THE THIRSTY DEAD (1974)

A PG-rated horror film is unlikely to satisfy a fan of the genre-- especially when it's pretentiously written, poorly acted, and has costumes and sets that look deeply unnatural.

The plot involves the abduction of four young women off the streets of Manila. They are brought by boat to the jungle home of a cult that worships a talking severed head in a glass jar filled with red liquid. I think the head's name is Raul, but it was hard to make out. And I wasn't about to watch this thing twice to clarify it.

The cult needs the blood of young women to make an elixir that keeps them eternally young. There's a catch, though: the "blood donors" soon lose their youth and beauty, and are kept imprisoned in a rat- filled cave. Long story short, the women escape the cult with the help of its high priest, Baru, who looks like Sergio Franchi and wears a cape a la Dr. Strange. However, when Baru crosses the "Ring of Age," he gets old quickly. I don't mean he's boring; he literally gets old and dies.

Its low-budget look offers the perfect opportunity for camp, but the film is played completely straight. There's no action to speak of, the pacing is glacial, the cave mock-ups are clearly paper mache, the dialogue does not sound like natural speech, the acting is at grade-school-play level, and the score features the same few pieces over and over again.
The so-called "special" effects include a leaf that magically closes wounds, the cutting of a woman's neck for blood to make the elixir, the cult's head-in-a-box deity, and Baru's not-rapid-enough aging. Aside from beautiful, scantily-clad young women in bikinis, there's nothing to recommend this bilge water to anyone.