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!!!

First of all, what an amazing title. B-movie titles never really get subtle, but Don Dohler is playing in a whole different ballpark here. A blood massacre, that's the best kind there is!

Don Dohler is mainly known for making the same movie over and over again: an alien lands on Earth (usually a forest, as it is free to shoot there), gets into all kinds of PG-rated havoc, rednecks fire guns, the end. That synopsis fits "Alien Factor", "Nightbeast", "Galaxy Invader" and uhm... "Alien Factor 2". "Blood Massacre" however, is something completely different you don't exactly associate with Dohler. It's an ultra-violent horror movie where most of the cast members die horrible, gory deaths.

The plot is almost non-existent. A group of violent criminals (led by Dohler regular George Stover)goes from town to town robbing and occasionally murdering people. With the police (well, one inspector) hot on their trail they lay low in a farmhouse, but it's a horror movie so naturally the nice, friendly family inside turns out to be cannibals.

As limited a filmmaker as Don Dohler was, I've got to say this is one of his best movies. The suspense is actually build up pretty well, with the old farmhouse gradually revealing its secrets. It helps that Robin London (who, sure enough, only has one credit) gives a genuinely creepy performance as the family's insane daughter. Her bizarre sex scene with Stover is the highlight or the low point of this movie, I haven't decided yet. The minute you see her smirk at the main characters, you know they're in a heap of trouble.

The final act is obviously a battle between both groups, like "The Hills Have Eyes" with a budget of three dollars. Sadly, it's almost impossible to follow. For most of it the screen is almost completely dark, so you really have to squint to figure out which character you're looking at and whether or not they're being killed. The editing is also very confusing, most of the time you don't know when or where the action is supposedly happening. I do really like the random ending though, which borrows more than a few things from "Evil Dead".

Don Dohler wasn't very happy with this movie, which was released four years after shooting had wrapped up. He had to reshoot a lot of stuff at the distributors' request, which made him quit film-making altogether for nearly a decade. With that said, I really have a sweet spot for this movie in all it's micro-budget glory. It's a charming mom&pop-style slasher, just don't expect anything more than that.

A sleazy gang hides out at a remote country house.Unbeknowst for them the family which lives there turns out to be killer cannibals."Blood Massacre" by Don Dohler is an okay low-budget slasher/cannibal yarn.The acting is surprisingly passable and there are some original ideas to be found here,but the photography is weak and there is not enough gore for my liking.However the film manages to be both entertaining and sleazy,so I'm not complaining more.It also offers some nice twists and turns.Don Dohler actually reworked the film as "Harvesters" in 2001 with George Stover now playing the head of the family.So if you enjoyed "Fiend" or "Nightbeast" you can't go wrong with "Blood Massacre".6 out of 10.

The most fun 71 minutes I've had in a long time! If anyone can ever get there hands on this one definitely give it a view.

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.