Tomb

Unbelievable! A DVD release of the ludicrous, nudie-occult thriller Blood Sabbath (1972)? Really? People will actually be able to see this movie now?

Yes, I suppose that they will. And in case you were wondering, here’s what they’ll see.

After its creepy Blood Sabbath title card, we see hitchhiker David (Anthony Geary, best known from General Hospital) wandering aimlessly, set to the soundtrack of drippy folk music. Next, a van covered with painted flowers and peace symbols pulls up, with the girl in the passenger seat flashes David a big smile. This turns out to be none other than legendary ’70s soft-core porn star Uschi Digard, who promptly sprays beer all over David, and hoists up her blouse to wiggle her boobs at him. As the van speeds away, David looks miffed, but he walks on.

Later, while camping in the woods — his sleeping bag is out in the middle of nowhere — David’s sleep is disturbed by a noisy all-girl orgy at a nearby campsite. As if this wasn’t bad (or good?) enough, several lusty, busty ladies, led by Digard, wander over to his camp, throw their naked bodies on his recumbent form and try to kiss him. Oh no!

David’s response is akin to that of a schoolboy deathly afraid of girl germs. With a panicked yelp, he disentwines himself from the tangle of T&A that has engulfed him and runs for the hills.

“After him!” shout the nymphomaniacs, who giggle and bounce after our hero. David trips and conks his head on a rock. And here’s where the film starts to get strange.

Waking up groggy by the edge of a river, David is greeted by Yyalah (Susan Damante), a mystical water nymph. No, really. Despite being the least-interesting, and least-naked, female character we’ve seen so far, David instantly falls madly in love with her (A-ha! He does like girls!). Yyalah falls for David as well; at least, I think she does. It’s kind of hard to tell from her complete lack of facial expression — unless, of course, the embarrassment over her terrible wig counts as a facial expression.

Yyalah and David can’t be together because David has a soul, so next, he goes around asking townspeople and clergymen if they know how he can rid himself of his pesky animus. Fortunately — we think — the entire region is under the control of a coven of witches, led by their queen, Alotta (Dyanne Thorne, of Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS fame), who agrees to remove David’s soul with a procedure involving candles, an altar and a gaggle of naked dancing girls. It looks more like a lap dance than a Satanic ritual. Once it’s done, David whoops for joy, celebrating with a painfully lame slow-motion love montage with Yyalah, replete with all the standard running-through-fields and twirling-each-other-around clichés.

But wait! The story doesn’t end there. As it turns out that Alotta had evil intentions all along, and without his soul, David starts doing nasty things, like drinking blood and decapitating priests. This grosses Yyalah out, and she decides to dump David before things get out of hand (huh?), but by then, it’s too late. A big, confusing conga line of betrayals and stabbings lead to pretty much every character winding up dead, but eventually, David apparently becomes a water nymph himself, and he and Yyalah happily swim away together.

Every bit as insane as it sounds on paper, Blood Sabbath is earnest, inept, laughable and, of course, enlivened by lots and lots of female nudity. The dialogue is gloriously painful, the Vietnam combat flashbacks that David experiences are unintentionally hilarious and the really heavy drama scenes are undercut by the three-to-seven bushy vaginas that are usually onscreen whenever the characters are required to express anguish.

VHS copies of Blood Sabbath are very rare, but this nearly lost curio is now widely available on DVD. Well, sort of. You see, it’s included in a box set called Pure Terror 50 Movie Pack from Mill Creek Entertainment, which retails for about $20 and includes such “terrifying” flicks as The Devil’s Nightmare, Evil Brain from Outer Space, They Saved Hitler’s Brain and Manos: the Hands of Fate. That’s right, you have to buy 50 movies in order to watch Blood Sabbath.

You’re not going to do that, are you? Are you?