The Video Nasties #135 – Blood Song (1982, Alan J Levi)

‘Don’t you like my music?’

Blood Song is the kind of slasher film that tries to class itself up by opening with a Tennyson quote, but somehow ends up with 60s heart-throb Frankie Avalon strangling a nude woman.

Part stalker movie/part movie-of-the-week drama, Blood Song follows Marion, a young girl with a vague psychic connection to Frankie Avalon’s Paul. As a child, Paul witnessed his father killing his mother and then blowing his brains out, to which Paul’s response is to take out his pan pipes and start playing them. It’s the natural thing to do.

Paul escapes from an asylum 25 years later and, still carrying his pan pipes, goes on a rather slow paced rampage. For a slasher film, the slashing are kept to a bare minimum here, with most of the director’s focus going on the pathetic story of Marion and her abusive, alcoholic father.

Marion spends a lot of time moping about and crying, including one insufferable montage where she walks along a beach while a sappy ballad plays. Thankfully, at around the halfway point, Marion witnesses Paul burying a body and things get interesting.

Or so you would think! Because they don’t. There’s one decent kill near the end, but then the climax is flubbed, despite taking place in a sawmill, where the possibilities for gory demises are practically limitless.

On the plus side, Donna Wilkes makes for an appealing heroine, despite her TV movie character arc, and Frankie Avalon at least seems to be having a blast. I grew up watching him in the AIP Beach Party movies, so it was a pleasure to watch him hacking people in the face with an axe.

If only the filmmakers had realised that that is what people want to see, not the internal struggle of the alcoholic father.

Another missed opportunity for a Video Nasty slasher – there’s really not much to say about this one. Did I mention that Frankie strangles a naked woman to death?

I did? Well, that about says it all.