User reviews

I wasn't expecting much, if anything, from this film but my interests was really peaked by it when checking out this page before I started watching. I was surprised to see so many positive comments for Blood Relations before seeing the film - and even more surprised afterwards as this is a boring mess of a movie and I'm surprised anyone could find anything good to say about it! The story is not exactly original and focuses on a dysfunctional family. We follow a young girl who comes home to her family and ends up getting mixed up in a web of murder etc. The film is quite trippy as a result of the numerous drug induced dream sequences, but it's difficult to really care about anything that goes on and that constantly hinders it. The film's one saving grace comes in the shapely form of Lydie Denier in the central role, who provides the film with some much needed eye candy. I'm guessing this is meant to be a 'serious' horror film rather than a campy one, though it's very cheap and the scares, if intended, do really miss the mark. Overall, this is not a good or memorable film and since it is quite obscure anyway, I wouldn't recommend anyone purposefully seeks it out.

"Blood Relations" follows a young woman (Lydie Denier) who accompanies her boyfriend to his rich family's estate in the dead of winter. Her encounters with his estranged father (Jan Rubes), a brain surgeon, become increasingly strange, and the family's dark secrets start to emerge.

While certainly not an accomplished masterwork, "Blood Relations" is an atmospheric psychological horror movie that has the temperament of a hard-edged Lifetime TV movie from the early-1990s. What works about it is that it boasts an atmospheric setting, a number of moody nighttime sequences, and a twisty plot that keeps the viewer in "what is going here?" territory.

The film mostly plays like a sordid V. C. Andrews-adjacent family drama until the final act, where it becomes a full-fledged horror movie. It does rely on a number of repetitive sequences that are portrayed ambiguously (as in they could be dreams, or they may in fact be real), which wears thin. That being said, the grim denouement packs enough of a punch that I found myself mildly applauding the film for going for the jugular. The performances here are middling at best, though Jan Rubes is effective as the dubious and sinister patriarch.

All in all, "Blood Relations" is a minor effort with a TV-movie feel, but it does get progressively darker as it moves toward its conclusion. It is a decent horror flick with enough idiosyncrasies and moodiness that warrant a viewing from genre fans. 6/10.

Young lovers Thomas (Kevin Hicks) and Marie (Lydie Denier) plot to kill Thomas's neurosurgeon father Andreas in order to inherit a fortune from Thomas's grandfather Charles (Ray Walston), who is close to popping his clogs.

For much of its runtime, Blood Relations plays like one of those made-for-cable erotic thrillers that used to play late at night - softcore porn for post-pub perverts, with sexy star Denier shedding all of her clothes several times, even giving lucky old Walston an eyeful.

But as drop dead gorgeous as Denier is, the film proves extremely tedious for much of the time, the pedestrian thriller-lite script providing very little to get excited about - at least until the final act, when things improve considerably, the plot entering mad scientist horror territory, with cranial surgery and brain removal aplenty, as Andreas tries to transplant his wife's brain into Marie's very lovely body.

I enjoyed the heck out of the crazy last ten minutes!

An average horror movie with excellent shots, that sometimes really scares you. If you pay good attention is the plot not really so surprising. The whole film takes place in one house, and has a 19th century baroque sphere.

A woman stays with her fiancé at his father's mansion. The father is a brain surgeon, or at least a brain surgery hobbyist - he has a surgery room in the basement. Her fiancé's ill grandfather also lives in the house. The father and grandfather seem to be interested in her at least as much as her fiancé.

Lydie Denier is beautiful, but apart from her beauty, the film is really quite the bad one. It is boring and uneventful. She gets drugged several times by drinks, and doesn't wise up to that. She has odd drug-induced hallucinations or dreams, or perhaps merely witnesses odd things relating to the surgeon and his supposedly late wife.

Avoid this one. I'd be curious to see something better with Denier in it, though.

Definitely the worst movie I've seen in recent memory, a late night rental by one of my roommates that I had the misfortune of having to sit through. The story is of a young woman brought home to a sprawling mansion in the country in order to meet her fiancé's strange family, and from that commences intrigue, murder, horror, and acting on par with the average ventriloquist's dummy.

The film tries very hard to be scary but instead falls short of even being campy. Every twist is utterly predictable and the attempts to shock us with gore just fall flat. The cast all seem uniformly embarrassed to be part of such a sleazy production and you as they deadpan their way through dialogue of a quality usually reserved for 70s porno films you can almost read their thoughts : "Is it still too late to back out of this one? Can I have possibly have my name struck from the credits? Wait a minute, what am I worried about, no one is even going to watch this garbage anyway."

The gratuitous nudity (which is about the only thing worth watching) and over-the-top murders lend the flick a very trashy quality reminiscent of B-grade exploitation films of ages past, or just a very bad "Tales from the Crypt" episode in ages slightly less past. The ending is equal parts predictable, depressing, offensive, and absurd, leaving a bad taste in your mouth on every possible level.

This movie was a piece of crap, inane without much of even an attempt at a plot, didn't have enough gore to be a slasher flick nor enough camp appeal to be funny. No surprise, no suspense. If they shortened it by two thirds it could maybe be passable as soft core porn with too much of a storyline.

A lady goes to visit her new boyfriend's vastly wealthy parents estate, where she meets his somewhat dysfunctional family. The father is a neurosurgeon of some sort and his dying grandfather lives upstairs. They both end up acting like dirty old men, nudity commences. Eventually she discovers that there is a laboratory in the basement where the surgeon performs unholy experiments on unsuspecting victims. Goes downhill from there.

