Caçada Sangrenta

Honestly,I'm shocked no one has posted that headline yet,it's so obvious!I've seen this movie,and it's pretty bad!It should be noted that except for his occasional reunions with Annette,this is Avalon's ONLY acting performance since "Grease" Sad,when you consider he started his acting career with a few A pictures["The Alamo" & "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"]and then degenerated into the AI Beach films! Not a defense of him or this film,just a witty comment!

Got this in a double feature movie pack the other being "Mausoleum". I am surprised to see this one has the higher score of the two movies as I thought that one was more entertaining though not necessarily a good movie in its own right. This movie starts out showing a boy who witnesses his father killing his mom and her lover and then himself. Well this kind of makes him mental and suffice to say he will grow up to be our killer. They do not really try to hide who he is during the movie as you see him fairly early in the picture. Well a girl with a bad leg sees visions of him doing his killings and he soon goes after her after she witnesses him disposing of one of his victims. There are a couple of good kills in this one, but for the most part the film is rather slow and a lot of times there is not a lot going on. The film will focus on the girl and her relationships with her father and her boyfriend then cut to a scene from time to time of the mental dude killing someone. Then after she sees him face to face the film is just him stalking her before finally going after her in a very prolonged scene. Just not all that entertaining. The psychic link she shares with the killer almost seems pointless after the initial scenes of her seeing visions of his killing and really added no new dimension to the film other than she should have been a bit more ready for him than she was. So all in all have to say this song had no rhythm and runs way to long at the end. I kept thinking to myself near the end "Shouldn't this be over?"

Of all the people to star in an early 80's slasher film, Frankie Avalon doesn't seem like the most obvious choice and yet here he is, trying to give a respectable performance as the screenplay of Blood Song lets him down nearly every step of the way. Don't get me wrong. There's still some fun to be had with Blood Song, but it's not as taut and potentially thrilling as it could have been.

A young boy witnesses his father killing his mother, her lover, and then himself and is so in shock that all he can do is play his little wooden flute his father made him. Cut to present day and he decides to escape from the mental hospital where he's been cooped up forever. While he was there, he donated blood and this blood provided a life saving transfusion for a teenage girl named Mary (Donna Wilkes) after her father got them into a horrible accident which left her in leg braces.

Somehow, this shared blood has given them a psychic link and Mary can see him escaping and killing anyone along the way who says something disparaging about his flute.

If Blood Song had left out the silly blood transfusion leads to psychic visions subplot and kept the killer's flute out of it, it would probably be a much more effective movie. As is, it's too unintentionally hilarious to have the tension of chase scene broken by Avalon pulling out his flute and playing a few notes.

The acting isn't horrible, but Wilkes has been better in other films. The downbeat ending is a really punch to the stomach as well, but would have fit better into a more frightening film.

Bloodsong (a.k.a. Dream Slayer) is a rare and almost totally forgotten horror trash flick made during the 1980s' boom of slasher films. Don't get me wrong, though. I say trash in a good way; defining the genre rather than the quality. Because, in quality this movie is quite mediocre and, actually, not at all that bad as some would make it out to be. It's sleazy, but by no means a sleaze flick. It's violent only to and extent. It's bloody, but not too much. And, although it was not a t.v. movie, it sometimes has the feel of one. On top of all this mediocrity, there are some assets to Bloodsong. The acting and storyline are pretty good, there's plenty of cheap 80s style and substance, and it's the only film in which you can see former teen heart throb Frankie Avalon play a hatchet wielding psycho.

Yes, you heard right. Frankie stars as Paul Foley, an escaped and homicidal mental patient, who prior to his liberation, supplied blood to a critically injured teenage girl brought to his hospital after a car wreck. The girl, Marion (played by Donna Wilkes), crippled but on her way to recovery at home, starts to have horrible visions of death both in dreams and awake. In other words, Paul's blood seems to have connected his mind to hers, making Marion an unwilling mental witness to his killing spree in which the murders always start off with him hauntingly playing a flute (hence, the title Bloodsong). Needless to say, it is inevitable that their paths will cross and it won't be nice.

Although far from a classic, Bloodsong is pretty entertaining and not a complete waste of time. The killings are semi-graphic but, otherwise, fully slasher film certified. Avalon surprisingly creates a creepy and menacing character. Another plus is that the plot is embellished by the fact that poor disabled Marion has a father who is an abusive alcoholic who makes her out to be a slut and gives her hell every chance he gets. That sub-story is worthy of the trashiest Lifetime movie of the week. If I had to make a comparison, I'd say this film is a mix between John Carpenter's Halloween (only much cheaper and not on Halloween) and William Lustig's Maniac (only toned down and a lot less bloody). So, mediocrity aside, Bloodsong is worth at least one view by all 80s slasher aficionados. Frankie would appreciate it.

Frankie Avalon would be a lot more terrifying if he didn't carry around a flute with him everywhere he goes. Without that, his performance might be considered one of the more effective teen idol to creepy character actor performances. Some of the death scenes are effective and the last act chase sequence between Avalon and his final victim works really well, but there's something a little too calm and leisurely about this to ever really get one's juices flowing.