Peter Grendle’s most recent masterpiece, Blood Soaked, is a crude wink at modern grindhouse, a hotpot of Nazism, teen slasher, female serial killers and zombies. If you take this film as seriously (or not-so-seriously) as you take films such as Machete, Sleepaway Camp and I Spit on Your Grave, then you’re in for a real treat.
Grindhouse films are categorised as containing large amounts of sex, violence or bizarre subject matter. I think it’s safe to say that while there were no explicit sexual scenes aside from our heroine, Piper’s (Heather Wilder) lesbian awakening on the side road of a desert, there’s more than enough of all three of these themes to place Blood Soaked firmly within this genre.
The film crashes straight in with the opening showing two young sisters sobbing over their father’s dying body, before the eldest picks up a syringe filled with black liquid, plunging it into his heaving chest. The credits give a taste of the reasoning for the opening at they flit between newspaper readings and disturbing clips from World War Two and pro-Nazi imagery.
Ten years later and it appears that the death has had effect on the sisters, as they are shown hunting down a distressed woman and heartlessly stabbing her in the face before raiding her car. The acting in this is true to the style, almost like something out of a teen drama class: very loose and hilariously over the top. Katie, played by Hayley Derryberry, was almost animalistic, her sadism and cute bubble gum blondness reminding me of Sheri Moon Zombie in Devil’s Rejects.
The plot then jumps to Piper (Heather Wilder) as she starts her first year of college. The following scenes are a little cringy, but isn’t that the point? They are also very funny, especially the expected drunken party, where Piper’s new lesbi-love interest, Ashley (Rachel Corona), has a bitch fight with a girl she supposedly put her moves on at a previous event.
Following the party, Piper’s sexual awakening is explored in the New Mexico desert. Not the most typical place, but the girls had to stop after hitting a rabbit with their car. This opens the opportunity for our antagonists, Sadie and Katie, to turn up with their master plan. What follows is of course the typical bloodshed, torture and terribly acted dismay. Without giving away too much of the plot, there’s a definite twist that will leave you baffled and if you are like me, a little bit excited.
Grendle’s work is undeniably low budget. The camera is shot in a nauseating way and in the darker parts of the film I struggled to understand what was actually happening. However, this adds to the emphasis of Grendle’s intention. This was never to be a serious film. It’s grindhouse, it’s b-movie, it’s hyperbolised acting, violent gore and insanely courageous plotlines. It’s fun and who knows, maybe in years to come it could gain cult classic status.
