Blood Thirst (1971)

If Blood Thirst (1971) looks as if it was made a decade earlier than its release date, that's because it pretty much was.  Actually shot in 1965, its black and white photography and short running time, (around seventy five minutes), meant that it was destined to be a B-movie.  Indeed, Blood Thirst finally got a US release in 1971 as supporting feature to Bloodsuckers (1971), the US edit of the never properly completed British movie Incense For the Damned.  It is, in effect, a variation on the Elizabeth Bathory story, with a series of vampire-like murders of young women in Manila turning out to be carried out in order to provide an ancient woman with eternal youth.  Local cop Vic Diaz calls in his buddy from the NYPD to help investigate the killings which seem to centre on a local nightclub.  Of course, Diaz has an adopted Anglo sister to provide a love interest for the American hero and, inevitably, to be put in peril at the film's climax.  

The plot is slight - which is probably why the trailer is so brief, any more and it would have given away all of the plot points - and the film, for much of its length, unfolds as a crime investigation rather than a horror movie.  It even features a first person narration by the protagonist, in true hard boiled private eye fashion.  It finally lurches properly into horror toward the end, with the supernatural elements earlier dismissed by the hero when floated by Diaz, coming to the fore.  The black and white photography gives it a all a moody, noir-like feel, but the resolution seems rushed and the make up for the monster actually doing the killings is a let down - it just looks like a guy with melted wax all over his head.  Pre-dating by a few years the late sixties and early seventies boom in Philippines shot horror movies, Blood Thirst was shot on location in and around Manila by Americans, rather than being a full fledged US-Philippines co-production.  Director Newt Arnold was a noted Assistant Director on a number of big budget studio pictures, with his directorial career being restricted to low budget genre movies.  Blood Thirst's relatively short length means that it is never a particularly taxing watch, but it does seem to take far too long to get moving, with far too much time spent watching dance acts in the shady nightclub.