Blood Rage

Maddy (Louise Lasser! Louise Lasser!) takes her twin, ten year old sons, Terry and Todd, to the drive-in theater for some wholesome movie watching fun. Unfortunately, Terry is a homicidal maniac, who can't resist the opportunity to slip out of the car, and murder someone with an ax! To make matters worse, he blames Todd for the murder, causing him to be locked away in a mental institution. Ten years later, Todd escapes, and heads home, just in time for Thanksgiving.

BLOOD RAGE is another enjoyable slasher film from the sub-genre's heyday. Overflowing with gushy gore FX, 80's fashions and decor, mountainous hair, and a skull-fracturing synthesizer score, it's a perfect slab of blood-drenched cheddar.

Still, in spite of the grisly goings on, the most haunting scene involves Maddy sitting on the floor devouring leftovers. Then, in her horror and grief, she cleans the oven! Vigorously! Drop whatever you're doing and watch this right now...

Blood Rage isn't really that bad. But it isn't really that good. It is cheesy, but not cheesy enough. That's why I give it 5/10. It won't satisfy your craving for slashers and isn't even close to creepy or scary. Still, it has some cheesy charm of it's own. Mark Soper is really trying to be good, and succeeds most of the time. Music is also kinda cool and so are some characters. But that can't save this movie from being really uninteresting and uninspired for 90% of the time. I recommend this only to my fellow slasher fans needing a quick fix. Other people? Avoid it...

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.

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.

"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.