The Thirsty Dead (1974)

The Thirsty Dead: Directed by Terry Becker. With Jennifer Billingsley, John Considine, Judith McConnell, Tani Guthrie. Beautiful young girls are kidnapped off the streets of Manila by a death cult that needs their blood to remain immortal.

“Some movies, back in the heyday of Ballyhoo, used to claim they were so terrifying that a single viewing would kill you. The Thirsty Dead could have made a similar claim, although threats of being Bored To Death donu0026#39;t draw nearly as big a crowd.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis movie reeks like overcooked cabbage. It actually starts out kind of promisingly. Attractive young women are being abducted off the streets of Manila. The rumor is White Slavery. The truth is even worse. Seems the captives are being taken prisoner to the Cardboard Cave Kingdom of the Xanadu Rejects! Our four pretty protagonists stumble through the film as though they have each drunk a gallon of Nyquil before the camera started rolling. The Heroine, played by Meredith Baxter Birneyu0026#39;s ugly brother in drag, is about as stupid as a bag of hammers. For some dumb reason she falls in love with the King of the Aztec-y cult, a disco-suited Peter Lorre impersonator. This irritates the High Priestess, whose horse-teeth are the scariest effect in the whole film. Meanwhile, the other 3 captive girls – Jan Brady, the obligatory native Filipino girl and a redheaded Russ Meyer reject – sit around and do nothing. Thereu0026#39;s lots of buckskin bikinis and sexy sarongs and girls dancing around a severed head in a square lava lamp, but the plot apparently wandered off while the director wasnu0026#39;t looking. I stopped caring fifteen minutes into this mess. Itu0026#39;s almost too bad to laugh at.”