Blood Harvest (1987)
BLOOD HARVEST
WRITER: Story by Chris Vaalar and William Arthur
Screenplay by Ben Benson and Emil Joseph
DIRECTOR: Bill Rebane
STARRING: Tiny Tim as Mervo
Itonia Salocheck as Jill
Dean West as Gary
Lori Minneti as Sarah
Peter Krause as Scott
Frank Benson as The Sheriff
QUICK CUT: A young woman travels home to reconnect with her family, and childhood friends, including the local clown, Mervo!
THE MORGUE
Mervo - A man with a trouble passed, who couldn’t deal with everything going on, and delved further into his performing clown personality. He’s awkard, shy, and creepy just by his presence, but underneath it all, he’s a good egg.
Gary - Mervo’s brother, dedicated to taking care of his brother, and what remains of their family farm. He has a gigantic crush on their neighbour Jill that is unrequited.
Jill - A young woman off at college, who returns home to help her parents deal with the townsfolk reacting to her dad working for the bank foreclosing on them.
We've got a bumper crop of Blood this year
TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! November is here, and harvest time comes. Which means I decided to review Blood Harvest, an obscure little movie that...you know, this all sounds awfully familiar. ANYways, this movie has become a BIT more well known, since Joe Bob Briggs showed it during his Last Drive In series on Shudder. I normally try and avoid movies other folks have shown or talked about recently, but I already had this one on the schedule, and decided to go ahead with it for reasons. So let's get to this.
The movie opens up by letting you know in no uncertain terms that Tiny Tim is in this movie. If his name being in the credits wasn't enough, you get him singing over the opening, and an extreme closeup JUST to get the point home.
We watch as some bodies get carried off, and then cut to a foreclosure auction for a farm, but the town isn't happy about what the bank is doing, and throw a little riot.
Jill returns to town, looking for her dad who works for the bank. Her parents are nowhere to be seen, and when she stops to meet a friend and grab a bite to eat, the locals let her know just how upset they are with her family.
Final season of Game of Thrones got me like…
She finally finds a ride and returns home, to find it has been painted with threats, and a dummy dangling from the inside to scare whomever opened the door. Needless to say, the Robinsons are none to popular around here.
After that fright, you would think the movie would let up on Jill, but then she finds a clown in her kitchen. Damn, call the exterminator, we're gonna have to start a Clown Hunt!
But no worries, it's just Marvelous Mervo, the local clown, who used to be her childhood friend Mervin. After his parents died, he went around the bend a bit.
A man and a woman in a loft, a year ago…
Merv's brother Gary shows up to take him home, and she starts to settle in. She checks out an old weird barn across the way, and oh no, nothing good ever comes of barns in movies.
But before she can go investigate, she gets a threatening phone call, and a brick thrown through her windows. This movie is going out of its way to show just how much this family is hated. You gotta love judgmental country folk.
Jill heads back to town to report the harassment and vandalism to the sheriff, and wow, WOW WOOOOW this guy is a piece of work. She asks what he's going to do about it, and he's like, NOW? YES NOW YOU PIECE OF SHIT DO YOUR JOB.
Coach get your guns!
While they head back to the farm, we watch Mervo sneak into a shack somewhere, to chat with a woman tied to a chair. Oh that's not good.
Before we can see more of that, we cut back to Sheriff Can't Be Arsed as they arrive at Jill's house. And they find...NOTHING. Everything has been cleaned up, and the sheriff is pissed because it looks like a prank. Again, WOW.
Gary shows up and tells Jill that he is the one who cleaned the place up, and oops. Next time, don't mess up the crime scene, yes?
Forgive me, Father, for I have clowned.
They go hang out in the old treeshouse, Castle Exposition. While there, we find out that the first bodies we saw being carted off at the start of the movie, were Gary's and Mervo's parents, who had been hung and slit to bleed out like livestock. And this is what broke Mervo, to boot.
Jill tries to take a shower, but someone is messing with the hot water, and Mervo is coincidentally lurking about. He gives her a fright, but she's happy to see him, instead of a stalker, I suppose.
He gets a little too friendly too quickly, and Jill isn't interested. She's also engaged. Mervo takes it grumpily, but mostly okay, and leaves.
