Horror Movie Review: Blood Harvest (1987)

Blood Harvest is a slasher film that was directed by Bill Rebane, releasing in 1987. It focuses on college student, Jill Robinson. Returning to her family home, she discovers it has been vandalized after a local dispute. Worse still, her parents are nowhere to be seen.

If all that wasn’t bad enough, Jill finds herself being stalked. Also, her friends begin disappearing one by one. She’s left with only her childhood friend Gary and his mentally unstable brother to depend upon. It soon becomes clear that those who remain may not have Jill’s best interests at heart.

If you’re thinking that I must have missed out a lot of detail regarding the plot of this film then you’d be wrong. In a nutshell, that’s pretty much all there is to say about it.

Blood Harvest is certainly looking its age. At least for the copy that I viewed, the visuals were very grainy and the audio sounded like it was recorded in a submarine. Of course, this was always a low-budget B-movie so it comes with the territory.

The premise for the film is actually a decent idea and it’s surprisingly well executed for the most part. Of course, there’s issues. Firstly, the so-called whodunit mystery is laughable due to how painfully obvious the identity of the killer is. Not only are there no other real alternatives but you get enough glimpses at them to figure it out without much thought.

Now, you can’t get away from the obvious exploitation within the film surrounding Itonia Salochek as Jill. In fact, knowing that Blood Harvest would be her one and only project that she ever took part in and that she has been nowhere to be seen since is definitely a little odd. Makes you wonder, what actually went down during the filming of some of these scenes. Let’s just say, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were watching a softcore porno at times.

The acting performances are okay at times and then bad at others. It’s pretty cheesy on the whole but you can tell that these amateur actors are trying their best. Jill is a character that exists only to be exploited. She’s a complete moron to put it lightly. She does absolutely nothing right at any moment and is a complete damsel the whole film.

There is some gore and I can at least compliment the film in saying that they look rather good indeed, basic but effective.

Blood Harvest is at the very least strange enough that it’s memorable. Whether it’s the weird sex scenes or the eccentricities of Tiny Tim, you almost can’t look away from the enjoyable absurdity.