Slasher

I first saw this in the early 90s on a vhs. Revisited it recently. Found this film and Ruggero Deodato's Body Count lame during those days. After revisiting both, I found Body Count bad but this one good cos of the gory kills. The film starts off very well n continues with a good pace n solid killings but in the middle it becomes slow n boring. The only plus point of this film is the gory effects. A face gets slashed by a hatchet, a hand gets chopped by a machete, a head gets split open like a watermelon, a body gets cut into half, etc. The unique thing about this 80s slasher is that the action takes place in a sprawling, secluded apartment complex called Shadow Woods with lots of trees, woods n neighbors around.

Being a sucker for old posters and VHS-covers, I have to start by stating that the cover image displayed here on the website does not correspond with the actual movie. The image is that of another movie named "Blood Rage", although that one is a misogynic exploitation/thriller from the year 1979 and directed by Joseph Zito; creator of "The Prowler and "Friday the 13th The Final Chapter". If you're interested, the most frequently seen poster for this "Blood Rage" features a Rambo knife with the reflection of a terrified and screaming woman in it. But anyways, on with the actual review…

This obscure and initially shelved (between 1983 and 1987) '80s slasher may have an incredibly dumb storyline and may feature some of the most absurd plot-twists in cinematic history, but it's inarguably entertaining and delivers just what the target audience for this type of movies craves the most: extreme gore and gratuitous nudity! With sickening murder sequences and reasonably well-crafted make-up effects like these, I'm actually even surprised that the film wasn't released in 1983, as there definitely must have been a market for it. Who cares if the script is retarded when blooded machetes are fiercely swinging and chopped off heads are joyously rolling, right? Somewhere in the seventies, during a night out at the drive-in with their mother and her latest lover, the twin brothers Todd and Terry decide to go for a little walk between the cars and look at couples having sex. For no apparent reason, Terry hacks up a guy's face and then quickly puts the ax in the hands of his brother who is just standing there looking stupid. Todd spends the next ten years in a mental asylum (although his mother refers to it as a "special school"), until he suddenly decides on Thanksgiving Day that it is time to escape and tell the world that he's innocent. When Terry learns that his brother is loose, he starts butchering the entire neighborhood in order to uphold the idea that Todd is a maniac. So, before you ask: yes, we are supposed to believe that Todd never bothered to deny that he was the killer for ten long years, or that Terry is perfectly able to control his maniacal tendencies the entire time but then slaughters all his friends and relatives without any moral constraints. The film also never undertakes any attempts to build up suspense or mystery, what with the identity of the killer revealed straight from the beginning and it doesn't feature that typical "which one of the twin brother is this?" sub plot. Instead, there are a lot of dumb dialogs and quotes, for example Terry who keeps repeating "it's not cranberry sauce" whenever there's blood on his shirt, and an incredibly over- the-top hysterical performance of Louise Lasser. The body count is high and the murders are nice & nasty, with plenty of machete action and severed body parts flying around everywhere. Director John Grissmer didn't do a lot of film work apart from this one. He made the good but obscure and underrated plastic surgery thriller "Scalpel" (a.k.a. "False Face") and wrote the early 70s psycho- thriller "The House that Cried Murder". By the way, the latter is playing at the drive-in theater during the opening sequence of "Blood Rage".

"Blood Rage" begins with two twin adolescent boys at a drive-in with their mother on a date; the two slink off, and one of them murders a man in his car. Ten years later, the psycho twin is incarcerated in a mental institution. On Thanksgiving, the good twin and his mother go to visit, but find he has escaped. He returns to the woodsy community where his mother lives and begins carving up residents like turkeys.

Let's face it—evil twins are to horror films what pumpkin pie is to Thanksgiving. It just works. "Blood Rage," a little-known slasher filmed in the early 1980s, knows this, and takes full advantage of the trope. The film fell into obscurity and wasn't even released theatrically until 1987; it made it to small theaters and B-movie drive-ins, and all but disappeared. What's interesting is that the film actually offers all of the hallmarks that genre fans love about these films: a holiday setting, corny one-liners, young adults copulating, and some impressive special effects set to a pounding synth score. You'd think the film would have at least garnered a cult following, but the limited availability of it until Arrow Video's 2015 release prevented it from ever really catching on.

The film is admittedly a mess in areas; some of the performances are hammy and the dialogue contrived, while the pacing is certainly bizarre at times, but for a low-budget B slasher film, these are typically taken for granted, and if anything are part of the charm. Louise Lasser spends the majority of the film boozed out screaming into a telephone and eating Thanksgiving leftovers on her kitchen floor, while her good twin boy searches ruthlessly for his unhinged brother. Bodies start piling up, and elaborate gore effects take precedent over plot development at times. The script overall is vaguely sketched and doesn't completely feel rounded out, and the film does suffer from a frankly nonthreatening villain, but the final act is tongue-in-cheek and well handled.

Overall, the film is a nice slice of eighties slasher pie that somehow got left behind. It's not a great film by any means, but it's also not a bad one when pitted against the genre standards. The ending is rather grim, and Lasser's turn as the mentally destroyed mother is hammy, Oedipal, and at times poignant. In many ways, the film reminded me of "Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker," another eighties slasher that never really caught on, in both tone and thematics. "Blood Rage" is most definitely worth a look for genre fans, and is a hokey, gory effort if nothing else. 6/10.

A homicidal child blames his twin brother for a grisly axe murder he committed and he's sent away until one Thanksgiving when he's released and the murders starts up at their mother's apartment complex again.

There's a hint of Greek tragedy throughout Blood Rage that doesn't always hit the mark, but you have to admire the filmmakers for daring to make something more than just another run of the mill slasher. If that's what you're looking for, you'll still be more than satisfied, because in it's uncut form, Blood Rage might be one of the bloodiest slashers from this era. Hands are lopped off, heads are split in half, and torsos are torn apart. Louise Lasser also blesses us with one of the great unhinged performances of all time.

Pros: great gory practical effects and a retro 80s soundtrack.

Cons: poor acting and dialogue, the story is bare bones and almost non-existent, and the pacing is sporadic and jarring for the most of the film's runtime.

Overall, it's a directionless movie that drags and basically seems to exist solely for its death scenes. I guess that makes it a decent enough late night popcorn horror movie, but you'll end up struggling through a rather horrendous film just for a few decent gory moments. Maybe worth a single watch, but that's it.