Bloodrage starts with a small town prostitute named Beverly (Judith-Marie Bergan) seeing a regular named Charlie (Jerry McGee) out the door as her boyfriend arrives, a local cop named John Ryan (James Johnson) who knows about her chosen career but turns a blind eye. Once he leaves Beverly is visited by a young, shy & sexually repressed man named Richard (Ian Scott) who, in certain scenes, is a dead ringer for Christopher Walken. Anyway, Beverly invites him in & says that she has noticed him watching her & that he has to pay her for her time whether he stays or not. Richard doesn't like her demanding money from him & when she threatens to call her boyfriend Ryan, Richard becomes violent & aggressive. In an ensuing struggle Richard pushes Beverly & she ends up going head first through a window & ends up with her throat being slit on the broken glass in the frame. At that moment Ryan drives up outside the house in his squad car but is held up talking to a guy named Gus (Patrick Hines) about nothing in particular. Richard has to think & act quickly, he cleans the blood up (gee, large amounts of blood sure does come off white walls without leaving a single trace easily & quickly doesn't it?) & hides Beverly's body in a closet just as Ryan enters the house. Even though he thinks it seems a little strange that Beverly has all but disappeared eventually Ryan leaves & then Richard disposes of Beverly's body out back, Richard then hitch hikes & gets into a truck which takes him to Times Square, New York City. There he rents a crappy run down hotel room, finds a job in a beer packing factory & befriends one of his neighbours, Candice (Rita Ebenhart). However, because of the pressures of living in New York Richard soon feels the urge to kill again & singles out yet another prostitute, this time named Lucy (Blair Trigg). By some bizarre coincidence Ryan feels that Beverly might have gone to New York & sets off to find her, he contacts detective Tom Malone (Lawrence Tierney) & asks around at various strip bars. By an even more amazing chain of coincidences Ryan becomes aware of Richard & sets out to stop him & gain some revenge...
Produced & directed by Joseph Zito I thought Bloodrage was a little bit too dull & slow for my liking. The script by Robert Jahn is poorly paced as it starts out very well with the brutal murder of Beverly but then goes into a real lull for an absolute age from which it never really recovers. The character of Richard is a problem, he never interacts with anyone at any point in the film as a normal person except his neighbour Candice & even then it's hardly a normal relationship. We know virtually nothing about him when Bloodrage starts & more or less the same when it finishes, Richard is given a few monologues to try & give him some personality, background & motivation but they aren't overly effective or insightful. The script tries to paint Richard as a normal everyday person living a dull 9 to 5 life in isolation, that's fine I suppose but it's not what I personally want to see in a film as most of us live that life anyway. Occasionally Richard decides to take out his pent up frustrations out on women & he justifies his actions by the fact they are prostitutes & strippers. The coincidences which lead Ryan to both New York & Richard are rather far fetched, Bloodrage ends very abruptly as well. This is a film which concentrates on set up so don't expect a high body count, in fact Richard only kills three people during the film, & one dog. There's not much blood or gore, the slit throat by broken glass is quite nasty but the other two are strangulations & contain no blood even though they are surprisingly brutal & cold. Technically Bloodrage is generally fine throughout even if it isn't going to win any awards, the acting was surprisingly strong & the seedy late 70's New York Times Square locations really add to the unsettling atmosphere, it's just a shame the film plods along at such a slow pace. Even at a relatively short 77 minutes I won't be watching Bloodrage again anytime soon that's for sure, having said that I didn't think it was a complete waste of time just a somewhat misguided attempt at a serious portrait of the beginnings of a serial killer. Unfortunately I can't recommend Bloodrage to anyone as it's just too slow, dull & ultimately provides little in the way of entertainment value but it isn't without one or two merits.
Produced & directed by Joseph Zito I thought Bloodrage was a little bit too dull & slow for my liking. The script by Robert Jahn is poorly paced as it starts out very well with the brutal murder of Beverly but then goes into a real lull for an absolute age from which it never really recovers. The character of Richard is a problem, he never interacts with anyone at any point in the film as a normal person except his neighbour Candice & even then it's hardly a normal relationship. We know virtually nothing about him when Bloodrage starts & more or less the same when it finishes, Richard is given a few monologues to try & give him some personality, background & motivation but they aren't overly effective or insightful. The script tries to paint Richard as a normal everyday person living a dull 9 to 5 life in isolation, that's fine I suppose but it's not what I personally want to see in a film as most of us live that life anyway. Occasionally Richard decides to take out his pent up frustrations out on women & he justifies his actions by the fact they are prostitutes & strippers. The coincidences which lead Ryan to both New York & Richard are rather far fetched, Bloodrage ends very abruptly as well. This is a film which concentrates on set up so don't expect a high body count, in fact Richard only kills three people during the film, & one dog. There's not much blood or gore, the slit throat by broken glass is quite nasty but the other two are strangulations & contain no blood even though they are surprisingly brutal & cold. Technically Bloodrage is generally fine throughout even if it isn't going to win any awards, the acting was surprisingly strong & the seedy late 70's New York Times Square locations really add to the unsettling atmosphere, it's just a shame the film plods along at such a slow pace. Even at a relatively short 77 minutes I won't be watching Bloodrage again anytime soon that's for sure, having said that I didn't think it was a complete waste of time just a somewhat misguided attempt at a serious portrait of the beginnings of a serial killer. Unfortunately I can't recommend Bloodrage to anyone as it's just too slow, dull & ultimately provides little in the way of entertainment value but it isn't without one or two merits.