Why so serious??
Later, Jill hears creaking and someone is taking a spin on her swing. She gives the sheriff a call, which is sure to go well, and he grumps that OH NO he won't be able to play poker! YES I AM SO SORRY YOU ARE INCONVENIENCED.
Her fiance Scott calls to check on her, she lets out all her troubles, and he does his best to calm her down.
The creaking of the swing stops, she starts to freak out again, and a knock comes at the door. But fortunately, it's actually the sheriff.
He actually showed up, and it was just Mervo sitting on the swing, keeping watch over his friend, whom he knows is having troubles. OR SO HE SAYS!
Oh just let him go free, those sorts of clowns are out of season.
Now that the movie has gotten the first act out of the way, everyone is settled and comfortably watching the movie...it’s time to get skeevy.
Someone breaks into Jill's room, creeps up on her sleeping body, and chloroforms her. We watch as she is helpless to stop being stripped, tied to the bed, and photographed. We can only imagine that's not all that happened, but it is fortunately all we witness.
Jill wakes up the next day, thanks to a kiss from a strange man, whom she knocks to the floor, and reveals it is Scott, come to check on his girl.
Hey, those aren’t ruby quartz.
It's not long before they're both naked, and at least she was awake for it this time. They have sex, and Gary arrives, watching through the window. Gary does love to watch, doesn't he? First his parents being taken away, and now neighbour sex.
After the sex, Scott wants some beer, but has to drive into town to get it. On his way out, he sees someone mysteriously creeping through the tall grass. He goes to investigate, following the lurker to that old barn everyone keeps almost checking out.
When Scott arrives, all he finds is a BAT TO THE FACE and he falls down to the ground. Our mysterious figure then drags him inside
Oh no, voodoo scarecrows are back!!
Gary pops back on by, and he gets to hear all about how she met Scott, before Mervo arrives to give people a good scare again.
Mervo gets grabbed by his brother, and forced to apologise to Jill. He rants a little bit, but blurts out his 'friends' the animals he used to talk to are missed, and he's not angry for what Jill's dad did to his parents.
The boys head home, and Sarah stops by to check on her friend, with Scott seemingly being lost in the plot.
Sarah can't seem to get in her car though, and that's when the creepy lurker shows up. She runs and tries to hide in the barn, instead of just going right to Jill's door which is RIGHT THERE not ten feet away.
Once in the barn, the killer shoots an arrow at her, pinning her to a support beam through her hand.
The lurker, who is dressed in big baggy clothes, and his face covered up so we can't know who it is yet, drags her off and ties her up, to bleed her out like the rest of his victims. Oh, and he strips her for good measure
You have failed this city!
After the murders, we see Merv praying again, so the movie clearly WANTS you to think that it's Merv doing the murders. He's not quite right, he's looked down on, and every time there's a murder, we see him praying.
I'm gonna tell ya, it's no surprise that he's not the killer. Simply by HOW OBVIOUS it would be, you know the movie isn't gonna go there, right? I mean, it would be wildly on the nose for the killer to be the dude in the clown makeup.
There's another knock on Jill's door, and she hopes it's Scott. Instead, she gets a Gary, looking for Merv. No one can find anyone in this movie.
Following Gary's departure, Jill has a good cry, and falls asleep on the couch, and oh yay, more chlorophorming! This movie hadn't made me feel dirty in a good twenty minutes!
Hey Jill, found your boyfriend!
The mysterious figure drags her off to the barn and gropes her while the dangling Scott watches. Fortunately for Jill, police sirens can be heard, and the would be predator quickly carries his captive back to her house before they arrive.
Our sheriff peeks in the window to make sure Jill is home safe, and then heads back to his car and leaves. I'm sure he has an important cribbage game to play.
But now it's time to off Jill's boyfriend, and he gets his neck slit just like all the rest, before we cut back to Jill waking up.
Ugh, that is not how his optic blasts work! I knew the MCU was gonna screw up the X-Men!
Jill heads to the kitchen to get a drink, and a bucket of her boyfriend's blood spills out all over the floor. As she sits there crying over spilled blood, Gary rushes in to console her. Boy, that was convenient, huh?
