Blood Rage (1987)

The Slasher marathon continues with even more bloody fun. Well maybe not fun in the case of this stinker from eighty-seven. As always, I’m getting ahead of myself. Time to pop in Blood Rage and take a look.

Imagine you are at the drive-in and it is the glorious seventies. Well that is where twin brothers Terry and Todd are, in the back seat of a station wagon while their mother’s date is getting “handsy” in the front seat. The boys decide to sneak out and immediately Terry thinks it is fun to kill a dude with an axe and then blame his brother Todd for the crime. Todd goes catatonic and doesn’t speak until ten years later when he remembers his brother is the killer. That is going to make Thanksgiving awkward…

Todd breaks out of the hospital he has spent a decade in for a crime his brother committed and heads home to make sure everyone knows that Terry is the bad kid. I’m not sure if Terry had been killing free since the drive-in, but when he hears that his brother is loose he goes on another murder spree. Lots of bodies start to pile up as the brothers finally have their showdown. Well I guess you can’t really call it a showdown when it is their mother who shows up and shoots one of them.

This movie is a mess. The plot is jumbled and makes little to no sense. The characters are poorly fleshed out and don’t do anything. I was having trouble keeping track of the victims because I couldn’t remember who was who. The actor that plays the brothers seems to have mopey mumble and crazy psycho as his two acting options. There is zero subtly between his performance when it switches from brother to brother. The characters know the “evil” twin is running around and can’t tell the difference when one is insane and the other barely speaks? Hell, they are also clearly wearing different clothes and sporting much different haircuts! This is a poorly written utterly forgettable mess. The only thing that I did enjoy was a very young Ted Rami in the opening drive-in scene as the condom salesman in the men’s room. Lasts less than thirty seconds and then things get crappy.

Drink shitty Old Milwaukee Beer and get killed... seems fair

I suppose I need to mention the acting. It isn’t only our lead that is bad. Pretty much all the characters either stumble over the lines or end up yelling them. There seems to be an issue here with everyone playing all things as melodramatically as possible. So much so that it borders on annoying. Actually, let me correct that. It lands firmly in the territory of annoying! I couldn’t wait for the killer to whack everyone in sight.

The one thing that Blood Rage does have going for it are the effects work. We get some decent kills in the movie. Things start off with an axe to the face. That is followed up with a hand getting lopped off (he was drinking Old Milwaukee Beer… nasty stuff), good use of a fork, some machete fun, and while it happens off screen there is a cool bit with the psychiatrist lady who is split in half. That would have been fun to see onscreen but even after the fact it is a nifty gag. We get some acceptable gore.

Sadly, there just isn’t enough going on in Blood Rage to recommend it. This is for those of us that insist on watching every Slasher movie we can find. Normal people will want to skip it.

© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer