Blood Rage (1987)

This flick is a special one. It's hard to find the full uncut version, it's only available on VHS so forget the DVD versions available. Even as they have the alternative title. All I can tell about this movie is that the storyline is ridiculous. After 10 minutes it's clear who's the actually killer. But what makes the movie worth searching is the amount of gory killings. If you have the DVD then all the gory moments are gone. On the VHS they are intact and worth watching. The acting itself is not that bad at all. The movie never had that much of promotion, but it is one to have in your collection if you still collect VHS. And as I have seen the other movie Blood Rage be sure to catch the correct one. The blood reign is in this one, not in the other one. So you know what to do....start searching. Oh yeah, and try to catch the movie they are showing at the Drive In, it's from the same writer....

Fmovies: Years after a tragic accident, a serial killer escapes from a mental asylum and returns to his parents' apartment complex where his twin brother and his friends have gathered for Thanksgiving, and after learning about who's the real killer the slowly-dwindling group tries to stop the madman.

This here's not all that bad when it really tries. The main one that this one gets right is the slasher motifs that it plays upon since there's some great stalking in here that gets some nicely needed suspense in the film. This is mostly used from the ability to play off the true identities of the two brothers against the others, which is where this one manages to get some fantastic use out of pulling the double switch about which one's who. A lot of scenes work for that reason, as the playoff of which one's which drives up the confusion factor in the characters quite nicely, especially since the ruse is found out so early on and the majority of the film plays off that discovery as everyone goes around trying to find out the killer's true identity which is what results in the variety of kills in here. The first rampage scene in the apartment complex, where there are some great attempts at hiding from the killer and some wonderful confrontations before the final result comes out as the various workers confront the killer unknowingly only to end up getting hacked to pieces in exceptionally gory manners. There's several more that the film uses to trade off its twin gimmick, from the encounter with the older couple to the scenes with the friends partying in their apartment and the tennis court scene. The ending chase in the film is also really great, as there's plenty of full-on stalking and confrontations with the two involved, and it's a long, drawn-out one that's a lot better than what would normally be. As well as the exceptionally graphic and gory kills throughout here, these help to raise this one above the norm as there are some pretty big flaws about it. One of the biggest flaws with it is that there's way too unconventional an approach to the narrative structure. There's way too much skipping around to other areas that mean absolutely nothing which is just irritating. That affects the numerous scenes where one of the tenets in the apartment complex keeps trying to get out a phone call to a person that lives within the complex itself. It's a short walk over to the place where they're calling, yet the fact that half of the movie is the character calling is just plain ludicrous. It's so illogical that it's hard to take seriously, and thus really should've been dropped. The other really noticeable flaw in the film is that there's nothing given about the motive behind the killer. This one offers up nothing, and not even clues are hinted around. This here really kills most of the positive points, since that's a crucial area to handle and this one doesn't attempt one. That takes off most of the positive points itself and just leaves it feeling mediocre.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, a mild sex scene and Language.

Being a sucker for old posters and VHS-covers, I have to start by stating that the cover image displayed here on the website does not correspond with the actual movie. The image is that of another movie named "Blood Rage", although that one is a misogynic exploitation/thriller from the year 1979 and directed by Joseph Zito; creator of "The Prowler and "Friday the 13th The Final Chapter". If you're interested, the most frequently seen poster for this "Blood Rage" features a Rambo knife with the reflection of a terrified and screaming woman in it. But anyways, on with the actual reviewÂ…

