One of several movies from the late 1960s and early 70s that combined the biker genre with sexploitation (Wrong Way, The Takers, Bad Bad Gang!) and whose makers were probably kicking themselves for not calling their film ‘Sleazy Rider’. Although if you’ve ever seen the film that laid claim to that title, you have to admit it earned the honour… and then some.
Sinner’s Blood really is a skinflick in biker movie clothing, and while…yes…there are technically bikers in this film, they are mostly kept to the periphery, playing second fiddle to the exploits of two sisters, Penelope and Patricia. The real focus of Sinner’s Blood, Penelope and Patricia have recently lost their mother and have been forced to relocate to a small town and live with their Uncle Clarence. Sexual freakery appears to run in this family, Uncle Clarence is a creepy, unshaven loser kept under the thumb of his yelling, buck toothed wife (Drucilla Hoy). Their offspring consists of Edwina, a lesbian with a penchant for baby doll nighties who doesn’t appear to be playing with a full deck, and Aubrey, a big lug who reads porno magazines and peeks in on Penelope and Patricia undressing through a hole in the bathroom wall.
Penelope, the ‘bad girl’ of the two sisters, soon earns herself a reputation when she drags her uncle into the shower, after dirty ol’ Clarence had been pathetically loitering about the bathroom. Naturally, he jumps at the chance to help out when she ‘accidently’ drops a bar of soap. Penelope also begins hanging around with Gentry, a newbie member of the biker gang, which is how the biker angle gets worked into the main plot. Not even being a ‘good girl’ gets you very far in the sordid little world of Sinner’s Blood, as Patricia finds out when she is seduced by her cousin Edwina. All of which is watched by Aubrey through his beloved peephole, the sight of which causes Aubrey to go off the rails and attempt to rape Patricia.
The most recognizable member of Sinner’s Blood’s cast is Drucilla Hoy, who plays the domineering mother, and is familiar as Tessie, the one legged mute in Ted V. Mikels’ The Corpse Grinders. Almost everyone in this oddball cast though would be right at home in a Ted V. Mikels movie, spectacular in this respect is John Talt as Aubrey, a 6ft slack jawed giant who resembles a junior version of Ted ‘Lurch’ Cassidy. Aubrey’s height, fondness for porn mags and voyeurism earns him the memorable nickname ‘the big peek freak’, which Gentry hollers after him as Aubrey tearfully runs away. Of course Gentry isn’t without a few sexual secrets of his own, namely that he is a closeted gay and has been fooling around with another of the bikers. Despite his relationship with Penelope, Gentry can’t hide from his true nature for long, and at a biker orgy Penelope discovers him in a comprising position with a fellow biker. While outwardly accepting of his sexuality, secretly Penelope vows vengeance, and at the first opportunity slips him some LSD. All of which has tragic consequences for both him and Penelope herself, especially when Chip, Gentry’s murderous ex-boyfriend comes after her.
Sinner’s Blood might best be described as the most Andy Milligan-esque film that Andy Milligan never directed. While it is a little more professional than the Milligan stuff (though is still rough and ugly looking by conventional filmmaking standards), Sinner’s Blood uncannily taps into so much of what was within Milligan’s twisted wheelhouse. Hatred of the church, bullying characters, incest, rape, anti-female ranting (“women are dirty…filthy bitches” hisses Chip) and homosexual elements that were probably the last thing the film’s target audience expected to see at the drive-in. It all eerily follows Milligan’s M.O. The scene where a priest is violently beaten about the face with chains by the biker gang also feels very much ripped from the gospel according to Andy Milligan.
As with Milligan’s films, Sinner’s Blood has all the hallmarks of someone using exploitation cinema as a punch-bag to work out all their personal demons and sexual hang-ups. What with his T.V. Mikels worthy cast of uglies, and Milligan-esque mental baggage, director Neil Douglas could have become quite the exploitation film powerhouse, but chose to blow his entire load on this, his one and only film. Douglas pulls out all the stops here, but incredibly someone obviously thought Sinner’s Blood just wasn’t quite sleazy enough, and in the mid-1970s the film was re-released as ‘Hard Riders’ complete with hardcore footage culled from a Rene Bond movie.
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