Gary gets her into the tub, cleans her up, and generally comforts and consoles her. Pfff, I've been covered in blood before, suck it up!
After he helps her to the couch, Gary starts fondling and kissing the naked woman, and starts removing his own clothes. Look, things are getting so skeevy, that word doesn't even apply anymore.
Jill comes to, freaks out and shoves Gary off her. Wow, way to misread that situation, Gare.
Paint your face, the shadows smiles
Gary heads to the barn to have a good cry, Merv is muttering in the mirror about having to do things he doesn't want to do, and then shows up to talk to Jill. Girl...change your locks.
Merv says he wants her to come with him, he needs to show her something. Hey, big guy, she has seen PLENTY tonight, trust me.
He takes her to his cabin, shows her a bunch of photographs, and a letter to Gary from their parents. It reveals they committed suicide because there was nothing they could do to keep the farm, and hopefully it would help the boys to do so.
Merv explains Gary was the one who made it look like murder, so people would feel sorry for them, and no one would ever believe Merv, so he better stay quiet.
You didn’t tip toe through the tulips!!
Gary shows up, and the brothers get into a fight. Mervo the Magnificient grabs some scissors, trying to stab his brother, but not before Jill can get her hands on a gun and shoots the clown.
Well...that was unexpected. I guess we're supposed to believe that he's still the killer, but once he's down for the count, Gary explains this is perfect, everyone will blame Merv for the murders, and oh yeah, Scott's dead and we can be together now!
But Jill pushes away and runs back home, soon followed by our mysterious lurker, who is, if you had not figured it out yet, Gary.
HEY JILL WANNA CHECK OUT MY NEW PAIR OF NYLONS AND CARVING KNIFE??
She keeps running, this time into the barn, because that has gone SO WELL so far in this movie.
Jill finds every dead person dangling like bleeding pigs. Gary tries to explain it was all for the best, but he comes off as what he is, very unstable.
She tries to feed his ego, buy some time, and it works for awhile, until she gets the chance to grab something sharp and stabby, and jab him good in the arm.
They run around a bit to keep the final act interesting, but eventually end back up in the barn, where Jill encounters a bleeding pig and...where did THAT come from? Whatever.
It puts the lotion on its skin…
Gary manages to get the upper backhand, and leads Jill back to her friends and family so we can end this. Things do not look good for Jill, oh well!
But then a shot rings out! It's Merv! He's okay, and PACKIN' A SHOTGUN! Woooo, clowns! He unties Jill, they leave the barn, and the movie ends with GARY'S EYES SNAPPING OPEN! Sigh, no, just end.
TRISK ASSESSMENT
Video: Very good looking, a Vinegar Syndrome tends to do.
Audio: Same, a good mix, and all the dialogue comes through strong.
Body Count: Not the best, but still some good stuff here.
0 - Gary and Merv's parents found dead at the start of the movie.
1 - Under two minutes and we get a slashed neck
2 - Sarah gets her neck slit
3 - Scott gets his throat slit
4 - Merv shoots his brother
Best Corpse: Scott’s nice neck slit and extended scenes of gushing blood into a bucket get the prize.
Blood Type - C+: Some decent amounts of blood in here.
Sex Appeal: Lots of nudity with Jill, various states of undress, and even Scott and Gary strip down to a point.
Drink Up! Every time Mervo sings
Movie Review: I thought this was gonna be bad. Really bad. Most movies starring novelty acts are bad. And it sure has it’s low quality issues, to be fair. But the story is good, and while there’s some confusing bits here and there as the narrative isn’t very linear at times, the big picture makes enough sense at the end of the day. The acting is good enough, even from Tiny Tim. There’s just something about his haunted, broken performance that sticks with you, I really liked. It works where it needs to work, and while the surprise twist is anything but, it does yank a rug or two out from underneath you, while delivering a nicely grimey story. Four out of five hanging dummies
Entertainment Value: This movie is weird, but not THAT weird. It could be more strange. Most of the weirdness comes from Tiny Tim, and he is a delight to watch, as I’ve made clear already. Some of it’s uncomfortable, and it’s also a bit bland at times, but overall I really enjoyed this and was so much fun seeing Tiny Tim in this dramatic turn. Three out of five dangling pigs.
