Dr. Rage

This review pertains to the "Unrated Directors Cut" Where to begin on a film like this? First of all I have seen many, many horror movies, but never one quite like this. You will notice from the first five minutes that this film isn't exactly a "Hollywood" production, but I tried not to let that taint my review. The film revolves around a taxi-driver who has a bit of a rage problem and instead of facing jail time, decides to do some medical "research" There are a few minor twists and turns that I will leave for you to find out, but the bottom line is this movie never reaches the high expectations shown on its DVD Cover. The special effects are OK, the last five minutes are fair, but the overall mood of the movie never really reaches full effect.

If you are a fan of odd, low budget, dialog movies, then you might actually find this one somewhat entertaining. The added sex scene provides at least some sort of excitement to an otherwise dull production.

My rating 2 out of 10.

I think that the cover said it was based on a true story, but I didn't see it. This is a C or D level horror film with little going for it. An angry man is sentenced to work with a mad doctor to control his rage. The doctor enhances the rage to extract the rage through the sweat glands ala the funky Gatorade commercial colored sweat. The only thing that saved this film from being a total washout was the relatively good acting by the experienced cast. I wonder why they took this job? It couldn't have paid very well. Only two good things about this movie, the sex scene between Duff and Polk and the last 8 minutes with some surprise special effects. Dialog was crummy, camera work was crummy. Scenery was crummy. They even had a setup for a sequel.

The Asylum is a movie studio that has a reputation of making cheap B-movies. Sometimes mock-busters (cheap knock-offs of more known movies made for fooling the viewers in seeing their crap-fests) and sometimes really cheap movies. And DR. RAGE is no exception.

The movie is about a doctor that tries to uncover the mysteries behind the Straun Foundation with the help of his female partner. In the meanwhile he also discovers that the foundation's director is plotting against them. But in the meanwhile the viewer is bored by shoddy editing, bad acting performances (including from once respected actress Karen Black in one of her more recent movies to date), some scenes that doesn't make sense (like the scene of the hobo assaulting the lead across the street) and some creepy special effects towards the end.

However this movie is so badly made and dull that even bad movie fans (like myself) would avoid. And I have to confess that the more I watched it the more I wasn't caring about the characters and prone to falling asleep!!

A friend of mine put this on as he had bought it for £1, personally after seeing it the film was not worth it. The acting was poor the story was very formulaic and quite dull and there were no scares. The actress Denice Duff playing Dr Verger was reasonably sexy and there were a couple of reasonably steamy scenes with her in (she looked a little like Carla Gugino who I saw in Nic Cage vehicle "Snake Eyes") The lead actor Stephen Polk reminded me of John Glover most well known as the father of Lex Luthor in Smallville. Andrew Divoff who I have seen in a few low budget flicks was easily the best actor in this as Dr Straun a crippled psycho who likes to watch his patients treatments and reactions on CCTV in a straight Jacket. Even the most devoted horror fans would have little to enjoy here. 1.5/10

The film is being sold in the U.S. as a Haunted House movie, even the menu designs show a house with burning windows and people with straight razors. Well none of that is in this movie! Shot in 2002 finally seeing a video shelf in 2006! Written originally like 20 years before that this is a film that escaped, briefly, not released. Was the only way to sell it to sell it as something it wasn't to this degree!?! Given the "quality" of the film, perhaps would be a cynical answer and the answer the producers must have decided was their only option to get the film off the shelf. But this is really shameful.

The film almost entirely takes place in rather poorly decorated warehouse interiors trying to be some sort of hospital. Lots and lots of talk, the medical machinery when it's shown is very shoddy indeed. Brief nudity sort of in one love scene with Denise Duff should be mentioned as one of the few reasons anyone may not be totally angry to waste time and money watching this. She plays with her glasses a lot, that's as much character development as she explores.

However, there is a mutant sort of two headed retard character/monster that is pretty well done and during the final 5 minutes there is a lively sequence involving him. The rest of the film is a dull cheap waste of time.

Whole thing is shot on HD, and thought it doesn't scream video, it doesn't look especially good either, some of the lighting is really bad but it's in focus, just lacks any style or sense of claustrophobia or building tension. Talk talk talk. Cheap, cheap, cheap. A long wait for very very little result I'd think for all involved and for all those who have to watch it.