Christmas Horror Review: Bloodbeat (1983)

Bloodbeat is a slasher film written and directed by Fabrice-Ange Zaphiratos, releasing in 1983. The plot focuses on a young couple attending a family gathering for Christmas at their rural home. Everything is going fairly well when out of nowhere a spirit wearing samurai armour begins killing members of the family. This unravels a dark family secret involving psychic abilities.

Initially, things start to unravel when Sarah meets her new boyfriend, Ted’s artist mother, Cathy. Cathy immediately senses a psychic connection with Sarah that she cannot explain. After a number of unexplainable incidents, the house becomes subject to violent poltergeist activity.

Bloodbeat is a really weird film. Firstly, it’s worth considering that it’s clearly operating on a shoestring budget. It’s filled with dated effects and for some reason is filmed with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Also, there are massive issues with the audio. Watching Bloodbeat with subtitles is essential because without them it’s nearly unwatchable. I’m not sure what was used as a microphone to pick up audio but it failed. The poor sound is not helped by an obnoxious soundtrack that blares over everything making hearing what characters are saying even harder. These problems are hard to look past but it makes matters even worse when the plot itself is nonsensical.

Sure, you can make assumptions here and there but nothing is properly explained. There are way too many questions regarding the plot and its characters. Worse still, it all unfolds are a snail’s pace. There are loads of scenes in which characters do little of note filled with exaggerated sound effects and music that adds to the bizarre nature of the film.

The actors deserve a 10/10 because they’re actually very good considering what they must have had to deal with. The effects must have been hard to comprehend and the script must have made matters worse. Also, there are some weirdly place sexual moments for no apparent reason. It feels very exploitative and nothing more.

The ending is just terrible, it ends abruptly with no conclusion for Sarah and it looks like they had to switch to a handheld camera to get the final shot and then quickly roll credits.

Overall, I’ll give Bloodbeat credit for trying to do something a bit different but it’s all just such a jumbled, weird mess. I suppose I can at least say that due to its strangeness, it’s at least memorable.