*note: there’s volume in this post

The natural viewer and movie watcher won’t be dismissed for having never seen or even heard of Dramoling Movie on the Land’s haunting 1967 subculture psychodrama “Blisters” since (I checked) it was never actually “released” and has only been drifting around and shown to small parties in people’s living rooms, dens, garages and maybe your cousin’s shed but we were somehow sent a copy of it last month and did as much due diligence as we could here at Eric Undead to dig deep and find out the truth about this “well, they say” type of mysterious and arcane thing that’s been floating around for almost six decades. I can’t find anything out there that indicates how many actual copies were printed and distributed but we’ve got a scratchy one here and let’s dig in.

I think one thing’s for sure and whether you’ve seen the actual movie or not – surely you’ve been on the internet before and seen the clip of that soul haunting opening scene – and yes there’s volume on this one we digitized for the public:

I mean, from the opening seconds we can feel the tension and the building horror the tone is setting. What is this man doing? Is he trying to get her attention? Is he practicing the Dark Magicks? Is he calling out to the Elder Gods in some sort of sacrificial invitation to come into our realm and feast once more, satisfying more of their eternal hunger? It’s hard to really get a grasp on just those first ten seconds but after that scene which we rate Pucker Factor 9, things slow down a little bit and we can start to adjust.

Produced and set in 1967 Holland, we get a brief yet horrific origin story of who would become the Nightmare of the Netherlands as dubbed by the savvy press looking for a quick hit in the days before Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and Eric Undead. In this opening which we think is probably exploring pre-WWII European dynamics, we watch and listen as a mother sings a violent and terrifying ode to the Ancient Ones, teaching her newborn the Arts of Summoning and Beckoning Hunger. Notice how he quickly adapts, as if reincarnated from something mythic and arcane in human form. This foreshadowing promise of human carnage, suffering and sacrifice is terrifying. Just look as the child proudly stares into the abyss:

Thankfully this is short, a premonition of our own doom and mortality perhaps? However our fates are decided, our next scene is he as a young man living in a filthy cardboard box among the roaches and Hollandaise vermin. He stares with hatred into the camera and via flashback we see that back on that fateful night, even as an infant, he had indeed summoned the Hungry Ones who devoured his family right there in front of his face. It’s hard to pinpoint when our first memories are but his are made clear, he’s never forgotten that event and he stands and screams into the dark night (translated) “I never will hungry again you unholy seed i will dine yourself and mine and we all will glory in palaces of fulfilling and drinking at all cost we will dine!” And his fingers begin to snap once more.

Over the next hour we watch as he moves through Europe, snapping his fingers and calling for The Hungry. In Amsterdam he invites them in and they slay and roast an entire village of 400. In Norway, a stew of a dozen hikers from America. In Belgium, a gruesome montage of them laughing and meat grinding the Flemish. In Czechoslovakia, well you get the point and are dared to see for yourself.

Leaving behind piles of bones and mountainous piles of disgusting scat everywhere, eventually, the citizens and authorities become alarmed. Lockdowns and curfews and manhunts ensue! Innocents are detained and some executed in the 14 year period known as the Persecuted Europeans Nordic and Icelandic Scourge. Riots! Looting! Cities burn! And then one unexpected week, the deaths and consumption slow to a stop.

He grows feeble. He weakens. He fails to conjure his lords. He is tired. He is depleted. And then he understands the source of his Failure, his Undoing: the blisters.

The boils prevent him from reaching the pitch needed to reach his masters. We see, again in montage, how he grows thin and frail all the while, now in split screen, we watch the Poles and Czechs mounting a war front complete with maps covered in strings and cackly radio receivers.

And who could ever forget Stanilslavus Zzygki’s Pulitzer Prize runner up watercolor representing the pain and suffering brought upon his people? They believed! And they hunted!

And then! Once he understands the forces opposing him have him cornered, once his fate is sealed, once all is lost! Spoilers!! He rips off his own foot and bares it to the sky in martyrdom and suffering and penance and torment and screams the Arcane words and lightning crashes and thunder breaks and the gods weep and the mermaids sing and the clouds open up and a bolt of divine energy releases from the heavens and encircles his agonized form and he crumbles and withers and turns to ash and the winds rise up again and he is blown across the lands spread far and distant and MY GOD THIS IS POWERFUL SHIT! JESUS CHRIST! WHO WROTE THIS ANYWAY?? WHAT A LUMINARY!! SHIT!! SHIT!

And then, like a whisper, he’s gone. All of the songs and suffering and the tragedies and the blisters are whisked away like a sweet fart in the wind. Will his memory by survived by anyone who once escaped him?

But in an uncanny use of foreshadowing and prophesy, and long before slick screenwriters started setting up sequels and cross overs and universes and shit like that, the camera fades out, sets to black for a few long moments and reopens on a rainy street. It seems Asian-y with the style of dress and headgear – maybe a slum like Pig Sty Alley from Kung Fu Hustle: a man bathes nude in the mud, a woman pisses on a smoldering fire, an old hatchet lady smokes and surveys the poor and then, in the corner under an overflowing gutter, a form rises from the muck and shit and we are left with this last haunting image, a look into our own fates, what our destiny holds:

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