Bloodrage

A title like "Bloodrage" is enough to catch the attention of any horror fan, the cover is also promising but the movie itself isn't that good. Ian Scott plays a violent young man that is about to snap at any moment, the event that leads to that is a encounter with a prostitute that went sour. When she asked him for money and threaten to call his mother, he lost it and unveiled his more basic violent instincts. To escape the police he moved to New York, checking in a motel. Soon he started to feel the pressure of the big city, full of things that deeply bothered him. First in that list, the prostitutes, which he'll hunt down one by one until he meets one that will give him a run for his money. Not only he has to deal with the city life but also the small town cop that came to New York trying to find the person responsible for the death of the first prostitute. Who will get to him first?

The movie's plot is simple, nothing wrong with that if it was well executed, in my opinion it wasn't. It's rather slow-paced. Only in the first murder we see any blood, not enough for a movie called "Bloodrage". The characters aren't developed enough to make them interesting, their actions don't make much sense. Ian Scott reminded me of Ted Raimi, specifically in "Skinner", they kind of look alike.

Set in the seedy, grimy, rubbish-strewn streets of New York, home to pimps, strippers, hos, junkies and violent criminals, Joseph Zito's psycho thriller Bloodrage draws inspiration from Scorsese's Taxi Driver whilst sitting comfortably alongside other gritty horrors of the same era such as Maniac, The Toolbox Murders and Don't Answer The Phone.

The film sets the grim tone quickly with the grisly murder of prostitute Beverly (Judith-Marie Bergan) by young nut-job Richie (Ian Scott), who kills the woman when she threatens to tell his mother that he visited her without any money. The hooker's head goes through a window pane, her throat gashed on the broken glass. Richie mops up the mess, buries the body and hot-foots it to the big apple, where he continues to be upset by women who don't live up to his expectations. Needless to say, they don't stay alive for long. Meanwhile, cop Ryan (James Johnson) is looking for Beverly, his search leading him closer and closer to Richie.

Employing a Taxi Driver style inner monologue to let us inside the head of the misogynistic killer, this somewhat derivative study of a psychopath is helped by a convincing central performance from Scott. Richie's treatment of his victims is cold and brutal, with one victim tortured in her bath-tub before being strangled with her phone cord. Richie even goes so far as to break the neck of a neighbour's dog, before doing the same to its owner. He also likes to spend time watching the hooker in the next building as she entertains a series of 'johns'. This allows for Zito to squeeze some full frontal nudity into a film that is already full to the brim with sleaze.

It is fair to say that the plot offers nothing new to the genre, and that the pace is rather sluggish at times, but the run-time is fairly short, so boredom shouldn't be a problem. Zito would go on to make slasher Rosemary's Killer (AKA The Prowler) and Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter, and while I wouldn't say that Bloodrage is quite as good or as gory (the title is misleading: there's not a great deal of blood) as either of those, it should pass the time nicely enough for those who appreciate sordid exploitative trash from the early-'80s.

5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for the final scene, in which Ryan finally gets his hands on the sicko who killed Beverly - it's hilarious!

"Bloodrage" tells the story of Richie,a withdrawn young man with the penchant for murdering hookers.He kills Beverly,a small-town prostitute and after concealing his crime goes to New York.As his killing spree continues Richard becomes more and more fascinated with a prostitute who lives across the alley.He watches her undress through the window and we hear his innermost thoughts via voice-over monologues."Bloodrage" oozes sleaze and misogyny.The seedy atmosphere of 70's New York is well-captured with its peeling-wallpaper interiors and dirty alleys.The murder scenes are quite brutal and there is plenty of full-frontal female nudity.If you enjoyed "Maniac" or "Don't Go in the House" give this grimy slice of psycho cinema a look.7 out of 10.

Bloodrage is not a great film. It's also not so-bad-it's-good. It's simply watchable and decently fun. Despite the lack of gore, the film is very gritty. You can almost smell the New York bars and apartment halls. Exploitation fans should find the amount of violence that is present thrilling enough, even if it's not overly explicit. There's a ton of nudity, so that box is checked if that's your thing. Overall, Bloodrage is a good watch if you go into it knowing what you're going to get. What you get is a simple plot about a guy who kills hookers and his further descent into madness. The sparse plot is very lean and tight. The acting is pretty darn good overall with the exception of a few characters.

What a grimy, filthy and bleak film this is! "Bloodrage" is one of those glorious New York City movies, filmed when the place was literally crawling with hookers, pimps, junkies and every kind of deviant freak that can be imagined. Working as both an incredible documentation of a vanished New York in it's "Golden Age" as well as an utterly fascinating character study of a truly sick, soulless maniac. Ryan is a baby faced, average looking young guy, but with this palpable hatred for women...not all women of course. One of the reasons why this sick little film works so well is that it's perhaps the ONLY movie of it's kind that forces the viewer to seriously relate to the psychopath. Although the guy is a complete scumbag, the women in this film, and I mean EVERY woman, is portrayed as money grubbing, dishonest. Not once did I feel sorry for any of the females that got murdered here, because they were all so horrible. And that is how this clever movie gets under the skin. It feels downright creepy to catch yourself relating to a serial killer, but "Bloodrage" forces the viewer into this guy's mindset by making you see women the way he does. Wow. It's as politically incorrect as the worst of these 70's films, and it literally bleeds atmosphere from it's filthy pores. Why on Earth "Bloodrage" isn't available on Blu Ray, or even dvd is an absolute mystery to me, as is this ridiculously low score here. Do people just not GET what director Joseph Zito (of The Prowler fame) who goes under the funny pseudonym Joseph 'Bigwood' has succeeded in doing with this one? For a title like "Bloodrage" it isn't extremely bloody, as the violence here is more of the psychological kind. It does make up for the lack of gore by splashing a healthy amount of T&A on screen (actually nothing about this is "healthy), as "Bloodrage" is based in a World of hyper-sexuality. I urge fans of this genre to seek this movie out and witness some truly beautiful 42nd Street grime. And I urge some Blu Ray distributor like 'Vinegar Syndrome' to please restore "Bloodrage" to it's original pristine version. It is so deserving.