Eighties splatter cheese, of note because it’s a rare example of Thanksgiving themed horror. Released in 1987, near the tail end of the slasher era, BLOOD RAGE was given little fanfare, despite the presence of a “star” in the form of MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN’s Louise Lasser.
…a rare example of Thanksgiving themed horror.
The opening offers a demented twist on that of HALLOWEEN, with Terry King, a deranged tyke, slicing up a couple making out at a drive-in. The crime, though, is pinned on Terry’s twin brother Todd.
Flash forward ten years later, at Thanksgiving, when Todd is interred in a nuthouse and Terry has grown into an arrogant jock. During Thanksgiving dinner Terry’s mom Maddy gets a call from the asylum informing her that Todd has escaped. She tells Terry the news in confidence, which he promptly blabs to everyone at the table, thus providing Maddy with a glimpse of his true nature—which further manifests itself when he spies his parents making out later that night, inspiring him to impulsively chop up his father.
In the meantime Todd’s shrink, one Dr. Berman, initiates a search for him. The doctor’s assistant is stationed at the King house, where Terry impales him with a machete before going after Berman herself, bisecting her in a nearby forest. More killings follow as Terry decides to pay his friends and neighbors a visit, machete in hand. It all boils down to a hokey poolside confrontation between Terry, Todd and Maddy, who by this point has lost her mind completely, allowing for an excess of scenery-chewing to compliment the silliness.
…an excess of scenery-chewing to compliment the silliness.
Potential viewers of this film, I’m guessing, probably aren’t expecting anything of real worth, so I’m probably remiss in reporting on its shortcomings. Nonetheless: storytelling-wise the whole thing is a jumble, with voice-over narration from a psychiatrist used to fill in the many narrative gaps, while the acting is so uniformly rotten it’s hard to believe the cast contained veteran professionals (including Lasser and Mark Soper as her hubbie). An especially pressing problem is that the male protagonists Terry and Todd are supposed to look so much alike they constantly get confused for each other, but the two actors who play them, despite being real-life twins, don’t much resemble each other.
But the film’s selling point isn’t its acting but, rather, its exploitable elements, which include some gratuitous nudity and softcore sex, and of course the gore, which is quite plentiful but reduced by the tackiness of the filmmaking. The special effects tend toward the low rent, as when a bisected woman’s upper half (which is to say: a woman buried up to her waist) flails on the ground—although there is an inspired bit in which Todd happens upon Dr. Berman’s bisected corpse and tries to put its two parts back together.
Vital Statistics
BLOOD RAGE (a.k.a. NIGHTMARE AT SHADOW WOODS; SLASHER)
Film Limited Partnership
Director: John Grissmer
Producer: Marianne Kanter
Screenplay: “Richard Lamden” (Bruce Rubin)
Cinematography: Richard E. Brooks
Editing: Michael R. Miller
Cast: Louise Lasser, Mrk Soper, Julie Gordon, Jayne Bentzen, Arianne Kanter, James Farrell, Chad Montgomery, Lisa Randall, William Fuller, Doug Weiser, Gerry Lou, Ed French, Dana Drescher