There's more to fear than creepy crawlies when vacationers enter "bloodstalker country" in the peculiar Floridian exploitation item BLOOD STALKERS, on Blu-ray from Garagehouse Pictures.

Getting out of a mental ward after his experiences in Vietnam, Mike Aiken (Jerry Albert, WHISKEY MOUNTAIN), his wife Kim (Toni Crabtree, EYES OF A STRANGER), road entertainer Daniel (Ken Miller, I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF), and his stripper girlfriend Jeri (Celea Ann Cole, SPACE MUTINY) skip Key West for Mike's family cabin deep in the Florida Everglades. They discover quickly that their presence is unwelcome, with no help for directions or supplies from the local general store owner (Herb Goldstein, KING FRAT) or a trio of redneck hunters (THE EVICTORS' John H. Meyer, CATCH THE BLACK SUNSHINE's David Faris Legge, and director Robert W. Morgan) who warn of "bloodstalkers" in the area of the Aiken cabin. The quartet find their way to the cabin, but Kim is unsettled by indications that someone else has been there in the fifteen years since Mike's father's nervous breakdown and death, and Mike himself goes back to the car to discover muddy prints all over it and hears the screams of a panther in the overgrowth. Although Daniel and Kim express concern for Mike's mental well-being after his descriptions of the local Native American legends including a child stealing beast and little people, it turns out that not all of the strange goings-on are in Mike's head (or are they) when a furry arm busts through the wall and attacks Jeri. While Daniel, Kim, and a traumatized Jeri hold up in the cabin, Mike ventures out in search of help from people who are either too afraid or in on whatever is going on in the swamps.

This Florida-lensed obscurity was the sole directorial effort of Robert W. Morgan, a man who made a name for himself in the 1970s as a Bigfoot researcher who was the subject of a quartet of documentaries – the most familiar being IN SEARCH OF BIGFOOT (released by Vinegar Syndrome on a DVD double bill with the oddball fictional film on the beast CRY WILDERNESS) – after having authored the screenplay for MAKO: JAWS OF DEATH (also featuring Albert) for fellow Floridian exploitation director William Grefé (THE DEATH CURSE OF TARTU). Although he was apparently inspired by the local legends about a Bigfoot-like hairy man in the Everglades, the beast is more of a shaggy dog along the lines of the more outrageous SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED with the film having more in common with the era's backwoods horror genre. The pacing is a bit too leisurely but the climax raises a couple hairs and throws in some surprising gore (courtesy of Grefé regular Doug Hobart who also did effects for the Florida-lensed SCREAM BABY SCREAM and FLESH FEAST). Assistant director/supporting actor Lane Chiles also appeared in Harry Kerwin's Florida-lensed GOD'S BLOODY ACRE and cinematographer/editor Irv Rudley worked on Kerwin's CHEERING SECTION. Morgan would go on to author some books on Bigfoot including the "Bigfoot Observer's Field Manuel."

Given scant theatrical release by Century Cinema Corporation, BLOOD STALKERS disappeared until the mid-eighties when Vidmark released it on VHS masquerading as a slasher film. The transfer later turned up on Retromedia's triple feature DVD MORELLA'S BLOOD VISION with the Filipino film BLOOD THIRST (as BLOOD SEEKERS) and ZOMBIE (the uncut version of Del Tenney's I EAT YOUR SKIN). Garagehouse Pictures' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen Blu-ray is an improvement on the dark VHS image but the print seems faded with suntanned Miller looking only a shade darker than his bleached blond hair. Although the shadows during the daylight scenes are harsh and the night scenes underlit, there is more visible detail than before, from some of the subtler sightings of the "bloodstalker" to nudity during the skinny dipping scene. The LPCM 2.0 mono track is acceptable.

The film is accompanied by an introduction by Morgan (1:14) as well as an audio commentary in which he recalls observing on Grefé's IMPULSE, scripting MAKO: JAWS OF DEATH which he reveals was originally titled SHARKENSTEIN and was more the work of Hobart than Grefé, and getting involved with Rudley who had the studio Creative Film & Sound where the band Blood, Sweat & Tears was tuning up for an outside performance and they ended up scoring the film although they could not be credited because the production could not afford their base rates (the score is credited to Stan Webb who did the film's sound recording and final mixing). Morgan also appears in a video interview (19:10) in which he covers some of the same information on the commentary but also discusses his Bigfoot career, more about the Grefé films, visiting Russia for a possible co-production after BLOOD STALKERS, and his government work including the discovery of a mafia money laundering scheme and the Watergate investigation.