Blood Massacre

Don by name, 'the Don' by nature, maverick-minded, luridly inventive, low budget horror impresario, Don Dohler, truly is the Grindhouse gift that just keeps on giving, and I have a powerful yen to express my boundless joy at experiencing his gruesome, George Stover-starring, wickedly gnarly sounding home invasion insanity, 'Blood Massacre' (1991), and such a tantalizingly blunt title could only mean one thing, the entirely welcome reality of yet another gob-smackingly gory instalment of deep backwoods-weirdness that only the diabolical dean of B-Movie delirium, Don Dohler can deliver!

Murderously misanthropic, foul-mouthed ex-Vietnam vet and full-time creep-master, Rizzo (George Stover) is the most vociferously distempered member of a disorganized, douchey crew of ghetto-grungy, unsophisticated freebooters whose last impromptu violent Video Store heist yielded little more gain than the tenacious, wholly unwanted attentions of Detective McGuire (Herb Otter Jr.) and a sudden desperate need for immediate sanctuary!

The far from fortuitous theft of a car, and subsequently bad mojo-inducing kidnapping of a young woman, lickety split leads this querulous, terminally trash-mouthing mob to her remote family home where fulminating tensions within the dismally dysfunctional gang are merely the foul-mouthed prelude to a cannibal-crazed, blissfully bad taste Blood Massacre! Huzzah!!! Even if venerated celluloid shock troopers Wes Craven, John Waters and Andy Milligan had combined their not inconsiderable horror-making idiosyncrasies they still might not have reached the exultant WTF apogee of low budget maestro Don Dohler's cheap-jack, adrenaline-jacked backwoods' skeezoid slasher classic, 'Blood Massacre'.

'Blood Massacre' is another hen's teeth elusive example wherein the conspicuous lack of funds, and rushed, expeditious 'look' of a 'seat-of-the pants approach' to gonzo filmmaking adds a fabulously frantic verisimilitude to the macabre Helter Skelter insanity of maestro, Don Dohler's idiosyncratic insanity, dude!!!

After committing a series of crimes, a group of deranged criminals hiding out from the police take over a remote house in the countryside from a family living inside, but as they spend time in their presence realize that there's something off about the family and must try to get away from them alive.

For the most part, this one was quite a charming low-budget effort. One of the better features here is the films' rather enjoyable setup that serves as a solid twist to the home invasion genre. With the early part of the film featuring the concurrent build-ups of the gang going on their rampage either through the encounter at the bar or the video-store hold-up as well as getting to see the family's life on the farm, there's a fun sense of who the characters are and the quirkiness to each group that's highly enjoyable. Once the criminals are forced on the run and encountering the daughter which brings them all together at the fateful farmhouse, everything comes together in fine form with the way they overtake the house and start to impose their way on the family all works nicely to the films' benefit. When this one turns around and flips everything around into the psycho family letting their secret loose on the criminals, there's a demented sense of fun to the way everything turns on its head. The full reveal of everything about them, from the way they all act and behave to the rather brutal sense of encounters shown here where the psychotic family is shown to attack and kill off the intruding psychopaths one-by-one in a frenzied final half that's non-stop carnage, this twist provides a lot to like. While it's painfully obvious that there's something off from the start about them, that doesn't stop the chases and means through which they all battle each other to a wild and unexpected finish that provides the goods in terms of shocking reveals and low-budget gore. However, there are still some issues to be had here. The main factor is the films' inherent cheapness which is painfully obvious from the very beginning with the general look of the film giving away its low-budget origins. Granted, some of that is through no fault of the film itself considering the production process it went through but that's still an issue to overcome for some considering the amount of crazy kills on display, the single-location setup, and the production that makes it incredibly difficult to make out night-time shots because of the darkness obscuring everything. The other factor here is that the over-the-top finale, with several strange twists and unexpected reveals that don't connect to what's going on in the rest of the film, which all hold this one down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

This long shelved ( filmed sometime in the mid 1980s ) shot-on-video horror begins with Cinemagic Visual Effects logo staying on screen seemingly endlessly, while mashing down random keys on a low quality synthesiser, before crummy 80s music from no-name bar band. Everything in this opening scene in the bar is filmed in close-up, and with a fog machine being used to simulate smoky atmosphere, making it difficult to follow what is going on, or to notice the cash register, which is seemingly left over from an old western from the 1940s. Lead guy then orders " Beer ". Not, for example, a Heineken ( my preference ) , he just orders a beer. I love it when a movie does this, as though there is only one single type of beer on Earth.

" 🍺 "

After drinking his * beer * , bar guy kills people, later meets up with a trio of thugs, they debate what to do next. " I don't give a f***, let's just do something! ". Indeed.

So, they rob a video store! While wearing their Kim Carnes '81 Tour shirts, with a Freddy Krueger standee watching, these morons rob a mom and pop video store, and kill one​ person in the process. The entire robbery sequence is silent, with more terrible, almost comical, music dubbed in.

Later, a witness by the name of Captain Obvious tells police, the killers are " gonna hurt somebody! " , after they've already committed murder.

The Last House On The Left plot elements kick in, as the quartet of killers hold up in farmhouse with a family held hostage, but the hostages turn out to be cannibalistic killers, more dangerous than the original quartet of killers, and the family hunts them down and kills them one by one, in slightly gory fashion.

Film then switches gears, and becomes a wilderness survival horror in final fifteen minutes, as the original killer bar guy is the only survivor, ( making the presence of the other three villain characters completely pointless ) and he must fight for his life in the woods, against this cannibal family.

This film then features one of the most baffling, " What the f***? " plot twists I've ever seen, as the cannibal family peels their flesh off, to reveal not only are they cannibalistic killers, but also unkillable skeletal aliens!

* speechless *

I'm guessing the only thing that got this movie anywhere was it's title. The title is pretty clever. What could be better than the words 'chainsaw' and 'massacre' being in the same title? The words 'blood' and 'massacre' of course. The box art was pretty awesome too, showing a head with some ribs on a platter. How could any horror fan avoid wanting to watch a film called "Blood Massacre" with body parts on a silver platter?

The case and title makes it feel like your picking up either a slasher film or brutal cannibal film. It's niether that. You got this gang of crooks that come across this family in the woods and they end up being cannibals. Sure, cannibalism is beautiful in horror films, but in this film, it wasn't very graphic like the box suggested.

Overall, the film is worth buying for the Slasher Film collector only, merely because of its rarity and its awesome boxart and title. But for entertainment purposes, don't expect much.

Don Dohler was known mostly from his SF/horror movies with bloodthirsty aliens like 'Nightbeast' or 'Alien Factor' 'Blood Massacre' is completely different movie and tells the story of four video store robbers who accidentally killed the owner's daughter. They are hiding in rural house terrorizing local family. What they don't know, all of the family members are sick cannibals who wants their blood and guts for a dinner... 'Blood Massacre' is one of the Don Dohler's last good movies made with good gory taste. The movie itself isn't very gory. We have decapitation, blades in the stomach, stick in the guts and some more, but honestly it's not so much for Don Dohler's earlier standards. The plot is just very similar to 'Texas Chain Saw Massacre' but with four thugs instead of teenagers. What I want to say - this movie isn't so disturbing as it should be. Anyway, 'Blood Massacre' is still very fun and easy to watch little flick. The acting is horrible, but who cares? We have some nice gore scenes(although there should be much more blood and gore), pretty nice rock music and finally very nice and surprising twist on the end. If you find this movie, give it a chance. 6 out of 10