Blood Rage (1987) Film Concept Group/Horror RT: 82 minutes Rated R (gory slasher violence, language, nudity, sexual content, drug use) Director: John Grissmer Screenplay: Bruce Rubin (as “Richard Lamden”) Music: Richard Einhorn Cinematography: Richard E. Brooks Release date: March 29, 1987 (US) Cast: Louise Lasser, Mark Soper, Julie Gordon, Jayne Bentzen, Marianne Kanter, James Farrel, Chad Montgomery, Lisa Randall, William Fuller, Douglas Weiser, Gerry Lou, Ed French, Dana Drescher, Ted Raimi. Box Office: N/A Body Count: 11
Rating: *** ½
Let’s talk about holiday-themed slasher flicks. Most of the major holidays are represented in this genre- New Year’s Eve (New Year’s Evil), Valentine’s Day (My Bloody Valentine), April Fools’ Day (April Fools’ Day-1986), Mother’s Day (Mother’s Day-1980), American Independence Day (Uncle Sam), Halloween (duh!) and Christmas (Silent Night, Deadly Night). It could even be argued that Leprechaun is a St. Patrick’s Day movie. What about Thanksgiving? For years, I asked that question. The closest I ever came to finding one was Eli Roth’s faux trailer for Thanksgiving in 2007’s Grindhouse. I didn’t know that a Turkey Day slasher flick already existed. Blood Rage has been around for more than 30 years and I had no idea. And I call myself Movie Guy 24/7?
Made in ’83 but not released until four years later, Blood Rage– aka Nightmare at Shadow Woods and Slasher (the title that appears in the credits on the Blu-Ray)- played at only a handful theaters in a heavily-edited cut that truncated the gory scenes, the movie’s main raison d’etre. The version seen on the Arrow Blu-Ray is the complete movie with all the gory scenes intact. You can color me blood red impressed. Ed French, who also co-stars, does an amazing job with an obviously limited budget. To that end, Blood Rage is much better than one would expect from a cheap horror flick especially one that managed to stay under Movie Guy’s radar for more than three decades.
The 1974-set prologue has identical twin brothers Todd and Terry at a drive-in movie with their promiscuous mother Maddy (Lasser, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) and her date. They sneak out of the car and go exploring. Terry spies on a couple having sex before taking a hatchet to the guy’s head. He then frames his brother for murder causing him to be committed to a mental institution. Ten years later, Todd comes out of his catatonic state and realizes he doesn’t belong in an asylum. Later at Thanksgiving dinner, Maddy gets a call informing her that Todd has escaped and is likely headed home. While she has a booze-induced emotional meltdown, Terry casually resumes his murderous ways in order to set Todd up again and have him sent away for good. Todd’s surprise return home couldn’t have happened at a more convenient time; it’ll provide Terry with a fall guy when he kills his mother’s fiancee, building manager Brad (Fuller, Porky’s II: The Next Day).
Why don’t we get right to what you’re all dying to know? Let’s talk about the kill scenes. THEY ROCK! A guy gets it with a hatchet to the head. One has his hand chopped off. It’s seen twitching while still holding a beer can. A woman is cut in half. A severed head is seen hanging by an electrical cord. A head splits open. Somebody meets their end via a carving fork to the neck. People are stabbed, slashed and hacked to death. All of it is accompanied by generous amounts of fake blood and lots of S&S (spurt and splatter). Blood Rage definitely lives up to its name.
Director John Grissmer (Scalpel) injects a healthy dose of humor into Blood Rage starting with Lasser’s campy performance as the increasingly unstable mother reduced to pleading with a telephone operator to help her find her MIA fiancee. It’s not every actress who can pull off a scene like the one where she sits on the kitchen floor shoving handfuls of leftovers into her mouth. Lasser brings an OTT seriousness to a role that fits in perfectly with the insanity going on around her. Mark Soper, who also played the unfortunate lover in The World According to Garp, plays the dual roles of Terry and Todd. Although his line readings are inconsistent, he does a good job creating different personalities for each twin. He’s equally convincing playing awkward and innocuous (Todd) as he is personable and homicidal (Terry). He also gets the movie’s trademark line: “That’s not cranberry sauce.” LOL! It’s a good one, no?
Blood Rage wouldn’t be a true slasher movie without sex, nudity and cliched characters- e.g. obvious final girl, slutty girl, frat boy jocks, concerned psychiatrist, etc. Nobody is particularly intelligent; it’s their only excuse for putting themselves in dangerous, deadly situations time and time again. Their performances are on the lower end of the spectrum but that’s to be expected. Things are helped by Grissmer’s peppy directing and a witty script by Bruce Rubin (NOT the one that wrote Ghost). They wisely take a tongue-in-cheek approach to the material without undermining the story. You could even say Blood Rage is their love letter to the slasher genre. It’s a lot of good bloody fun. The best thing is I now have a new Thanksgiving tradition. HOWEVER, I’m still waiting for some ambitious filmmaker to tackle Arbor Day. Any takers?
