Late teen Marion (Donna Wilkes) is having a bad time: one of her legs is in a medical brace after an accident, and at the beginning of the film, it’s not at all clear if she’s ever going to walk without one again. Her family life is rather terrible, thanks to her alcoholic, controlling and abusive father Frank (Richard Jaeckel), who also just happens to be responsible for the accident that caused her injury. Obviously, he uses his recurring bouts of guilt as yet another excuse for his drinking.
Things are so bad, Marion has concrete plans to run away with her boyfriend Joey (William Kirby Cullen). It’s only a question of time, and of Joey getting a job somewhere as far away as possible.
Because when it rains, it pours, Marion starts having visions and daymares of the killing spree of a guy with a flute fetish (Frankie Avalon). Why? Because she once had a transfusion of his blood, of course!
It’ll come as no surprise to anyone that the musical killer and Marion are headed for a collision course.
I found Alan J. Levi’s Blood Song a decent attempt at finding the point where ABC Movie of the Week style thriller and actual slasher meet. It makes decent use of its somewhat melodramatic mock-social realism, putting effort into building Marion and her social life up well enough to make her a more interesting heroine it is easier to care for. Of course and alas, it then finishes on exactly the sort of horror movie bullshit ending this sort of character was not made for, going for the boring trope when a semi-happy ending would have been much more fitting. Cynicism has its place in horror, obviously, but cynicism as an empty gesture is not really all that more interesting than the automatic happy ending it wants to replace while strutting around with typical edgelord non-grace.
Levi’s direction is very typical for a TV guy putting in some time in the horror mines early in his career: there’s a solid grip on all technical basics of filmmaking as well as the basic techniques of suspense, but also a certain lack of visual flair. Though, to be fair, Levi does put his locations in the part of town where the working class with aspirations lives to effective use, and has some success with flash cutting into and out of Marion’s visions.
The acting is very solid as well. Wilkes is convincing playing down six or so years of age, and is a generally likeable and believable heroine. Jaeckel does assholes rather well, and does his best with the script’s somewhat misguided attempts at trying to make Frank more likeable without him ever actually doing anything that would make him so until he catches a knife meant for his daughter. It’s the old “heroic self-sacrifice as the cheapest way to redemption without all that unpleasant need of having to actually change” move. Avalon clearly enjoys escaping his clear-cut image here, and, as is so often the case with this type, only needs to play up his natural creepiness until everybody in the audience notices it. He also plays the not exactly great idea with his trademark father-built flute (Professor Freud on line one, please!) so surprisingly natural, it works as a killer’s weird trademark despite of itself.
So, as an early 80s attempt at a non-typical slasher, Blood Song isn’t half bad. It’s not the sort of film I’d fall in love with or champion as a big lost masterpiece, but it does have enough virtues to be absolutely worth one’s time. Which is a lot more than I’d say about many a slasher.