry Brown as Gary; Dana Day as Dolly; James Fitzgibbons as Ted; Claudia Peyton as Sarah; Peter Spelson as Uncle Pete; Franck Miley as Paul

Synopsis: Christmas season, Wisconsin. At the family retreat in the countryside, a family soon finds the merry season to be at ill-ease, the mother a psychic aware something is amiss in the homestead, and the new girlfriend of one of her sons disconnected from them. Could the random killings by a samurai in the environment be connected?

[Spoilers Throughout]

The infamy of Blood Beat, an obscure film but one which has slowly crept back into interest for those thirsty for odd American genre films, is that it is about a samurai ghost conjured to kill a person every time a young woman has an orgasm. Blood Beat does not exactly follow this premise exactly, in fact like a lot of exploitation/horror films deviating from these premises in the actual content. What sounds like a strange and lurid premise is something else entirely, as Blood Beat is still pretty weird as premises go. It does not get into the fact that it is still a film about sexual repression, family conflict, and a samurai inexplicably walking around the Wisconsin woodlands killing people.

Most of Blood Beat plays out like a very nihilistic family drama, where tensions are so high even Ingmar Bergman films have more levity compared to the attitudes and neurosis shared among these characters. Quite a few independent American genre films from this era have this peculiar trait, where they ingest other genres within them. They are the more rewarding, as rather than the generic exposition padding that the dull exploitation films have, independent productions like this instead ingest older types of cinema their creators grew up with or take on aspirations for more dramatic interaction between the characters. These films can  turn into dramas riddled with putrid emotional turmoil and this is among many.

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That it is set at Christmas offers a hilariously strange tone to Blood Beat, considering its premise, but emphasises this dramatic tone. Where the (step)father has moments of frustration with his wife's behaviour, that which may be due to her psychic powers but also has a side found in drama where she spends her days locked in a room painting by herself. Where her relationship with the new girlfriend of one of her sons has the awkwardness of a new person in one's life meeting the family for the first time, only with the added issue that said girlfriend is acting strangely and has a black magic aura surrounding her which erupts through sensuality. Even the side characters meant to just be slasher film fodder have toxic relationships, such as an older couple where the husband barks orders to his wife whilst in the other room with the dog. It can be ridiculous how nasty and bleak these films can be - the most extreme like Carnival of Blood (1970) and Andy Milligan films being practically nihilistic of the entire human species - and Blood Beat whilst not as extreme has an unintentional streak of negativity for human relationships until its ending, suggesting family and their ancestral bond literally leads to spirit strength.

Whilst it can be seen as extremely crass, that her libido is a destructive, not depicted in a way that I feel is sexist but just a bit silly, the girlfriend character for three quarters of Blood Beat is depicted in a way that leads to the film's more rewarding aspects. Whilst it is a family drama inexplicably draped is slasher kill scenes, her plot thread is depicted as a low budget psychodrama, play in a low budget, not-quite Repulsion (1965) style with overt references of Carrie (1976). It never explains why the family has samurai armour in the house, or why a samurai was chosen for this very rural and American type of genre film, but she has before being revelled to be possessed by black magic a fascinating character for this film to have, one who is nervous amongst the family and troubled. One who flinches during a hunt, refusing to see an animal be killed, fleeing from the scene and beginning one of the first deaths. Her sensuality, whilst potentially eye rolling in how it leads to death, does play to Blood Beat's weird tone.

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Director/screenwriter Fabrice A. Zaphiratos helps in this regard by incorporating avant-garde techniques that create a sense of disorientation. The droning electronic score, found in many a production like this at the period, helps in its atonal noises further for this sense that Blood Beat is going to drag itself into stranger places as it tried to juggle domestic sequences with disconnected slasher kill sequences. That it eventually includes the girlfriend's sexual repression, whilst potentially crass, nonetheless lets the film edge closer to being to psychotronic version of Repulsion with added psychic shenanigans, objects in the kitchen assaulting a character at one point for evidence, where even a box of cereal is potentially threatening.

Sadly Blood Beat decides to end the film in pure gobbledegook. Not compellingly strange, almost logical ideas which ultimately make no sense, but the cod-mysticisms that a lot of horror cinema has which has no actual sense of mysticism even for a fun premise. Eventually the girlfriend is shown, as mentioned, to be possessed by an evil black magic figure, whilst the mother and her children are represented as being forces of good, all with the type of practical effects rotoscoped on screen you see in Indonesian films like Mystics in Bali (1981). Not necessarily a bad thing but unfortunately in context of where Blood Beat was going, with its regional flavour and lengthy scenes of low budget drama, it is a tonal shift that is not compelling weird but just arbitrary. It is an issue as well as betraying the tone Even in an exploitation film, a more honest and rewarding way to tell a supernatural/paranormal story would be to accept the irrational as that which invades normal reality and is beyond logic. Even if it has a pseudo-dramatic cause, confusion is more profound in lurid cinema and art house drama alike. To attempt to explain it rationally is deceitful, and in most cases never is satisfying anyway, where the mystery is loss and the films unravel themselves in having to try to explain something which comes off as convoluted. It is poisoned for a psychotronic film like Blood Beat to make sense, so the ending does in spite of the film's pleasures does slip its qualities down a little.

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Abstract Spectrum: Psychodrama/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Personal Opinion:

The film is still strange and memorable, but stepping back, even if you are willing to forgive Blood Beat for its flaws and admire its homemade quality from its French-Vietnamese director, he did drop the ball in story logic and in pure psychotronic entertainment by suddenly turning into a series of inexplicable coloured lights and psychic powers in the ending.

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