ANTHONY GEARY, R.I.P. – BLOOD SABBATH (1972)

BLOOD SABBATH (1972) – Anthony Geary, best known as Luke Spencer on General Hospital when that soap opera was kicking off the absurd trend of daytime dramas being more like Republic Serials, has passed away. Balladeer’s Blog marks the sad event with this review of Geary’s most Psychotronic movie.

Hey, when you needed someone to save Port Charles from a weather machine you needed James Bond or Luke Spencer. Anthony Geary skyrocketed to fame as Luke of “Luke and Laura” fame on General Hospital.

Genie Francis played Luke’s romantic partner Laura (after they retconned his rape of her into a “seduction” instead). 

For her part, Genie had to suffer through a real-life marriage to Commander Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Anthony had to suffer through bombs like Blood Sabbath. 

It’s tough to beat the Bad Movie pedigree of this flick. For starters, it was directed by Brianne Murphy, one-time wife of schlock film icon Jerry Warren, the man behind several of his own flops AND the U.S. distribution of several Mexican-made horror and wrestling movies.

Costarring with Geary was Dyanne Thorne, Ilsa herself from truly awful films like Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S., Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia and Ilsa, the Wicked Warden. Those flicks, while not porn, are only for hardcore devotees of bad exploitation movies.

Along for the ride were future Falcon Crest actress Susan Damante (below left), Prison Girls star Susan Landis and Psychotronic Hall of Famer Uschi Digard.

Story-wise, Anthony Geary plays David, a troubled Vietnam War veteran who has the lamest, cheapest ‘Nam Flashbacks ever committed to low-budget films. Now out of the service, he wanders around with a guitar looking to get his head straight.

While napping in a forest one day, he is suddenly accosted by horny hippy chicks who want to have sex with him. Our expectations are subverted in ways that Rian Johnson never dreamed of when David yells at the women to get away from him and goes running off.

Keeping the weirdness going, David next tries to nap beside a small lake, where he encounters another beautiful woman – Yvala (Damante), a scantily clad water nymph who coos him to sleep with her gentle voice. It may seem like Blood Sabbath is trying to be a mix of Pippin and Oh, Calcutta, but it’s actually a horror film.   

When Geary wakes up, he is taken in by the elderly Lonzo, who lives beside Yvala’s lake and catches the fish in there. Evil lurks nearby in the form of Alotta (Thorne with black hair in this movie), who heads a coven of witches. Dyanne Thorne plays Alotta mostly topless to show off what our grandparents would call “her ample bosom.”

Alotta grows envious of a romance that develops VERY unconvincingly between David and the water nymph Yvala. Frustratingly, David and Yvala cannot consummate their “love” because her soul is “of the water” and his soul is “of the land.”

So, this Vietnam vet who ran away screaming from horny, naked hippy chicks earlier is suddenly willing to get rid of his soul since it’s a barrier to oinking and boinking with Yvala. The scheming Alotta takes advantage of this to get Geary’s soul and get him as a lover by letting him offer up his soul at one of her coven’s Blood Sabbaths.

This ritual is usually held to help crops grow for the local farmers, but Alotta really wants some Anthony Geary so she distorts the ritual this time. She tells David that once he hands over his soul, he will be able to freely frolic with Yvala. The catch is that if Yvala ever dumps him, he must instead become Alotta’s lover. (Oh, no, anything but that.)

The Blood Sabbath cements the Faustian bargain and after granting Luke and Laura David and Yvala a brief period of happiness together, Alotta makes her move. Mystically assuming the appearance of Yvala, the witch has sex with David, then lets the water nymph know she too has lain with the Vietnam veteran.

Yvala dumps David, but rather than keep his bargain to become the lover of a different shapely, beautiful woman (oh, the horror), Geary kills Alotta. As she dies she makes him pay the price by cursing him to “be killed by your own.”

Thus, he is transported back to Vietnam, where he thinks he gets fragged by his own side, but actually gets run over by the vehicle carrying the hippies from the start of this film. Wait, what? How is that getting “killed by his own?” 

And as if that wasn’t head-shaking enough, for some reason Yvala can join David in the afterlife and the two go off together, completely ignoring the ramifications of Geary selling his soul in a Blood Sabbath earlier. The End.

I probably would have gotten around to reviewing this movie eventually, but when I heard about Anthony Geary’s death, I knew that reviewing Blood Sabbath had to be done NOW.

Anyway, rest in peace Anthony. You’ll be missed.