Blood Hunt (1986)

Blood Hunt (1986) Directed by Javier Elorrieta

A foolproof story about the metropolitan man arrives in a neglected, remote rural town populated by surly, suspicious locals who hide a dark secret as part of their ceremonial customs. Patxi Andión plays the out-of-town doctor assigned to work in the small, rustic, gloomy Spanish town that is plagued by a peculiar heroin epidemic and juvenile delinquency. As a result of this juvenile lawlessness, the adult men of the town have unlawfully organized themselves to wipe out all drug addicts in the vicinity. For this purpose, they found “La Madriguera”, a facility that pretends to be a rehabilitation center for those captured, but in reality, is a kind of extermination camp. It’s harsh stuff, Javier Elorrieta directs his film with the same stylized precision of a Spaghetti Western – chock full of gunslinging hoopla, coarse machismo, swell cowboy shots and operatic slow-mo violence – transposing the economy of a European western to post-Franco countryside Spain; and there he monumentalizes a full-blown political commentary that ultimately refines its exploitation standards.

It is crystal clear that Javier Elorrieta’s Blood Hunt exposes the toxic reactionary mentality still simmering in modern Spain, while the major cities are engulfed by the belated countercultural revolution of “La Movida Madrileña”, the uncivilized and counter-revolutionary populace depicted in Elorrieta’s film still dwells in the atavistic thought of a moribund fascism – the ghost of Franco still haunts the dusty, old streets. The judgmental vigilantes of the doomed town, led by Gonzalo (Agustin Gonzalez) and Fabian (Aramis Ney), are like fascist inquisitors who solve any problem with violence and nothing more than that. When this group of henchmen who run the law in that godforsaken town see in the community’s new doctor a threat to their maddening, abusive, genocidal deeds, that’s when the film evolves into a full-fledged horror melodrama; a bloody, sleazy, and caustic one. And although the film is always elemental in its predictable cycle, the harshness of its imagery never weakens, it grows stronger. This happens because Javier Elorrieta stages the tragedy with cinematic grandiloquence, seeking gratuitous shock but validating it through a sobering socio-political message.

It’s harrowing everything that goes on in Blood Hunt, but I guess that’s the only way it could make explicit the perils of fascist reaction rooted in the bogus narrative of “upholding the tradition and values of a community”. The film may fail many times in trusting that its rich, aggressive style will do all the storytelling work – sometimes the story inevitably stalls – but that doesn’t deny the fact that what we’re watching is solid Spanish exploitation cinema made for the right reasons.

*Severin Blu Ray edition 2k scan of the original negative blew me away, the night-time drizzly cinematography looked particularly stunning. Highly recommended.