Blood Rage (1987)

[Wernski]

Originally Posted by cakefactory

I really, really am not impressed by Friday the 13th or Scream, and those two seem to be held up as two of the very best, which is a scary concept indeed. The two I always remember as my favorites (apart from Halloween and the NOES series) are Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker and House on Sorority Row.

I don't think most slasher fans hold up F13 as one of the best, it's just one of the most famous, and most beloved for having such a long, varied legacy and a culturally iconic killer. I think once you really start getting into them, you find most are overall better made films. And Scream is more of an ironic commentary on slashers, almost like judging the merits of westerns based on Blazing Saddles (though that's an admittedly more extreme example, as Scream does make the effort to be a genuine slasher while having fun with the genre).

Some examples you would probably find more illuminating I think would be Final Terror, Black Christmas, Rituals, Ravenous, Maniac, My Bloody Valentine or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre... the originals, of course, not so much the remakes or sequels. I think House On Sorority Row and Butcher Baker are both good choices, so we might have similar tastes.

Slashers are essentially like westerns in that they have some very specific trappings (i.e. formulaic), and the fun is how they navigate those and make their own unique films without betraying those boarders. And also like westerns, tons and tons of filmmakers of varying degrees of talent and even interest in making a quality film have tried their hand at making them. So there are some great ones, and plenty of truly terrible ones. If you watch just a handful of westerns, you could come away thinking they're all garbage if the ones you saw were Bad Girls, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter or The Ridiculous Six. But most slashers, and westerns, fall in the middle of the great and terrible, with a mix of flaws and enjoyable qualities. Blood Rage definitely has a heap of both. I think it's fun, but I definitely wouldn't call it a great movie or anything.

Originally Posted by Pizzamorg

She effectively ruined the movie for me, constantly bringing the mayhem to a halt so she could pretend to be drunk and fanny about.

Man, she is the movie. That's like saying Jason kept interrupting this story of camp counselors falling in and out of love with kill scenes in Friday the 13th.