Guilty Pleasure: Blood Harvest (dir by Bill Rebane)

In 1987’s Blood Harvest, college student Jill Robinson (Itonia Salochek) returns to her hometown in rural Wisconsin and discovers that there have been some changes.

For one thing, the local farmers are struggling and the bank is foreclosing on their land. Since Jill’s father is the president of the bank, people are not particularly happy to see her in town. (One farmer spits at her.) When Jill arrives at her parents home, she discovers insulting graffiti on the exterior and a strawman hanging in the front corridor. Even more upsetting, her parents are nowhere to be found!

Jill goes to see Sheriff Buckley (Frank Benson) about the graffiti but when they go back out to Jill’s house, both the graffiti and the strawman have vanished. The sheriff tells Jill not both him anymore and then leaves her alone at her home. Most people would probably panic about this but not Jill! Instead, Jill hangs out with her childhood friend, Gary (Dean West).

Gary’s has had a tough time of it recently. His parents recently died mysteriously and he now takes care of his brother, Mervon (played by 60s folk singer Tiny Tim). Gary and Mervon are an oddly matched pair of siblings. For one thing, Gary appears to be no older than 20 while Mervon is in his late 60s. Gary looks like a fresh-faced jock. Mervon has long stringy hair, speaks in a falsetto voice, and always wears clown makeup. Mervon, who prefers to be called The Magnificent Merv, also likes to sing about how Gary and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. As for Gary, he is disappointed to hear that Jill not only has a boyfriend at college but that she’s also engaged to him. It doesn’t help that Jill keeps saying stuff like, “If my father hadn’t caught us that time, it could have been you and me getting married!”

While Jill’s parents remain missing, she is visited by her boyfriend (Peter Krause, making his film debut) and her best friend, Sarah (Lori Minnetti). Because Jill isn’t particularly smart, she doesn’t notice when both her boyfriend and her BFF are dragged over to her family’s barn and brutally killed. (Jill does eventually start to worry about the whereabouts of her boyfriend but it’s not like Sheriff Buckley is going to help her….) Who is the person who is not only murdering Jill’s friend but also frequently drugging her and undressing her so he can take pictures? Well, there’s only two suspects and the scare scenes are so clumsily staged that you’ll see the killer’s face long before you were probably meant to.

Blood Harvest was directed by Bill Rebane, the Wisconsin-based filmmaker behind The Giant Spider Invasion and The Demons of Ludlow. (Ludlow even gets a shout-out.) It’s a typical Rebane film, with all of the inconsistent acting and incoherent plotting that he is typically known for. At the same time, it’s also a film that’s a bit more interesting that one might expect just from the plot description. There’s an interesting political subtext to Jill’s father being the banker who is responsible for the decline of Jill’s hometown and one gets the feeling that Rebane shared the anger of the film’s famers when it came to banks foreclosing on people’s land. One could never doubt Rebane’s love of rural Wisconsin and, even though the film itself is a bit grainy, the countryside looks lovely. Finally, I have to admit that I could actually relate to Jill, both in her desire to escape country living and her dislike of wearing pants while at home.

That said, the main attraction for most people will be the very odd screen presence of Tiny Tim, who gives a surprisingly earnest performance as poor old Mervo. Everyone may think Mervo’s crazy because of the makeup he wears but he is a clown who is definitely crying on the inside.