Sede de Sangue

A female psychotherapist and her small group of emotionally troubled patients trek into the middle of the desert(where it's free to film a movie) for some solitude, and a bit of therapeutic soul-purging and brain-picking. Once settled at their destination, members of the group begin to disappear, leaving the others to nervously unravel the mystery while eyeing each-other suspiciously.

A fairly pissant little production, BLOOD FRENZY isn't exactly a marvel of filmmaking genius, but there are scores of truly wretched titles from the slasher canon which make it at least seem somewhat more substantial than it actually is. Formulaic, featureless, and for the most part watchable, this is a nondescript film which serves up the barest meat-and-potatoes provisions and makes zero attempt to distinguish itself with fresh ideas or impressive showmanship.

BLOOD FRENZY should manage to appease most undemanding slash-cinema enthusiasts, but mostly in a tap-water flavored sort of way. 4/10

There's two ways of looking at "Blood Frenzy": A very standard, run-of-the-mill slasher flick that tries to cash in on the success of the first two "The Hills Have Eyes" films, simply by using the same desert setting and a similar stack & slash routine. Or: A modest, unrighteously overlooked 80's slasher gem that sticks to the point and uses the at the time not-done-to-death-yet setting of a desolate desert to its advantage. Since it also specializes in nasty throat & stomach slicings, uses very distinguishable characters and even contains a very basic, but to-the-point twist at the end... I'm in the second camp. All-in-all, not a bad slasher movie from the 80's, although it's an obscure one and you first must have seen a lot of those to be able to acknowledge this.

A late entry in the '80s cycle of slasher movies, Blood Frenzy sees psychiatrist Dr. Barbara Shelley (Wendy MacDonald) driving to the desert to conduct a spot of confrontational therapy with six of her deeply troubled patients: macho douche-bag Dave (Hank Garrett), Vietnam veteran Rick (Tony Montero), bitter man-hater Dory (Lisa 'Wednesday Addams' Loring), sexy blonde nymphomaniac Cassie (Lisa Savage), alcoholic Crawford (John Clark), and Jean (Monica Silveria), who has a fear of being touched. No prizes for guessing that one of the group is a lot more disturbed than the rest and proceeds to kill off the others one-by-one, slashing their throats with a knife and gashing their stomachs.

This relatively obscure slasher starts with a gory prologue in which a drunken father tries to punish his child with his belt, paying the price for his abusive ways when the kid gets the upper hand and rips open pop's neck with a gardening tool! The desert-bound action leading up to the other murders is, by comparison, rather mundane—assorted bickering between the patients, with sex maniac Carrie trying to calm the situation by sleeping with the men (AND, later in the film, a woman)—but hang on in there: once the killer gets their game on, Blood Frenzy more than lives up to its title, the claret flowing freely throughout with plenty of throat cutting and a demented finale that features a juicy knife in the neck, a pick-axe in the back and an impaling on a wooden stake.

Supremely annoying characters are driving through the desert, when their van breaks down, only to be set upon by an unseen killer.

As in the vastly superior 1977 film, The Hills Have Eyes, the desert location gives a creepy atmosphere to the proceedings, but the characters are all so very annoying, and the gore effects are all so underwhelming they aren't worth waiting for.

Directed by hardcore pornographic filmmaker Hal Freeman, and allegedly based on a script by Ray Dennis Steckler , pointlessly​ titled " Warning - No Trespassing " , which was rewritten by Freeman's frequent collaborator, Ted Newsom, this will, at least, answer anyone's questions about why Wednesday Addams didn't continue acting.

A Los Angeles psychologist takes six troubled patients (three men and three women) out to an isolated mine in the arid wasteland, but the situation turns ugly when someone's neck is slashed.

"Blood Frenzy" (1987) has an engaging set-up and a unique location for a slasher. While the tone is too exaggerated and mixed with droll humor to take very seriously, the characters are fleshed out enough to make them interesting.

Masculine Tony Montero is effective as a Vietnam Vet with PTSD while petite Lisa Savage is a highlight on the female front. Meanwhile Lisa Loring (Wednesday from The Addams Family) is striking as an adult and very good at playing a biyatch. Actually, she might do it too well, not to mention she hams it up a little too much in the last act.

An eye-rolling sapphic episode in a dirty cave (off camera, for the most part) dooms any possibility of taking the flick seriously. Why Sure! Still, there are some positives if you like 80's slashers and don't mind low-budget ones released direct-to-video. Think "Sands of the Kalahari" if it were a low-rent slasher.

The film runs 1 hour, 27 minutes, and was shot entirely on location at Calico Mines, Barstow, SoCal, which is a 2-hour drive northeast of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert.

GRADE: C.