Bloodlust

Color, 1977, 91 mins. 37 secs.
Directed by Marijan Vajda
Starring Werner Pochath, Marion Messner, Gerhard Ruhnke
Mondo Macabro (Blu-ray) (US R0 HD) / WS (1.78:1) (16:9), Astro (DVD) (Germany R0 PAL) / WS (1.78:1)


This Bloodlustunnerving Swiss precursor to Bloodlustextreme European necrophilia yarns like Nekromantik and Lucker shares its era's fascination with blending art house aesthetics and gruesome subject matter, a tactic that arguably reached its zenith with Tenderness of the Wolves and Daughters of Darkness. Though not as widely known as those two films, Mosquito der Schänder (better known as Bloodlust or simply Mosquito) offers several haunting moments and maintains an eerie mood throughout with director Vajda (who turned almost exclusively to German television afterwards) making the most of his grotesque set pieces.

Still recovering from horrific abuse as a child, a nameless deaf mute accountant (The Cat o' Nine Tails' Pochath) develops a fixation with blood spilling across his skin. Brief flirtations with ketchup and red ink seem to satisfy him at first, but soon he develops a taste for the stuff as well. Though he nurses a weird fascination for a neighbor girl who passes the time by dancing on the rooftop, he remains socially withdrawn with his coworkers and can't even find comfort in the arms of a hooker. One night he breaks into the property of the local coffin maker and ravages the prettiest female corpse. Now addicted, he habitually raids the tombs of the dead and drinks blood from their throats via a spiked, double pronged glass straw. Authorities and citizens are incensed by the crimes and soon begin to cry for the deviant's own blood.

Shot in a staid and carefully composed style, Bloodlust succeeds more due to the perverse impact of its story than the uneven quality of its special effects; even an eyeball removal that would have Bloodlustbeen riotous in the hands of Lucio Fulci seems more disturbing here in concept than in execution. The camera often lingers on the blood dribbling from Pochath's lips, but overall it's more pathetic and weirdly poignant than disgusting. Add to that a deliberately eclectic score Bloodlust(ranging from abrasive organ doodling to gorgeous orchestral themes), some strangely effective German village scenery out of a depraved fairy tale, and an oddly anticlimactic yet appropriate ending, and you've got one seriously twisted chunk of Eurosleaze.

If they didn't catch this one during its brief theatrical run, most horror fans first heard about this film on the tape trading circuit back in the late '80s when it became known as "that movie where the creepy German guy sucks corpse blood out of a straw." A Japanese VHS was usually the source back in the day, though a scarce U.S. edition also popped up for a short period of time. The 2002 German DVD from Astro offers both the German and English soundtracks, both of which are dubbed since the international group of actors prohibited any kind of authentic single language track. While the lack of optional subtitles is regrettable, the English track is serviceable enough despite the flatness of the voices. Image quality is good for the time but not anamorphic, struck from a mint source with exceptionally robust colors. Extras are limited to a photo gallery Bloodlustand a newly created "trailer" generated for the video release. Some junky bootleg DVDs also turned up in the U.S. in the early '00s and are best avoided entirely.

In 2018, Mondo Macabro gave the film its global Blu-ray debut with a U.S. release as both a standard retail edition and one of the label's limited red case editions featuring an exclusive booklet with liner notes by Michael Gingold and plus lobby card and poster reproductions. BloodlustThe new 2K transfer from the film negative sports the Mosquito title at the beginning and looks terrific, with the impressive color scheme in particular really drawing out the vibrant '70s details of clothing and storefronts while giving some extra intensity to the orange-tinted flashback/fantasy sequences. Both the English and German tracks are provided (in lossy Dolby Digital, oddly enough) with newly translated, optional English subtitles. An interview with assistant director Marijan David Vajda (11m11s), the son of the director, was recorded in 2009 and covers his thoughts on the film, his father's career, the wrangling with censors, and the confusion over their nearly identical names. Next up, actress Birgit Zamulo appears for an interview (20m14s) about her very young attraction to acting, the theater contract that posed a problem with her taking a role in this film, her real-life contact with a prisoner on death row, and the very dangerous shooting conditions of the rooftop scenes. Finally the disc rounds out with the U.K. theatrical trailer, which is actually a lot of fun and quite gimmicky, and the usual Mondo Macabro promo reel.

Reviewed on October 5, 2018