Thanksgiving Trimmings - Blood Rage

 I have this blind spot because I have no recollection of this film from 1983, released in 1987, rediscovered when released from Arrow in three cuts in 2015, with Joe Bob even giving it a spot in his Dinners of Death special on Shudder. I actually found a review of mine from 2011 and it's quite detailed; yet, after watching it on Tubi early Saturday morning, for November, considering it's the month of Thanksgiving, it was as if "Slasher" (the title listed on the film version I watched, seemingly the full official cut with all the grisly violence intact and wholly accounted for) was brand new. I didn't recall any of it. It is quite a peculiar slasher.

The performance of Roper as on-the-spectrum Todd and devoid-of-conscience Terry is either awful or some sort of work of art...it could be one or the other. Or both. But Lasser, I found, so absolutely compelling as the mom having a come-apart when she learns of her savant son's escape from a special psychiatric school on Thanksgiving night. She adores her Terry, whose psychopathy is dormant until Todd's escape, seemingly a trigger that sends him on the murderous rampage. The score by Einhorn really brings a lot of energy and punch to the film it desperately needs. He might've been too good for such a film as this. When Karen cradles the baby near a pool the parental terror set off in me immediate thoughts of horror. The severed hand on the floor and the gushing blood from the arm stump of Maddy's fiance thanks to Terry is a showstopper for me in a campy way, as well as, Todd's psychiatrist screaming out on the ground as her lower half is split from her, with her insides out, still trying to move despite no longer having the ability to do so. Terry always keeps this ghoulish side of him away from his mother...all that Oedipus complex laid bare in this thing. The direction is really stilted in shot composition, mainly feeling as if he was just concerned with shooting the people, places, and setpieces, especially dialogue scenes, without much interest in capturing anything very stylistically. This is very get-the-shot and get-to-the-next-shot in it's shot selection. Lasser, to her credit, really provides this parent sort of shell-shocked, eating her dinner leftovers out of containers with the refrigerator door open, sitting open-legged on the floor. She just can't deal with this enveloping emotional weight. The tragedy at the end shows that Terry remained innocent and without fault to her, unable to live with herself after shooting who she believes was escaped Todd. Her precious Terry could do no wrong. An entire body count left behind him proved otherwise. 4/5

"Well, it's not cranberry sauce."

Terry and Todd are twin brothers. Terry is a psychopath who, as a child while his mom is making out with a boyfriend in his car at the drive-in, takes a hatchet to a victim screwing his lover in their vehicle for kicks. Terry smears some blood on Todd, rendered catatonic from shock at seeing his brother chop this young man's face numerous times, placing the hatchet in his hand. So mom thinks Todd is to blame, shipping the poor kid to an asylum. Meanwhile it's been ten years and Terry has behaved himself…but the question is for how long before Terry snaps again? Todd has told his psychiatrist over and over that it is Terry who killed that man, but she is not totally convinced (although she is suspicious of Terry, soon learning the hard way that Todd was correct). When Todd breaks out of the asylum, the news is told to his mom, Maddy (Louise Lasser, portraying this character as a bit on the edge, kind of nervy and seemingly uptight) and Terry. This seems to be the switch that turns Terry back into a sadistic, happy-go-lucky lunatic again, using an assortment of killing tools on his school mates and anyone else he is familiar with (including a couple who meet him while he is hanging out with a girl babysitting the single mother's baby).

Let's see: machete lopping off a hand, splitting open a head, pulled from a chest wound, impaling straight through a body, a fork stabbed into a throat, a decapitated head hanging from a cord, and a poor victim missing her lower torso and legs (which are a few feet away from her body thanks to the aforementioned machete). The gory kills in "Blood Rage" are not Rob Zombie's favorite kind of violence because they are definitely over the top and gratuitous. Mark Roper, as Terry and Todd, has performances all over the map. His Todd pretty much stays simple-minded and weak, while his Terry is vacant a personality, all smiles when he's wielding his trusty machete. What Julie Gordon's Karen ever sees in Terry is anybody's guess because we never see a side of this guy that is particularly likable or appealing. If you were wondering about nudity, "Blood Rage" also supplies the slasher audience with good news here: Jayne Bentzen is the uninhibited and free-spirited Julie, who smokes pot and likes sex. You know what that means, though, right? Yep, she's dead meat. Not before one of Terry's soon-to-be-dead friends gets a little loving from her first. And for our titillation, Bentzen has a shower scene, bathing her delicious naked flesh. "Blood Rage" is really a relatively unknown slasher that will be of interest only, I believe, to fans of the disreputable genre always in search for obscure "dead teenager" movies (to quote critics who hate slashers). It has all the ingredients and fulfills all the requirements. The characters and plot only service the killing formula, but at least the nutcase has an advantage that allows him an element of surprise on the victims who consider him the normal one and Todd the person to fear. Filmed in Florida, famed state of the great gore director HGL.