It took some time to really get going, but once it did, I was rather pleased. It's so refreshing to see things that you'll never find in a mainstream film. There were things in this movie that were downright sick, and yet those were the parts that I enjoyed the most. The setup was perhaps a little slow, but the finale was one that I won't soon forget. It's not for all tastes, but if you can enjoy films that are more than a little warped, then it is truly worth seeing.

You know you're about to watch a very unusual film when, during the first 10 or so minutes already, a passionate love-making sequences is montaged together with footage of an open brain-surgery. The weirdness continues when an adult son, with the persuasive help of his new girlfriend, decides to play a prank on the father by pretending to have slit his wrists and lay dead in a bloodied bathtub. Nice! Nothing says "dysfunctional family" like tasteless and downright shocking jokes, I guess!

Now, I have no idea how "Blood Relations" ended up on my must-see list, but there's definitely something oddly compelling about this late 80s Canadian horror/exploitation effort! Three generations of men (and a gardener) live together in their large and secluded family mansion. Grandfather lies nearly dead in his bedroom, the pervy father is a renowned brain surgeon who may or may not killed his wife to inherit her fortune, and the twenty-something son is plotting a scheme to eliminate his father and get his inheritance much quicker and all for himself. In the middle of all this is the stunningly beautiful Marie; - the son Thomas' girlfriend and accomplice, but she's playing her part of seductress very convincingly.

Admittedly there isn't a lot of horror in "Blood Relations", but this widely gets compensated by nudity, erotic atmosphere, and a whole lot of wicked strangeness. For example, I don't recall having seen many other films in which a girl gets down and dirty with the son, his father, and his grandfather! Well, what can you do when a dying old man's last wish is to strip naked and give kisses? The denouement is odd and largely unsatisfying. Mostly odd, though. To be honest, I guessed the ending right halfway through the movie, but then rapidly forgot the idea because it was just too silly and far-fetched. Not silly enough for this crew, apparently.

"Blood Relations" is a truly bizarre horror film.Stunningly beautiful Lydie Denier is being brought home by rich Kevin Hicks.She meets surgeon dad Jan Rubes and together with the son they plan to kill dad and get a huge inheritance.But soon we learn dad and son are quite mad...The film is occasionally truly creepy and weird-the performances are very good and believable.There is almost no gore,but the film definitely works as an atmospheric Gothic shocker.Overlooked classic and a must-see for horror fans!

I rented this movie totally by mistake thinking it was Claude Chabrol's "Blood Relatives", but it didn't turn out to be a TOTAL waste of a rental fee. It's kind of an early "erotic thriller", but unlike those films it doesn't let itself get totally overwhelmed by long sex scenes and actually does function somewhat as an inheritance thriller with some horror movie scenes involving graphic brain surgery thrown in for good measure.

French actress Lydie Dernier was living proof that you didn't need to be able to act or even pronounce the English language if you were willing to doff all your duds in any piece of crap movie defecated by the low-budget Hollywood film industry. This is definitely a step up from "Satan's Princess" (and let's not even speak of that movie she was in Robbie Benson). Naturally Lydie takes her clothes off a lot, and this is the only film I know of(aside from that dubbed late-night Ursula Andress cable classic "The Sensuous Nurse")where a woman seduces a son, a father, AND a grandfather (the latter played by the late, great Ray Walston).

Would I have rented this intentionally? Well, no. But I have now wasted five minutes of my (admittedly pathetic)life reviewing it, so I guess I can't say its THAT bad.

This is a masterpiece, a brilliantly crafted thriller, with highly sophisticated dialogues and a thrilling plot. The performance of Jan Rubes is fascinating: it is certainly the best maniacal character ever created. Too bad the movie was unnoticed by the viewer and ostracized by the critics.

This is a very creepy film with plenty of sex and horror in a very mysterious old old Gothic type dwelling and a basement that looks like ER. Kevin Hicks,(Thomas),"Seeds of Doubt",'96 brings a very good looking and sexy Lydie Denier, (Marie), "Children of Wax",'05 to meet his father, Jan Rubes, (Andreas),"Anthrax",01 because he intends marry this young gal. There is fireworks going on between Tom and Marie, they are making love all over the place and don't seem to ever stop for a breath of fresh air. Andreas is a brain surgeon and has some very strange methods of screwing around in the heads of his patients. The grandfather who has recently had brain surgery views Marie and manages to recover from his brain surgery rapidly and asks Marie if she will take all her clothes off and give him a kiss. (A real Dirty Old Man). This is a very scary film and with all this brain surgery going on, I kept thinking about how veteran Horror Actor, Boris Karloff would have handled this type of operation and Marie !

BLOOD RELATIONS starts out like an erotically-charged thriller, turns into a mystery, then winds up in full-blown horror territory. Nothing is as it appears to be, as the story takes several quick, off-kilter turns.

Lydie Denier is the increasingly perplexed Marie, who slowly uncovers the family secrets that will cost her dearly. Kevin Hicks is Thomas, Marie's unpredictable fiance. Jan Rubes plays Andreas, the extremely friendly, possibly unbalanced patriarch of this little psychodrama. There are definitely some hidden parts to his personality!

This movie is twisted, bizarre, and in the end, utterly satisfying...