This obscure and initially shelved (between 1983 and 1987) '80s slasher may have an incredibly dumb storyline and may feature some of the most absurd plot-twists in cinematic history, but it's inarguably entertaining and delivers just what the target audience for this type of movies craves the most: extreme gore and gratuitous nudity! With sickening murder sequences and reasonably well-crafted make-up effects like these, I'm actually even surprised that the film wasn't released in 1983, as there definitely must have been a market for it. Who cares if the script is retarded when blooded machetes are fiercely swinging and chopped off heads are joyously rolling, right? Somewhere in the seventies, during a night out at the drive-in with their mother and her latest lover, the twin brothers Todd and Terry decide to go for a little walk between the cars and look at couples having sex. For no apparent reason, Terry hacks up a guy's face and then quickly puts the ax in the hands of his brother who is just standing there looking stupid. Todd spends the next ten years in a mental asylum (although his mother refers to it as a "special school"), until he suddenly decides on Thanksgiving Day that it is time to escape and tell the world that he's innocent. When Terry learns that his brother is loose, he starts butchering the entire neighborhood in order to uphold the idea that Todd is a maniac. So, before you ask: yes, we are supposed to believe that Todd never bothered to deny that he was the killer for ten long years, or that Terry is perfectly able to control his maniacal tendencies the entire time but then slaughters all his friends and relatives without any moral constraints. The film also never undertakes any attempts to build up suspense or mystery, what with the identity of the killer revealed straight from the beginning and it doesn't feature that typical "which one of the twin brother is this?" sub plot. Instead, there are a lot of dumb dialogs and quotes, for example Terry who keeps repeating "it's not cranberry sauce" whenever there's blood on his shirt, and an incredibly over- the-top hysterical performance of Louise Lasser. The body count is high and the murders are nice & nasty, with plenty of machete action and severed body parts flying around everywhere. Director John Grissmer didn't do a lot of film work apart from this one. He made the good but obscure and underrated plastic surgery thriller "Scalpel" (a.k.a. "False Face") and wrote the early 70s psycho- thriller "The House that Cried Murder". By the way, the latter is playing at the drive-in theater during the opening sequence of "Blood Rage".

Blood Rage fmovies. A man (Mark Soper) is blamed for murders actually committed by his evil twin (also Mark Soper).

This film is written by Bruce Rubin, the Oscar-winning creator of "Ghost" and "Jacob's Ladder", and stars Woody Allen's ex-wife Louise Lasser. Even Ted Raimi makes a small cameo towards the beginning.

This film, part of the 1980s slasher cycle, is awfully bloody and gory, but seems to be largely forgotten. It has not seen a proper release since the 1987 Prism Entertainment VHS, and now has to be viewed on CrypticTV or YouTube in less than great quality.

Who owns the rights? At this point, if a negative is available, it should be relatively cheap, and would be a solid investment for Scream Factory or a similar distributor.

Yes the cranberry line is quite infamous ... at least once you've heard it and are aware of it. I didn't know it before I "discovered" this. It's not like "Say hello to my little friend" or other lines that you can identify even without having seen the movies they belong to. Then again, this is a "simple" horror/slasher movie, so it figures doesn't it? The answer would be yes to this.

Also this is bad. Why I'm giving it a 7 anyway? Because it is entertaining while being mad as hell. There are almost no words to describe some of the things happening here. Blood and nudity are one thing (I quite liked the effects), script and acting a completely different thing. The two "lead" men are almost impossible to distunguish. They look almost the same (yes I know they are twins, but I mean they were apart for almost their entire life) ... but that's not even it. It is the coincidences, the madness and inability to act ... or maybe overacting was encouraged? It's almost cringe worthy at times ... but again it can and was able to add to the party factor ... so bad it is good (sort of) ... if there's a movie to apply it to, here you go. If it talks like a slasher, walks like a slasher and "acts" like a slasher ... it probably is a slasher! Don't expect too much ... just let the blood clouds open, the limbs hit the floor and enjoy the mayhem

Blood Rage (1987)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Terry commits a brutal murder at a drive-in but blames it on his twin Todd who is sent to a mental hospital. Flash forward ten years and Todd has broken out of the hospital and returns home where more bodies begin to pile up.

BLOOD RAGE was filmed in 1983 but it sat on a shelf for four years before it was finally released without too much fan fare. The film was pretty much forgotten but over the years it has gained a rather large cult following and it's not too hard to see why. Even though I thought the film was pretty bad, there's no question that it contains some rather campy moments at times and the gore level is quite high.

I think it's the gore that most people are going to be coming to the film for. The special effects aren't the greatest thing around and they certainly don't compare to the work of Tom Savini but they certainly have an appeal. It doesn't matter what happens to the victim you're going to see a ton of blood come flowing out. So if they're stabbed, shot or chopped...prepare for blood. There are some creative kills throughout including one poor woman who gets cut in half and another man who loses his head.

The biggest problem with the film is pretty much everything else. The movie is available in three different cuts but I went with the original VHS version that clocks in at 82 minutes. Those 82 minutes feel triple that time because this thing drags so often. Whenever someone isn't getting killed off we're basically watching some pretty poor acting in a rather bad story without much going for it. There's no mystery, no suspense, no humor and not much of anything.

Again, BLOOD RAGE is going to be remembered for its gore and I'd still recommend slasher fans check it out for this reason alone.