Wednesday, December 6, 2017

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: BLOOD RAGE (1987) ** ½


A kid chops up a necking couple at a drive-in and blames it on his twin brother who is promptly sent to the nut house.  Ten years later, he escapes on Thanksgiving and returns home.  People start dying in a variety of gruesome ways, but which twin is doing the killing?

The gory death scenes are over the top.  Hands are hacked off, machetes are pushed through stomachs, heads are lopped off, and bodies are chopped in half.  I especially thought the shots of the still-wiggling body parts were a nice touch.

The stuff in between the slashing is hit and miss.  The big problem is that the tone is out of whack.  It’s almost like they were trying to make a camp classic on purpose, but it didn’t quite work out.  Louise (Frankenhooker) Lasser gets some laughs as the mother of the twins, but her acting is so broad that it feels like it came out of another movie.  We do get one legitimately funny scene where she chews out her son’s psychiatrist while the shrink’s recorded notes drolly play over her hysterical screaming.

Blood Rage features a decent body count and a good amount of skin.  The twin gimmick works well enough I guess.  The victims think they’re talking to the good twin, but it’s really the psycho, who just so happens to be hiding a sharp implement behind his back.  Your enjoyment of the cheesy and/or dumb parts (like who plays tennis at midnight?) will probably depend on your willingness to go along with the goofy tone.  Even at a relatively-brief 80 minutes; it wears out its welcome awfully fast.

AKA:  Slasher.  AKA:  Nightmare at Shadow Woods.  

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