Blood Rage

How to ruin a thanksgiving dinner?

Well, the proclamation “My psychotic brother just escaped!” post turkey-carving is one way to ruin appetites and that the only thing for which to be thankful might be escaping the clutches of some maniac.

Blood Rage (AKA, Nightware at Shadow Woods) is a paint-by-numbers slasher, and yes, it’s one of the few splatter films set on Thanksgiving. It’s also an evil twin movie. Maybe there’s an identical Blood Rage out there that’s better.

One kid brother is an innocent bystander, the other (above) murders people at drive-ins with an axe! Mistaken identities. It’s the stuff of sitcoms, only funny!

Flash forward ten years. So, how to cope with the trauma of raising this duo, now adults? Why, therapy of course and lots of it.

In the case of Blood Rage, the mother sees a psychiatrist prone to making ponderous voiceovers:  “The trauma of watching his twin commit murder, had made Todd catatonic!” Viewers will occasionally sink into a similar state.

Todd is locked up in a mental institute and Terry is left tending to Thanksgiving dinner….which, as stressful family gatherings go, is enough to set people off the deep end…especially ones who share identical genes as those enjoying their bird at the institute, complete with plastic cutlery to prevent self-harm.

When Todd escapes the loony bin, we’re led to believe he’s the psychopath when in reality…reality is blurred (much like when you’ve had too much to drink and are seein’ double).

You see, Todd and Terry are indistinguishable, save for bangs VS a mullet, the evilest of hairdos. So much for red herrings.

It’s non-committed Terry who goes ballistic upon seeing his mom with a new boyfriend, Brad, who’s just proposed to her on Thanksgiving (we aren’t privy to what happened with the brothers’ dad. Guess things didn’t work out…maybe he died of shame).

Anyway, Terry lops off the suitor’s hand with a machete, an appendage that’s hilariously shown still clutching a beer with fluttering fingers (You gotta admire his dedication…”pry it from my cold, dead hands!” or should that be, “pry that cold one from my dead hands?”). As far as impromptu hand surgery goes, refer to The Wax Mask or Dr. Butcher, MD to see how it should be done and we by no means advocate giving it a go.

Poor Todd has “never kissed a girl before*,” an admission that understandably doesn’t go over well with Terry’s collegiate friends, looking out for a psycho on the lam:

Hot chick: “You gotta try it* sometime…listen I’ve gotta go!”

Her larrikin fratboy buddies are “not afraid of him” and the car radio ominously plays a song we couldn’t track down on Google but whose chorus is the foretelling “I’m gonna get you.”

And get them he does, as Terry lays waste to nine victims, in this a Thanksgiving everyone would sooner forget even more so than when the Detroit Lions fail to cover the spread. Blood Rage is a minor turkey, but stuffed with nudity, severed heads, torsos, and limbs — pretty damn gory for an 80s horror.

*** (out of 5)