Blood Rage (1987) Review

"It's not cranberry sauce."

-Terry Simmons

Todd Simmons (Mark Soper) has been locked in a mental institution for 10 years.  When he was a kid, his twin brother, Terry (Mark Soper), committed a brutal murder and framed Todd as the culprit.  On Thanksgiving, Todd manages to escape the institution to confront his evil brother, but Terry seizes the opportunity to add to his body count and pin all of the murders on Todd once again.

What Works:

The best part about Blood Rage is the gore.  The are plenty of gnarly and cheesy kills throughout the film.  The gore effects are pretty cool and even the off-screen deaths have memorable body discoveries. 

Mark Soper plays two characters and he does a good job of making them seem like two very distinct characters.  Soper isn't a brilliant actor by any means, but he does have a blast playing the psychotic Terry and really gets to chew on some scenery.

The best performance in the film comes Louise Lasser, who plays the mother of the twins, Maddy.  Lasser is great in the role and comes off as extremely unstable.  She becomes crazier and crazier over the course of Thanksgiving night and every scene she is in is gold.  Whether she's crying about her problems to a telephone operator or stuffing her face with leftovers on the kitchen floor, when Maddy comes on screen, you know it's going to be an interesting time.

What Sucks:

All of the other characters in the film are very bland.  No one really sticks out and I didn't care a bit when they got killed off.  That's pretty standard for a slasher movie, but the characters in this one were below average in terms of memorability and most of them couldn't act their way out of a paper bag.

The film likes to tell us what happens rather than show us, which works great for radio, but not so much for a film.  Instead of seeing Todd break out of the institution, we are told over a phone call that it happened.  That could have been an interesting sequence.  How exactly did Todd escape?  Also, when Maddy has a meeting with Todd and his doctor, instead of watching the drama between the characters play out, the doctor explains what is happening with voice-over.  it's very distracting and doesn't fit with the film at all.

Finally, there are quite a few dull stretches where not much is happening.  Terry takes his sweet time killing off the characters and likes to watch them for extended periods of time.  It's rarely, if ever, interesting.  The runtime of the film is 82 minutes and that still feels long.

Verdict:

Blood Rage has got some awesome kills and three interesting lead characters, with a great performance from Louise Lasser, but the rest of the characters suck, the film does too much telling and not enough showing, and there are too many dull stretches.  It's not a bad movie, but it's not good either.

 5/10: Meh