Terror of the Bloodhunters (1962) User Reviews

I wish it was worse!

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 21 September 2013]

Despite the amazingly cool (and kitschy) title, this film is MUCH more sedate and not nearly as bad as you might expect. Sure, it is bad--but with Jerry Warren directing, I really expected far worse!! After all, this is the same guy who brought us "Teenage Zombies", "The Incredible Petrified World" and "Frankenstein Island"--all absolutely terrible films. I wish it had been worse--then at least it would have been good for bad movie buffs.

The film is set in South America at some French penal colony like Devil's Island. Oddly, however, not one person in the film has a French accent and the film seems about as French as Chop Suey. In fact, throughout the film there are clumsily inserted scenes of native dancing girls who are supposed to be South American--but they clearly are Asians living in the South American jungle!!

"Terror of the Bloodhunters" begins with a shipment of prisoners being brought to the island. One of them, Steve Duval (Robert Clarke) is a political prisoner--sent there because of the books he's written. The commandant's dissatisfied daughter, Marlene (Dorothy Haney) is dying to escape the wretched place and helps Duval to escape. Together with one of Duval's expendable friends they set into the dense jungle (the sort made up mostly of old stock footage). Can they survive? And, more importantly, do you even care?

The film is extremely talky, has almost no bloodhunters in it and it a pretty dull film. Clearly it's bad but it is amazingly low-key and lacks the tackiness I'd hoped to find. Instead, it's just boring--and not a film I could recommend unless you either need to get some sleep or if you are a masochist.

too much talk not enough action.

[johnc2141 · 2/10 · 17 May 2010]

Well I'm not going to say terror of the blood hunters is awful,but not saying its good either.but i noticed its a Jerry Warren movie and expected it to be substandard.too much talk not enough action.there is however good stock footage of crocodiles,snakes and such but the movie overall does suffer from a low budget.heres a fact they used the title theme from this movie in the later dinosaur island which i thought was a little better than blood hunters.Robert Clarke who is the star of blood hunters plays a new inmate on devils island,not too much time afterward there is an escape with a fellow inmate and the wardens stepdaughter,and thats way before he tries the prison food,they must endure the devils island guards,crocodiles,swamps,headhunters and the blood hunters most of which are bikini clad and dancing as they plan to sacrifice other members of their tribe.jerry warren has made worse movies than blood hunters.like teenage zombies and the really inept incredible petrified world.this was the first time i saw blood hunters,may not be the last but all i can say is i was glad it was only 71 minutes long.I'm giving it a 2 mainly because the stock footage was pretty good.

Not even something to call a camp classic. Just a waste of an hour.

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 12 May 2022]

After escaping the law in a South American country, an escaped prisoner joins two adventurers on a trip through the jungle where they encounter a tribe of indigenous people who are said to be bloodthirsty cannibals. Nothing exciting going on outside of the titillating title because for an hour, you're waiting for something to happen that never does. This Jerry Warren film is one of the biggest disappointments in many ways because it's cast, Robert Clarke, Dorothy handy and Robert Christopher really have nothing exciting to do other than deal with their attempts to get out of one situation that could end up with them behind bars and end up in another that could get them killed, or worse.

Edward D. Wood Jr. Had a rival with bad movie making with Jerry Warren who took a bit of stock footage and created a teensy bit of a story around it, and ended up basically with a jungle film without a jungle. This is a very boring film in every way, with amateurish production values and weak acting, a cliched script, and even when they get to the Jungle, there's only about 10 minutes a footage where they have to try to escape from these alleged savages stalking them from behind closed shrubbery. There's hardly any wild animals at all outside of stock footage some tarantulas and alligators and birds, and you only see a few natives hidden along the way. This gets an extra star formation sherely for its audacity. Not even interesting enough to put on the list of the worst films ever made, just one of the most pointless.

Ah, 1962–A Banner Year....

[Flixer1957 · 1/10 · 1 June 2003]

**Possible spoilers**

This is one of Jerry Warren's most obscure films--a movie truly deserving of obscurity. It came out the same year I entered Kindergarten and I can't shake the feeling that I could have made a better feature.

Robert Clarke is a subversive writer sentenced to the French penal colony of Devil's Island. None of the cast even attempt to do French accents, but that's par for the Warren course. The dilapidated buildings look like anybody could break out of them, especially the remarkably well-fed prisoners; the guards don't seem to adhere to any weight or fitness requirements either. The leanest, meanest machine in the whole place is the warden's daughter played by one-hit wonder Dorothy Haney. This hatchet-faced character spends considerable time griping at her father and her fiance, eavesdropping through doors, and looking into the camera before helping Clarke escape. She treks into the jungle/swamps wearing walking shoes--standard issue on Devil's Island, I'm sure. Much talk and boredom later, she and Clarke escape into stolen footage of "South American Native Headhunters." As might be expected, the male natives are scary-looking while the belly-dancing women are beautiful. The quality of the cribbed footage, not surprisingly, is more beautiful than anything shot by Jerry Warren. I've sat through this film twice, and I still haven't seen any trace of the "Hypnotic Love" or "Shocking Bestial Desire" touted in the tag-line.

Looking at this mess, it's easy to see why Haney was only allowed to make one movie. It's also hard to figure out why Clarke was allowed to appear on film from the 1940s to the 1990s. I'm waiting for William Witney's much-reviled I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND to come out on home video. In the meantime, I hereby decree that Devil's Island shall be reopened and that any surviving people responsible for TERROR OF THE BLOODHUNTERS will be imprisoned there, for life.

