United Statesl – 1986
Director – Robert C. Hughes
Embassy Home Entertainment, 1987, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 42 min.
Surprisingly comfortable within the warm fold of 80’s exploitation, Hunters Blood, with all the B names behind it, has a lot to go on, and with little hesitation it sets to work. The cover, and box synopsis immediately invoke Deliverance, an association I am surely not the first to draw (and in fact the reason I bought it). Nevertheless, Hunters Blood quickly sidesteps any chance at class with an instant shower scene, an asexual one, but the point is that we establish this as exploitation right away.
David (Samuel Bottoms, Lance the surfer in Apocalypse Now) and his dad (Clu Gulager) don flannel & vests and hop into his uncles rumbling Bronco and rip up the road on their yearly hunting trip. Picking up dads brother and his New York lawyer buddy Marty (Joey Travolta) they back slap their way up to a beer joint in the Apilachians where loudmouth Marty plays the boorish tourist and gets the vengeance ball rolling. After sexually harassing the barmaid, they get in a knife fight with some more hillbillies, and take flight in the Bronco.
With sheer stupid blundering luck propelling them from here on, the protagonists run into the redneck’s poaching operation. Time after time they are self-trippingly lucky enough to escape, capture, be captured by and escape again the bloodthirsty filth encrusted hillbillies. Yet, despite prolific flayed and crucified warnings from skittish Game Wardens, the group resorts to positive thinking.
Thanks to good old fashioned yankee naivete, they continue the hunting trip. It is this very stubborn determination to die that makes the horror films of this generation so watchable.
Somebody has to get shot, yes, there will be blood in this movie. Between a fair mix of shrieking idiocy and meat-headed obstinacy, the surviving civilised guys will, after a few dramatic personnel cutbacks, surely catch the last meat wagon back to town .
VHS sleeve from Backwoods Horror
The poster whence came the artwork. Courtesy of 123 Nonstop as is the one below.





Immediately post-credits, the warden inflicts lesbianism on the rebellious friend of a recently deceased inmate, a theme repeated thrust home and which will undoubtedly lead to her downfall at the hands of said inmate. But, too distracted by the veritable buffet of cowed flesh, the warden and her open shirted lieutenants have their hands too full to pay much attention to a coup. The prison nurse, an ether addicted lesbian floozy, meanwhile tongue bathes the trim and conspires to let them all escape if they agree to 40 more minutes of grainy predictable friction. Fights, breast massages, groin grinding aplenty and copious moaning accompany shots of beatings, solitary confinement and shiv inflicted prison justice.
While it disposes with most of the excessive plot of other more moralistic, or humorous entries in the WIP genre, and also with most of the stomach turning gritty hardcore of still others, BBB manages to insert all the earmarks of the genre, peppered with just enough secular absurdity to make a good excuse. Bare Behind Bars shows a lot, but doesn’t say much, which, at the very least keeps it honest.


It opens with a short battle scene involving Woody Strode in a beret and sporting a small children's bow and arrow. Lethal in jump cuts at all ranges, Strode and Co. kill all other people in the scene, whoever they're supposed to be.
I was made sad by so much of the repeated foundering at intrigue this attempted that, with the CIA ops and cartel and fat white dudes, it completely lost me.


Michelle is a hot archaeology nerd poking around the building with her boyfriend Slade (Robert Patrick) when future guy shows up, saves em from some bikers, hands em the spear and mumbles something in a monotone before croaking
In search of the other half of the spear, the couple flees to Hong Kong where, they meet up with Bruce Le who flexes his sweaty muscles, has a kung fu fight then vanishes from the script (exotic isn’t he?). Returning to their hotel just in time to rescue Michelle’s goods from some slavering natives, Slade is subjected to another practiced and scripted belittling, the shame of which he masks by assaulting a bellboy with his bulge.
The closer we get to the climax of this thing, the longer it feels and the more bizarre the plot twists become, but the introduction of a native militia, a small army of cave-dwelling midgets, and a band of fierce horny amazons can’t save the film from spiraling into a longwinded if action packed conclusion.