VINEGAR SYNDROME’S BLOOD MANIA AND POINT OF TERROR SET RIPS THE SCREAMS RIGHT OUT OF YOUR THROAT!

Maria De Aragon

VINEGAR SYNDROME’S BLOOD MANIA AND POINT OF TERROR SET RIPS THE SCREAMS RIGHT OUT OF YOUR THROAT!

BLOOD MANIA / POINT OF TERROR

Blood Mania

Starring: Peter Carpenter, Maria De Aragon, Vicki Peters, Alex Rocco, Leslie Simms
Written by: Peter Carpenter, Tony Crechales, Toby Sacher
Directed by: Robert Vincent O’Neil

Point of Terror

Starring: Peter Carpenter, Dyanne Thorne, Lory Hansen, Leslie Simms, Joel Martson
Written by: Peter Carpenter, Ernest A. Charles, Tony Crechales, Chris Marconi
Directed by: Alex Nicol

“We’re very young souls. Very young and evil.”
“Yes, very evil…You’ll probably live to be a hundred and ten.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Only the good die young.”

Currently, going to the movies is a single-film event but it was not always that way. My dad told me that when he was a kid during the Depression (I am that old), going to a picture show meant featurettes, a newsreel, and two movies, sometimes even singing, all for a dime! When I was a child in the 1960s and 1970s, that sort of thing was long gone. But drive-ins will always have double bills where a current feature is coupled with the return of something from last year or the year before, that were thematically linked (Stallone/Schwarzenegger pairing of Raw Deal and Cobra in 1986 taught me everything I needed to know about being a man.). Sometimes they were odd pairings, such as the Mel Brooks comedy Young Frankenstein and psychological slasher Toolbox Murders double feature that I convinced a friend from church to get his dad to take us to see. Mr. D. lasted about 7 minutes into the The Toolbox Murders before pulling the plug on the evening.

Sometime during the mid 1970s, a horror triple feature of Blood Mania (1970), Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972), and the 1974 Vincent Price meta-horror film Madhouse made the drive-in rounds. I was around ten or 11 at that time, so there was no way to see it. But the TV spot was filled with enough weirdness to fuel my imagination for decades. Replete with the most brain bending bizarre images: undead monks crawling from graves, frightening monsters gathered in a living room, and all the distorted shadows and shapes that can be derived from descending a spiral staircase in the dark, I felt a need to go to those places and explore their environments. While Tombs of the Blind Dead and Madhouse are better known, it was Blood Mania that packed the most punch.

Dead Body Descending a Staircase No. 1 – This staircase was so dramatic it should have received a screen credit.

Blood Mania is the story of talented but doomed physician Craig Cooper (Peter Carpenter). The trip to his final undoing is a heavily giallo influenced, surreal descent into madness, mayhem and murder! Soon after the triple feature had moved on, I was able to catch the heavily edited TV version and it fulfilled all the promise of its eerie commercial. At it’s bloody heart, Blood Mania is a well crafted, brain bending, unhinged showpiece of Faustian deals gone wrong, incest, murder, and blackmail. As a bonus, it also an all around feast of gore, sex and way-out psychedelic visuals.

Vicki Peters

Leading man Peter Carpenter with his imposing, 6 foot 4 inch dancer’s body and dark, curly locks, was a multi talented actor, dancer, teacher, singer, writer, and producer behind Blood Mania its follow up, Point of Terror (1971). Sadly, he died while working on a third film

Leslie Simms and Dyanne Thorne

Carpenter surrounded himself with beautiful women in both films. Blood Mania love interests Vicki Peters and Reagan Wilson were Playboy models and gorgeous leading ladies Maria De Aragon (Blood Mania) and recently passed Dyanne Thorne (Point of Terror, Blood Sabbath and Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS) were the femme fatales.

Lory Hansen and Peter Carpenter

Both films seemed to be destined for obscurity until rescued boutique film restoration company Vinegar Syndrome released a beautiful multi-disc set in 2019. The three disc set includes a Bluray with excellent 2k restorations from the original negative of both films, interviews with Blood Mania director Robert Vincent O’Neill and actress Leslie Simms (Simms was also Carpenter’s teacher and friend. He made sure she had juicy roles in both of his films.) Blood Mania also has commentary from O’Neil, Simms and Vicki Peters, all of whom shared very fond memories of Carpenter.

The two other discs, both DVDs, contain DVD versions of the films on one and the edited for television versions (which is how I first saw Blood Mania) on the other. Both films have been beautifully restored from their original negatives, allowing the eye-catching color photography to leap off the screen.

Peter Carpenter as Tony Trelos

Point of Terror is very similar to Blood Mania, except that instead of a doctor, Carpenter plays Tony Trelos, a struggling singer trying to wrangle a record deal by wooing the wife of a music producer. The remastered audio on the Vinegar Syndrome set is crisp and clear, giving Carpenter’s musical performances full expression.

Gratefully, I got my copy before Vinegar Syndrome sold out of this special edition. I could not imagine my collection without these beautiful copies of movies that shaped my love of horror from such an early age.