Voodoo Heartbeat – review

Director: Charles Nizet

Release date: 1973

Contains spoilers

This is a right oddity, a 70s exploitation flick (and it does contain nudity and some degree of softcore), I watched it thinking it was a Jekyll and Hyde-a-like, though the poster has a fanged man. In reality there are no fangs and it is less Hyde more vampire. It isn’t a great film, it has quite a disturbingly visceral scene (that I will cover) and the acting is blooming awful but it does have something for those who wish to watch the Z-list of B-Movies that moves it higher in score than it perhaps deserves.

scientists meet

It starts with a plane landing and Doctor Grant (Ern Dugo) lands in America and is picked up at the airport to take him to a meeting about a serum he has procured (stolen). We see a car with two Chinese agents follow them. In the meeting he tells the story of his adventure, five years in central Africa where he found a serum of youth. Mistrusted at first, he treated a yellow fever outbreak and gained the local confidence to the point that they “awarded him” a girl to be his wife. The information that she was 14 is met with chuckles by the wholly male attendees, makes the exploitation much sleazier and the viewer feels distaste.

the interminably long walk

When an elder became ill he realised the man was dying and the villagers confined him into a hut, whilst the maidens led the elder into the mountains. He snuck out and followed. They reached a place known as the Devil’s Gate, the elder barely able to walk. After an interminably long series of walking shots, they get into a cave and there is a plinth which the elder gets on and a girl gives him the serum to drink. The women then strip and start dancing round him, then one copulates with him as the others writhe on him and he becomes young once more. The climax sees one stab him and remove his heart. As they took the body for cremation, Grant got a sample of serum and legged it back to the USA.

stealing the briefcase

Unfortunately, he only has 10CCs of the serum and concludes that they must start human trials! He is informed that they have a volunteer, a prisoner from Death Row, and Grant suggests that he will administer it one CC at a time and do a maximum of 7 rounds of experiment, saving 3CCs for analysis. That settled he goes back to a waiting car to go to another airport. As they arrive his Chinese tail attacks. They shoot Grant and his companion, then get a machete to start cutting at Grant’s arm to get the handcuffed briefcase. His companion manages to get a gun, shoot one attacker but the other gets away. A shot damages the car, causing the attacker to abandon the vehicle as the companion expires.

taking the briefcase... and arm

The agent steals a car from some women and drives away but loses control and crashes. As it happens a station wagon is passing driven by Dr Blake (Ray Molina) – we later discover that he is a doctor who is disgraced due to an investigation of an abortion gone bad, which led to the patient's death and where the state cleared him but her family are still suing. He goes to the wreck and steals Grant’s arm and the briefcase (at least getting a newspaper from his car to pick up the arm, I assume to prevent getting blood on his car seat) – as you do! At home he reads the Top-Secret notes and then injects himself with the serum! During this we get a gratuitous side scene of Professor Larsen (Will Long), a colleague of Grant’s, being nude massaged by his wife!

family meal

Blake’s daughter (Ebby Rhodes) has come into town so, rather than her go to his home, he meets her for dinner. Mention is made of his new young 25-years old girlfriend – “Your mother always says I was a dirty old man”  –  and, in a familiar trope, he orders his steak bloody rare when he always used to eat it well done. He can’t eat the steak though, having cut into it, and instead makes his excuses to leave and goes to see his girlfriend. Though this is after a shot of blood being drawn (presumably his blood in order to test it).

feeding

He gets there and, despite not feeling well, starts getting hot and heavy with her until he snaps and starts strangling her and then punching her face. Though we only really see him punching downwards and not the blows themselves this is quite a visceral scene with a really good use of foley and, when we do see her bloodied face, it is shocking enough that our brains fill in the punches landing. He then goes to her neck and starts sucking blood from it. Later a doctor friend tells him that his blood work suggests a blood malady like leukaemia, but more aggressive, and that he will have to have frequent fresh transfusions. His daughter, worried, goes to his home and finds Grant’s arm and phones the authorities.

boat chase and shoot out

He does raid a blood bank (despite being told he needs freshly drawn blood). The only other feed we see him indulge in is in a canyon, where a man and two ladies are having some outdoor fun and games. He shoots all three and then sucks the blood from their bullet wounds. It is suggested that his pain thresholds will be massively heightened and his strength increased. For some reason the cops decide it sensible to take Prof Larsen and Blake’s daughter on a boat chase with shoot out! This is poor – the acting is risible (for those who know we are talking Manos: the Hands of Fate bad), the sequences pace sapping and incongruous – the walk to the cave, long drawn out injection of serum or drawing of blood. The film has the gratuitous, but really not erotic, nudity and, of course, the layer of sleaze I mentioned. Yet there is something Z-grade watchable about this in general. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.