BLOOD JUNKIE

In a well-shot pre-credits sequence, a hiker wades through the greenery of America’s Dairyland and towards an abandoned building in the middle of a remote field. He sets up camp there, but is attacked in the night by a ghoul wearing a gasmask.

The year is 1989 and the place is Wisconsin. Our heroine is Laura, a teenage girl whose parents go away for the weekend, leaving her in charge of her younger, Horror-obsessed brother Andy. They’ve even left her $35 in case of emergency.

Naturally, Laura wastes no time in ringing her fitness freak mate Rachel and arranging a trip to the local convenience store so the pair of them can stock up on booze.

At the store, the girls bump into local oafs Craig and Teddy. They’re planning on a camping trip and are looking for two chicks to take along for the ride. Following on from some painful flirting, the girls agree to go with the boys – on the condition that Andy can also tag along.

When the quintet gets to the woods, they set up camp for the night and begin to tell ghost stories. Most notable is one concerning the maniac who resides in an abandoned local factory.

This soon fades into insignificance, however, as the focus of the trip later turns to sex (bushy minges, this being the 80s) and boozing. Oh, and in Andy’s case, animal torture ...

But when the girls stumble across an abandoned factory the following day – the building from the film’s prologue – the blood-hungry gasmask-wearing fiend soon reappears ...

Drew Rosas’ debut feature film strives for an authentic feel of the 1980s and is very successful to this end. Fashions are keenly observed – from attire, to jewellery and even facial hair – while the electro-funk score will be familiar to all lovers of micro-budget films of that era.

Visually BLOOD JUNKIE looks the part throughout, and retains a squalid no-budget look that lends it the feel of more low-rent 80s offerings such as NIGHTBEAST and THE DEADLY SPAWN. The budget was apparently just $7,000.00.

Even dialogue and editing styles derive from the era, demonstrating how Rosas’ film is no hollow homage but a genuinely affectionate tribute to the time that taste bypassed (check out how the street where Laura lives looks uncannily like Laurie’s home street in HALLOWEEN – just one of the film’s subtler nods).

Comedy-wise the film is satisfyingly subtle (weird, as this is a Troma release), with much of the humour stemming from the obliviously bad fashion and astute piss-takes of 80s mentalities. In some respects, this quirkiness recalled NAPOLEON DYNAMITE’s existential take on rural America’s inert oddness.

The film is slow to deliver the good in terms of horror and those looking for grisliness may wonder if it’s going to come at all after 40 minutes or so, given that the whole film only runs for 72 minutes. But, after a few false starts, the action does get going and the gore runs red in the final half-hour. And when it does, the fun is pretty much unrelenting.

BLOOD JUNKIE is no classic but has fun running through one cliché after the last, and evokes a bygone decade with nary a hint of glaring anachronisms. There’s even a spot of gratuitous frog torture thrown in for those missing the politically incorrect excesses of 80s genre output.

BLOOD JUNKIE is presented uncensored in a fair 1.78:1 transfer. The presentation is letterboxed and occasionally soft, but boasts strong colours and accurate flesh-tones.

English 2.0 audio is solid and well-balanced throughout.

Troma’s region-free disc opens with their brilliant 2-minute promo reel set to the strains of Motorhead’s ‘Sacrifice’, and chock-full of nudity and gore.

From there, a static main menu page leads into a static scene-selection menu allowing access to the main feature via 20 chapters.

The best extra is an audio commentary track from Rosas, who speaks fluently about this obvious labour of love and injects welcome wit in-between the wealth of no-budget info.

10 minutes of deleted scenes are letterboxed like the main feature and offer some fresh gags but little much else.

A ‘photo slideshow’ turns out to be an incredible collection of production photographs, set to snippet’s from the film’s score and running over the course of an unexpectedly impressive 20 minutes.

PLASTIC FANGS is a 12-minute short film from Rosas that starts off with a vibe akin to early Doug Buck, before moving into more surreal territory as it offers a fresh, blackly comical take on the bizarre world of fancy dress parties. Again, this is letterboxed in 1.78:1.

BLOOD JUNKIE’s original 2-minute trailer follows.

Also on the disc but not listed as an extra is a 2-minute video introduction to the film from Lloyd Kaufman and Debbie Rochon. I’m sure you can imagine the level of sophistication involved here.

Beyond that, the disc proffers a batch of the usual ‘Tromatic Extras’. Most of which are puerile shit, save for a bunch of trailers for other Troma titles: THE TOXIC AVENGER, GRIM, BLOOD OATH, POULTRYGEIST, KILLER YACHT PARTY and THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE.

Although not a great film, BLOOD JUNKIE is enjoyable and stands as one of the better contemporary attempts at capturing the look and feel of low-budget 80s horror cinema. Troma have furnished it with a strong Special Edition DVD release.

Review by Stuart Willis