Bloodbath

A bunch of burned-out, washed-up ex-pats live out their existence in a Spanish Coastal town, ignoring the natives and bitterly waiting for better days that never come. The locals practise weird rites and old crones walk the streets. Kids are found drowned or worse. Strange hippies descend on the town to seduce the ex-pats. There's barely and plot and the ending just raises more questions.

Dennis Hopper plays Chicken, a burned out drug addict with the manic personality of Dennis Hopper. Chicken keeps seeing his mother everywhere and has all sorts of crazy crap going on in his head. Carroll Baker plays a washed-up actress whom we first see having a pee into the sea after a drunken night out. She keeps waiting for a call to go back to Hollywood. Some other guy plays an ex-RAF officer waiting out his days getting drunk with his wife. Oh, and then there's the middle-aged gay guy firing out snide remarks left right and centre.

We get to see this lot living some sort of budget-level Fellini type lifestyle almost independent of the locals. The hippies seems to spark of some sort of killing spree by someone, but don't be fooled into thinking you're going to get any resolution from this one because while there are a few bloody murders, we never really get to find out who did them. Or why, for that matter. It's all very arty and surreal.

What makes it watchable is Dennis Hopper being insane and Carroll Baker trying to outdo him by being the same. In fact, I've never seen Baker more animated. She even lets out a blood curdling scream at a dinner table when she isn't the centre of attention. Her character is continually on the move while reminiscing about past times (she even relates an encounter which sounds exactly like something Harvey Weinstein would do!) while getting progressively more drunk and depressed.

What's it all about though? No idea. There's some gory deaths here (including a kid being crushed and a nasty impalement up the jacksy for one character) but...can't help with any explanations.

I was in Spain when this was filmed with my family. The film was shot in the town of Mojacar in the early 1970's. I met most of the actors and knew Silvio Narizzano and his partner Winn Wells personally since they lived down the street from our home. My parents owned a bar/restaurant called El Saloon and all the actors spent a great deal of time in their establishment during filming. My brother was cast as the mentally challenged child who was stomped to death in the plaza as a woman looked on from a balcony.

I clearly remember the shot, however I have never seen the movie as I was quite young at the time. I would like to obtain the movie (dvd, video). If anyway can tell me where to purchase that would be great.

Thank you.

A junky (Dennis Hopper), a retired Hollywood actress (Carroll Baker) and several other misfits live in a run down Spanish village. Suddenly they begin turning up dead! A strange and violent film, almost like an Italian "giallo" as if it were directed by Andy Warhol! I dug it!

A decrepit little Spanish village is the setting for this terribly overlooked artsploitation gem, wherein a diverse grouping of screwball characters begin to serially meet mysterious and violent ends...among them, a faded Old-Hollywood bombshell, a poetry spouting drug fiend, a stuffy WWll vet and his unstable wife, a couple of muscular gigolos, a bitter, mincing queen, and two waifish young girls.

Prepare yourself for mind bending surrealism, gore murders, cryptoglyphic metaphors, and a standout scene which may be the most politically incorrect in any film made after the Great Depression. Stir in some gay sex and dead animals for good measure, and voilà...an indescribable head-trip that fans of freak cinema won't want to miss. It's surprisingly well mechanized in most technical aspects, and the off-kilter characters are aptly effectuated by an appropriately eccentric cast(Baker, de Santis, and Hopper, most notably).

6/10...recommended.

Lovers of gonzo movies must sooner or later stumble across the wild and wonderful career of Dennis Hopper. His most interesting and "out there" period is also his least discussed. The so-called "lost decade" from roughly The Last Movie to Apocalypse Now. During this time he wasn't constantly working but he did make movies like Kid Blue, Tracks, Mad Dog Morgan and The American Friend, all due for reassessment. For my money the great lost Hopper performance can be found in Bloodbath (aka The Sky Is Falling), an obscure but worthwhile Spanish horror film. I use the term "performance" loosely because when watching his demented behaviour here you often get the feeling that much of what's on screen was probably similar to your typical day-in-the-life of Dennis in the Seventies! Hopper as Chicken hallucinates frequently, mumbles, rambles, freaks out, shoots up, makes love, quotes Hassan I Sabbah, and terrorises a poor girl by breaking a raw egg in her face and making her sing "Shortening Bread". Yup, it's that good. There are also some nice supporting roles from the zany ex-pats, especially the lovely Carroll Baker (Hopper's costar in Giant!) as a sad, faded Hollywood beauty queen still waiting for "that call" from the Studio.