#365Days365Movies

"Blood Rage" (1987)
* dir: John Grissmer
* Horror / Slasher Comedy / Oedipus Complex: The Motion Picture
[ ★★★★ / ★★★★★ ]

Acting: stunningly inept.
Suspense: non-existent.
Music: bland and predictable.
Plot: as boilerplate as they come.
Direction: flat and workmanlike.
Oddball regional charm: off the fucking charts.

(Plus: not even two minutes in and we're treated to a silent Ted Raimi cameo. I felt comfortable taking that as an early good sign, and it turns out I was right!)

Because unlike so many slashers of its ilk, "Blood Rage" has the common decency to be extremely, almost perversely watchable.

Whether due to the almost indescribably odd tone on display or its genuinely offbeat comedic sensibilities, this thing never once drags or idly wastes time or any other such common varieties of slasher cinema padding. While the plot itself is pretty standard (as far as these things go), the moment-to-moment beats keep you surprisingly engaged as you just try and parse out why all of these characters are TALKING like that. It's akin to a bunch of extraterrestrials getting together to recreate the plot of "Halloween" completely phonetically, and also the screenplay was written by an algorithm that was fed nothing but 70s exploitation trash and Sigmund Freud writings. To say you feel unmoored would be an understatement.

I also dig me a horror villain who talks incessantly while doing his dirty sinful business; so many slashers are populated by these silent hulking forces of nature that it's a genuinely nice change of pace to find one so damn chatty. Double points if they're shouting "STOP THAT" over and over like a weird puritanical schoolmarm and homoerotically stabbing a guy while puffing on a joint.

Louise Lasser also has the most extremely chaotic energy in this thing, and I am VERY into it. What is she doing. Does she know that she's doing it. Can she teach me how to do it.