May be a little too deep for the audience that it's targeting

[sol1218 · 5/10 · 5 November 2007]

**SPOILERS** You don't really get what you expected watching "Terror of the Bloodhunters. Instead of lots of tall buxom and beautiful Amazon-looking women you get, almost throughout the entire movie,deep philosophical exchanges between the leading cast members.

The story is built around the Devil's Island Commandant, Niles Andrus, and his spoiled rotten and bored daughter Marlene, Dorothy Haney. Marlene is sick and tired of being confined, like the guards and inmates, to the Devil's Island penal colony and wants to get out any way that she can even in a pine box. It's when a new group of inmates are sent to the Island that Marlene sees her chance to make a clean getaway. Big time philosophy writer and humanist Steve Duval, Robert Clarke, has been sent to that God forsaken island because of his ideas, thought crimes, about universal freedom as well as the human condition not because of any real crimes that he committed.

The commandant wanting his daughter Marlene to marry his top-kick or the captain at the island prison the very effective and by the books Whorf (Robert Christopher), who in twelve years running the place had no one escape, also want's Marlene to learn to paint with the multi-talented Duval giving her lessons. Marlene together with Duval and fellow inmate and humanist, another thought crime prisoner, Dione (William White) make their escape the very next evening on the Commandant's personal riverboat.

It's later when the trio realize that their plan to make it to safety in Brazil is about to fall apart they go on foot thought the dense snake jaguar and headhunter infested Amazon jungle. It's there where they together with the pursuing Captain Whorf and his sniveling sidekick Cabot, Steve Conte, are enlightened to what life really means and the real purpose of man being put, by a powerful but benevolent creator, on earth; To become as whole kind and perfect and the creator who put him there. In short man is to become a true human being in his feeling not only towards his fellow man, in treating him as he would want to be treated himself, but in forsaking the greedy materialistic and selfish ideas that's been put in his head, by those who follow and worship those false idols, since he was born.

We do get to see a number of sexy women looking more like they work as secretaries in a Wall Street and Madison Av office then jungle natives doing some kind of hula hula dance. This while the native women are sacrificing a member of their tribe, who looks totally out of it, to their brutal and blood-thirsty jungle God. There's also a sequence where Whorf and Cabot are captured by a group of native headhunters and Duval together with Marlene, Dione was earlier killed by a attacking black jaguar, coming to their rescuer before they get their heads shrunk. All this of course is just window dressing to the real issues that the movie addresses: Man lifting himself up as well as those around him. This in spite of all the evil that he's both confronted with and controlled by.

It's that hidden meaning in the movie "Terror of the Headhunters" that's by far the reason that it's not only a notch or two, but miles, above the average exploitation flick of the 1950's and 1960's. It's also the reason that the film hits home with its unsuspecting, who expected a lot less, and surprised audience.

If You Really Want to See the Worst....

[Michael_Elliott · 21 July 2010]

Terror of the Bloodhunters (1962)

BOMB (out of 4)

It's rather sad that the name Ed Wood has become known as the worst director in the history of cinema because it's simply not true. There are so many worst directors out there that never get the credit they deserve for being the absolute worst and I'd say anyone who'd call Wood bad had never seen something from Jerry Warren. Check out films like TEENAGE ZOMBIES, FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND and HOUSE OF BLACK DEATH and you'll come to realize that Wood deserves an Oscar compared to these duds. The "story" here takes place on Devil's Island where two new prisoners (Robert Clarke, William White) make their escape with a commandant's daughter (Dorothy Haney) but the three soon find their plan destroyed as they have to make their way through deep jungles and fight off snakes, disease and bloodhunters. Perhaps everyone, myself included, has looked at Warren incorrectly all these years. I guess you do have to give credit to someone who could sell an interesting story but do nothing with it. In TEENAGE ZOMBIES there were no zombies. In FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND there really wasn't an island or a Frankenstein doctor or monster. In this film there's not much of an escape, a prison or many bloodhunters. The film pretty much is one dialogue scene after another and after a while you have to wonder why the three bothered to escape from prison if the only thing they were going to do is sit around in the jungle and talk. This type of film could have worked had the screenplay been of any interest but it all sounds like the actors are making it up on the spot. It's boring, doesn't add anything to the film and whatever "message" it's trying to deliver gets dropped on its head. Clarke was an expert at Warren movies and he at least can act like he's having a good time. The rest of the cast are pretty forgettable and this includes Haney in a pretty bad performance. The film runs just over an hour and very little happens. In a common Warren touch, we do get quite a bit of stock footage of the jungle creatures including one really bad sequence where we see a snake come up on the trio. The snake is gliding through water yet none of the characters are by the water when the "attack" happens. Fans of Warren will want to check this film out but don't get your hopes up of getting any laughs or entertainment. However, if you are a fan of Warren then you know not to expect that.

A pretty decent jungle survival film.

[MonsterVision99 · 7/10 · 6 September 2019]

Jerry Warren gives us whats probably his most ambitious effort (in that theres more than just a few people on-screen through a good portion of it). A highly entertaining and pleasing B movie thats probably the most lively and well written proyect Warren ever made, with memorable and charming characters along with a captivating plot.

It has a lot of the usual Warren tropes, such as blatant stock footage and long static shots that some may find to be bland or bothersome, others may argue that the movie doesnt deliver when it comes to the exploitation elements it promises, but you can honestly say that about many B movies of the time (and now). Its all very well paced, it goes by very fast and doesnt overstay its welcome.

Overall, some problems keep it from being really good but its one of the best Z grade jungle pictures of the era and probably one of the most delightful productions Warren has to offer.