What’s Spanish for “pure sleaze”?

I’m beginning to think it’s ESCALOFRIO, the original title of SATAN’S BLOOD, a nasty little Satanic shocker from Spain. With a dash of diabolic mumbo-jumbo, a severed head or two and whole lot of swinging, sweaty sex, you have a tasty little pot of sopa de sexo y sangre, with enough left over for seconds.

Bored couple Andy and Anna head out for a drive in the city, only to come upon a strange couple, of which the man claims to have been a schoolmate of Andy’s. So while you and I would be content with a quick handshake, a “how’s life been” and a meaningless exchange of phone numbers (of which you’d never call), somehow Andy and Anna are tricked into going to the couple’s house, conveniently located in the middle of Cogida del Vago.

Almost immediately, the weirdness starts, as the creepy couple like burying their faces in plates and eating unseen blood-covered foodstuffs from the cupboard, bickering about botched suicide attempts and, most intriguingly, having hardcore, dirty-fluid exchanges with one another as part of a Satanic ritual. And even after all this, the couple still agrees to stay the night.

Things get weirder as they’re set up for murder and the strange couple start dying and dying, repeatedly. Is it a joke? Are they zombies? And what’s up with the creepy dude wandering the grounds? And just what are they eating in those plates? These questions are answered in the film’s oft-repeated “twist” ending, using a device that seemed to be very popular with Italian and Spanish thrillers of the ’70s.

While I personally could have used more “horror” – there are definitely a few chilling moments — the selling point of SATAN’S BLOOD lies in the overt sex scenes that, even today, go shockingly further than even the most fuck-drenched Skinimax flick. Every naughty position, every orientation you can think of is done, all in the name of the Dark Lord. Satanic spankings all around!

This Mondo Macabro DVD would go great on a double bill with the label’s other exercise in hellish hedonism, Paul Naschy’s PANIC BEATS. Fun for the whole family! –Louis Fowler

Buy it at Amazon.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 at 12:22 am and is filed under DVD Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.