Such a frustrating disappointment

One of my all time favorites.

Just perfect...

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Sensitive young Sarah (an appealing portrayal by fetching brunette Claudia Peyton) and her boyfriend Ted (likeable James Fitzgibbons) decide to spend Christmas with Ted's loopy psychic artist mother Cathy (a seriously strange performance by Helen Benton) in rural Wisconsin. Things go dangerously awry when a lethal wacko in a samurai outfit (!) shows up and starts bumping people off.Wtiter/director Fabrice A. Zaphiratos makes nice use of the lovely forest locations, presents an interesting array of colorful oddball characters, and crafts a genuinely disorienting off-kilter spooky atmosphere. Moreover, the glacial pacing, increasingly bizarre narrative (the samurai's attacks are apparently triggered by Sarah's orgasms!), the wonky synthesizer score, lovably low-rent (not so) special effects, and, best of all, these jarring classic music compositions frequently blasting away on the soundtrack during the more intense moments all further enhance this film's considerable outre charm. Vladimir Van Maule's sharp cinematography boasts several freaky stylistic flourishes. A truly peculiar one-of-a-kind oddity.

There have been just over 400 slasher movies released since Halloween moulded the genre way back in 1978. Despite this impressive catalogue of titles to search through, it's amazing how often the critics manage to get the category muddled with movies that just don't fit with the traditional trappings. A Nightmare on Elm Street for example is by no means a slasher movie. Glove fingered Freddie's murderous tactics are far too supernatural to allow him to share a place with the archetypal hack and slash icons such as Cropsy, Mikey Myers and Mr. Voorhees himself. That doesn't mean that there aren't any supernatural slasher movies in existence whatsoever. Just take a look at Uli Lommel's The Bogeyman, the rancid Boarding House and John Carl Buechler's mish-mashed Demonwarp for a taste of slash-happy shenanigans mixed with a slice of fantasy just for good measure. It's alongside those aforementioned entries that Bloodbeat comfortably finds it's nesting place within the hack and slash cycle. Despite an otherworldly final third that makes Gandalf's antics in Lord of the Rings look like a lazy Sunday afternoon in South London, the overall emphasis of the plot sticks closely to the rules regulated by the forever touted kings of the category.Ted (James Fitz Gibbons), his girlfriend Sarah (Claudia Peyton) and his younger sister Dolly (Dana Day) head to their mother (Helen Benton)'s remote woodland retreat to spend the Christmas vacation with their family and friends. Upon arrival Sarah begins to feel unsettled by a strange psychic link that she shares with Ted's mysterious mother. Later in the week, a family deer-hunting trip is ruined when Sarah stumbles across the mutilated corpse of a local wanderer. Soon after the body count begins to mount as a supernatural figure dressed in Japanese samurai garb begins hacking through the townsfolk with a katana. Before long the hulking killer begins closing in on the secluded family as they struggle to come to terms with the bizarre and inexplicable occurrences that have plagued their seasonal gathering…From the start it's only too easy to see how Bloodbeat has been labelled amongst the multitude of slasher movies that were released during the heyday of the early eighties. Victims are butchered by an ominous shadow in the traditional steady-cam build up and director Fabrice Zaphiratos signals his knowledge of the genre by adding the eerie heavy breath that was made famous by John Carpenter in 1978. It's only towards the conclusion that things take a wayward twist into the paranormal, as the killer rages a comical battle using extrasensory-perception instead of a carving knife or pickaxe! The highlight of the showdown is when the maniac confronts the final group of survivors in the secluded cabin. They each take turns to inflict psychic damage on one another whilst gurning like they're suffering from a particularly nasty bowel complaint.It's a real shame that we don't get to see that much of the bogeyman's disguise as it is by far one of the best that I can remember in slasher cinema. The samurai is one of the most majestically elegant screen icons ever set to celluloid, and to see such a figure taking the place of the more traditional masked villain is a great achievement. The cast, although amateurish, move the plot along neatly and Bloodbeat manages to keep the interest levels running high right up until the climax. An exceptional use of sound also helps to create an uneasy atmosphere and the director chooses wisely to add haunting orchestrated melodies to a few superbly edited set-pieces. It's easy to ignore some of the overcooked cinematography, as it seems that the director was doing his best to keep the momentum running high throughout the runtime.One criticism that can be levelled at Zaphiratos is that he throws a little too much of everything into the blender and what we're left with is a lump sum that's a little too uneven to digest. We're never really given a straight resolution to exactly what a ghostly samurai warrior is doing terrorising an American woodland retreat and a little more clarification would have been greatly appreciated. Why he decided to break the slasher mould and opt for a climax owing more to the likes of Poltergeist is a mystery in itself. Yes you can laugh at the Commodore 64-esque special effects and the strained faces of the ESP confrontation, but all in all this is a mildly diverting slasher journey that's perhaps a little unlucky to be so overlooked. At times taut and suspenseful, almost always intriguing and bizarrely bemusing to boot, Bloodbeat isn't that bad if you can find yourself a copy. It's strange but bizarrely alluring

I was quite surprised by this movie. Obviously it was made with no money at all, but acting, photography, editing and story are well done. Proves once more you can do an entertaining movie with very little. "Blood Beat" owes a bit to "Poltergeist", "Witchboard" and "The Shining" maybe, but has a good storyline of its own about the ghost of evil (dressed up as a samurai warrior, also incarnated in one young lady) against a family whose members seem to have a certain talent for (good) magic. The special FX to show the magic (red powerlines vs blue powerlines) look ridiculous by today's standards, but hey, this is just a cheap little horror movie to waste a Sunday afternoon with, okay? The movie has a couple of memorable scenes (e.g. the samurai slaying the older woman, while the possessed young lady is getting more and more "excited", I thought the rapid cutting was breathtaking). If you see a copy on a probably dusty shelf, give it a try, as the video tape will be cheap I bet.

I saw this movie in my teen years. And I would tell you how I felt about it if I had any idea what in the hell the plotline was. I saw the tagline on this website and I understood more about this movie than when I actually saw the movie. Still, I think that's what made it so memorable.