More socio-political commentary masquerading as a horror film here, as a bunch of soulless rich Italians literally leech off the lower classes in order to make money from illegal medical shipments of blood to war torn nations throughout the world. That message comes across loud and clear. And camp and colourful and daft and ridiculous at the same time.
A strange man drives around an Italian town picking up a prostitute, a gypsy, a drunk guy, and two annoying hippy drifters. He takes them back to his modern home where his sister Nina (Marina Malfatti) and her weird husband Antonio live. Antonio is an eccentric scientist obsessed with biological perfection who has all sort of crazy robots lying around the place. He also sports a ridiculous large wardrobe of gigantic bowties that only add to his strangeness.
The drunk guy seems to be the only one who realises that he's stumbled into some modern version of Hansel and Gretel, only instead of being filled up with sweets and shoved in an oven, the evil rich people give you what you want (booze, jewels, etc) then suck all the blood out of the back of your neck using a bizarre robot that looks like Metal Mickey has gone off the rails pretty badly. Eventually the captives are whittled down enough and the hippies come out of their smug stupor and finally cotton on that they are next.
Meanwhile, there's this agent trapped in a sub-plot throughout the film that initially finds some wine bottles containing blood who is trying to trace everything back to his source. He doesn't get to do much, but I guess he turns up at the right time when needed. Most of the madness occurs inside the house however, my favourite being when Antonio invites everyone who is still alive at that point to enter a weird hall of mirrors he's designed...if only they'll jump through the giant plastic fanny he's using as a doorway!
This is the blackest of black comedy right here, but there are the odd effective bits of horror too, from the hippies finding a fridge full of dead bodies to the exsanguination of the prostitute. This is a fun watch for seventies horror fans.
