Box of Blood 2003 Horror Movie Review

For nice sets of obscure, low-budget movies—particularly horror and/or sex exploitation movies—you can’t go wrong with Something Weird Video.  There’s hardly a good movie in the bunch, but there are plenty of so-bad-they’re-good flicks, as demonstrated in the five movie set, Box of Blood.


First up is The Bloody Pit of Horror; actually, like most of these films, this one has multiple titles, but I will refer to the one on the box.  This one stars Mickey Hargitay, who’s main claim to fame at the time was being Jayne Mansfield’s husband, and whose claim to fame today is being the father of Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay.  Mickey owns an isolated castle where he occasionally adopts the personality of the sadistic Crimson Execution, bringing woe to the visiting troupe of models who’ve come to the castle.


Next up is the very low-budget Carnival of Blood, a tale of a killer stalking the Coney Island Midway, and of course, murdering in creative and gory fashion.  A district attorney launches his own investigation and keeps dragging his girlfriend into dangerous situations.  Is he actually the killer, or could it be a disfigured Burt Young (later of Rocky fame)?  Don’t expect much logic, but it is interesting to see the 1970 version of Coney Island. 


Unfortunately, there isn’t much to enjoy about The Curse of the Headless Horseman, the weakest movie in the set.  When a medical student inherits a Wild West park, he brings his hippie friends out to improve the place (a requirement to fulfill the terms of the will).  A headless horseman is also at the park, terrorizing the various friends.  What little plausibility this movie has goes out the window with the appearance of Ultra Violet (a Warhol associate) who play a baroness who walks around with a Superman lunchbox.  (If you want to see a good movie with her, watch Midnight Cowboy.)


Despite a cast of relatively accomplished actors, Blood Suckers offers little quality either.  Peter Cushing, Patrick Macnee and Edward Woodward are all in this story about an Oxford student who disappears in Greece and becomes the captive of a murderous, vampiric cult.  Besides a tedious story, there is also some bad editing or directing:  some dialogue scenes look like each character spoke all his lines at once and then conversations were spliced together later.


Blood Thirst is okay enough, a black-and-white film that takes place in Manila where a monstrous creature is killing beautiful women and draining them of there blood.  An American homicide detective is asked to assist in the investigation; he is one of those suave pseudo-James Bonds who constantly quips and thinks all women are ready to fall for him.  Despite the general look of a 1950s horror film, this one was actually made in 1971.


On a straight quality level, these movies are all one or two-star fare, but at least three of them (Bloody Pit of Horror, Carnival of Blood and Blood Thirst) have a certain so-bad-it’s-good quality.  What really makes this set special are all the special features with lots of old movie trailers and posters that depict the Golden Age of the Exploitation Film as well as some short subjects that make the main features seem well-produced.  So you won’t get any Oscar-worthy films here, but the Box of Blood is still a lot of fun to watch.