An American junkie (Dennis Hopper) living on the coast of Spain hallucinates a series of fatal sexual fantasies for himself and a motley group of expatriates that include a has-been movie star (Carroll Baker), a former WW II pilot (Richard Todd), his neurotic wife, and a flamboyant homosexual. An interesting idea got lost in a vague, rambling story that might have played better back in the psychedelic 60s and even though it all comes together (sort of) in the end, it reely isn't worth the wait. Unless, of course, you're as crazy about Carroll Baker Eurotrash as I am. Raquel Welch's Eurotrash SIN (1971) and BLOODBATH both take place in European coastal towns far removed from civilization and the primitive villagers are a sinister, symbolic presence in each. There's food for thought when, dressed in black, the "townies" in both movies practice bizarre pagan rituals that include animal sacrifice and also serve as an eerie Greek Chorus/comeuppance for the protagonists. Definitely a demented double feature for Eurotrash aficionados everywhere!

One of the undeniable pleasures of compulsive movie-watching is discovering obscure stuff such as this one which not only managed to rope in a surprising number of talents but the end result is so oddball as to make one wonder how it ever came to be written, shot and distributed!; indeed, in comparison to the stream-of-consciousness nature of the film under review, the same director's would-be arty Western BLUE (1968; which I have just watched) seems like a walk in the park! For leading man Dennis Hopper (called "Chicken" here!), it was no big stretch to play this after his self-directed THE LAST MOVIE (1971) and TRACKS (1977) – what is more, he seems to have kept his APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) look for it – nor, for that matter, appearing as a junkie. For his co-star, too, Carroll Baker – here sending up her own image of a has-been Hollywood diva (dubbed "Treasure" in her case!), it was basically a continuation of her "Euro-Cult" outings of a few years earlier. Way-past-his-prime Richard Todd, however, must have kicked himself for accepting to appear in such a 'depraved' film, where he has to call his hard-drinking suicidal wife a "bitch", gay hanger-on Alice a "whore", and is even seen ogling an Oriental girl about 40 years his junior! Todd's wife is Faith Brook, an unknown name to me but, looking up her resume' to IMDb, she has been featured in films as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock's SUSPICION (1941), Joseph Losey's THE INTIMATE STRANGER (1956) and Anthony Mann's THE HEROES OF TELEMARK (1965)! With respect to the transvestite, apparently the actor was himself so inclined, since he went by the name of Win(ifred) Wells: actually, it was the latter who supplied the script and that of another strange Narizzano film i.e. the Italian-made REDNECK (1973)! What plot there is essentially develops into a quartet of couplings: Hopper with a good-looking blonde, Baker with a bland-looking macho (who's almost always stark naked), Todd with the afore-mentioned Asian and Wells with a black stud (unflatteringly referred to as "Turd")! For what it is worth, a fleeting character in the film announces herself as "Carrie Nation", but whether this was a direct nod to the pop group at the center of Russ Meyer's BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1970) is hard to tell under the circumstances! Anyway, all four protagonists come to a sticky end: WWII vet Todd goes willingly before a firing-squad, spurred on by his girl, in full official regalia(?!) – his wife is thus left alone; Wells is gored by a bull in his lover's shack (how the animal came to be there is anybody's guess); Baker is drowned in a pool following an orgy; and Hopper stumbles dead on the beach, having shot up once too many (he frequently hallucinates about his parents, with whom he seems to have had an oedipal relationship – worshipping his mother while hating his evangelist father).The rest is a semi-improvised wallow in hedonism: this Spanish production bore the original title LAS FLORES DEL VICIO – which, translating to THE FLOWERS OF VICE, links it with Jose' Ramon Larraz' no less outrageous THE COMING OF SIN (1977); the BLOODBATH moniker, then, is hilariously misleading and, for the record, the film is also known as THE SKY IS FALLING (an appropriately bleak line in a song Baker is constantly crooning). In fact, it is overflowing with local color in the form of peasants' toil-ravaged faces and solemn religious rites, to say nothing of violence – animals being nonchalantly slaughtered or beaten and, in the best (if tellingly irrelevant) sequence, the Bunuelian image of a child getting trampled by a crowd (even if we had already witnessed the discovery of the same kid's drowned body!). That is not forgetting the expected moments of Hopper lunacy: notably, squashing a handful of eggs early on squarely in the face of his black lover and then forcing her to sing a traditional 'from the old plantation' tune(!) and a remarkable dialogue exchange by the sea-side between him and his latest partner, which I quote verbatim: "You look beautiful like that" – "What?" – "I said 'You look beautiful like that'" – "I can't hear you" – "I said 'I wanna rape you'!" – "Then you should!"

I didn't get it. It was a film I saw as a teenager and I remember how bad it was.It seems that everyone was enjoying an hedonistic lifestyle, the upshot being, however, that you ended up dying because of it.My lasting memory is of Richard Todd (what was he thinking) walking quite happily to the firing squad, just to impress the girl.Plan 9 from outer space might be a bad film, but this is so much worse. This will never have the cult following of Plan 9 and I hope, in a perverse sort of way, that this film gets deleted and is never seen again.

I was in Spain when this was filmed with my family. The film was shot in the town of Mojacar in the early 1970's. I met most of the actors and knew Silvio Narizzano and his partner Winn Wells personally since they lived down the street from our home. My parents owned a bar/restaurant called El Saloon and all the actors spent a great deal of time in their establishment during filming. My brother was cast as the mentally challenged child who was stomped to death in the plaza as a woman looked on from a balcony.I clearly remember the shot, however I have never seen the movie as I was quite young at the time. I would like to obtain the movie (dvd, video). If anyway can tell me where to purchase that would be great.Thank you.