I drink your blood ('nuff said)

You know that warm feeling you get when you think about the horror films of your youth? How great, cheesy, and fantastically gory they were? The ones of your youth really had it right, didn't they? They really knew how to balance all the best parts of a fantastic horror movie. That's a great feeling, isn't it?

Well, now go back and watch one of those movies. Just watch a single one that you thought was great and simply classic when you watched it. You were young enough to dive into the sense of wonder you felt without the skeptic cynicism tainting the experience and the film for you. Now, it pales in comparison to smaller elements from more recent films, it just tries too hard, and achieves so little ultimately.

Sure, there are some films that live up to both your nostalgia and pre-cynicism (Evil Dead 2, Halloween, Re-Animator, etc.), but they are certainly rare. What's great about "I Drink Your Blood" is that it immediately elbows it's way into that category.

This film puts a hand on the shoulder of Nuke 'Em High and asks the Billy Jack series to give it a nudge against The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera in the stands at the Friday Night High School Football Game. When they're making out underneath the bleachers, I Spit On Your Grave interrupts jealously.

As you watch the film, there is the strongest sense that it knows exactly what it is. The movie is self-aware in that every aspect of it works like the perfect little gear in the machine. What results is a fantastic horror film that is both gory and cheesy and finds an implied humor in-between the two. This is not a film where nothing happens for most of the screen-time. Every scene is either handing you bad-acting gold or giving you a solid gore handshake over a business deal.

Those elements spring from the simplest of scenarios. It all revolves around a fun-loving group of devil-worshipers who hurt an old man by sharing their illegal drugs with him and unwittingly eat some rabies-pie baked with a slight hint of "grandson revenge" in the crust. Their ensuing murderous rage sets the stage for greatness.

In other words: watch this movie. Soon.