I’ve sat through at least 90% of Wild Eye Releasing’s horror-related catalog, at this point. It is a great home to indie flicks like The Disco Exorcist, Exhumed, and Murder University, but for a lot of the films they distribute, it’s almost painful to sit through in one sitting. I’ve enjoyed a select few, but for the most part, I really dislike a lot of their movies. I still remain loyal to the label, though, and any time a new film gets released, I give it a fair chance. My newest acquisition from Wild Eye was Peter Grendle’s Blood Soaked… and I was beyond surprised at how good this film turned out!
Piper is off to college for her freshman year and quickly becomes friends with an older student named Ashley. The two party together and actually form some more serious feelings, as they hang out the entire night. The two new friends get caught on the side of the road by a pair of sisters spitting hateful comments at the two and sporting ashes on their foreheads, even though “it’s not even a Wednesday.” (I wonder how many viewers of the film actually understood what Ashley meant when she said that!) Things get ugly real fast as Ashley is shot in the head and Piper is taken to the sisters’ desert lair, where they are keeping a group of re-animated corpses including their very own mother and Nazi father!
As you can tell from my introduction to this review, my hopes for Wild Eye films are never really held too highly anymore, so I really didn’t expect much going in to Grendle’s little indie flick. As soon as the film started rolling, I noticed that the quality was already ahead of its indie counterparts and had an awesome gritty feel to it that made me immediately think of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I was instantly hooked. Luckily, the impressive acting performances, awesome practical effects, and artistic approach to filming, managed to assist in moving the film along in the right direction for its entire duration.
Everybody from Heather Wilder and Rachel Corona as Piper and Heather, respectively, to the sadistic Nazi sisters, Sadie and Katie, played by Laina Grendle and Hayley Derryberry, did an awesome job in Blood Soaked. They played their roles naturally, really adding authenticity to an extremely unrealistic situation. I loved Derryberry’s approach to playing Katie as a giddy, childlike character although her and Sadie were doing some rather gruesome things to their victims. Think of what a younger sister to Sheri Moon Zombie’s Baby character from The Devil’s Rejects would be like — that’s the psychotic Nazi-sympathizing Katie!
Somewhere in the filmmaking process, Peter Grendle and his team decided to shoot the film in both color and in black and white. The finished product is an impressive looking film that certainly plays with the viewer’s senses, but I feel as though some things were lost in the de-colorization of some scenes. A lot of the sequences that were filmed in black and white seemed almost too hard to follow; A lot of the blacks blended together and I couldn’t tell what I was looking at, at times. It wasn’t a deal breaker because the film already had a lot going for it, but I wonder if it could have been executed a little differently.
Blood Soaked turned out to be a viciously brutal film that took the Nazi zombie sub-genre to a place that hasn’t been explored before. It is an original film with great direction and production all around and I highly recommend it. Be sure to visit Wild Eye Releasing’s official website to purchase your copy today!
I give this flick 3.5 knives to the neck out of 5.
Sounds good enough to give it a chance