Blood Frenzy

Supremely annoying characters are driving through the desert, when their van breaks down, only to be set upon by an unseen killer.

As in the vastly superior 1977 film, The Hills Have Eyes, the desert location gives a creepy atmosphere to the proceedings, but the characters are all so very annoying, and the gore effects are all so underwhelming they aren't worth waiting for.

Directed by hardcore pornographic filmmaker Hal Freeman, and allegedly based on a script by Ray Dennis Steckler , pointlessly​ titled " Warning - No Trespassing " , which was rewritten by Freeman's frequent collaborator, Ted Newsom, this will, at least, answer anyone's questions about why Wednesday Addams didn't continue acting.

A female psychotherapist and her small group of emotionally troubled patients trek into the middle of the desert(where it's free to film a movie) for some solitude, and a bit of therapeutic soul-purging and brain-picking. Once settled at their destination, members of the group begin to disappear, leaving the others to nervously unravel the mystery while eyeing each-other suspiciously.

A fairly pissant little production, BLOOD FRENZY isn't exactly a marvel of filmmaking genius, but there are scores of truly wretched titles from the slasher canon which make it at least seem somewhat more substantial than it actually is. Formulaic, featureless, and for the most part watchable, this is a nondescript film which serves up the barest meat-and-potatoes provisions and makes zero attempt to distinguish itself with fresh ideas or impressive showmanship.

BLOOD FRENZY should manage to appease most undemanding slash-cinema enthusiasts, but mostly in a tap-water flavored sort of way. 4/10

Ah, the 80's...big hair, twelve step programs, bad slasher films..."Blood Frenzy" features all three, in a way that is at least mildly interesting. The central plot device involves a therapy group cavorting around Death Valley for a weekend "away from it all" in the 110 degree sun! Just as they are settling into their weekend digs (the whole thing would fall apart as a premise now because of cell phones) , the slicing and dicing starts. Of course, the van they came in has been sabotaged, so they have to figure out how to get away from the crazed killer, while dealing with their own psychological problems. This film is quite similar to the far better "The Hills Have Eyes". The dialog is sometimes laughably bad (the last line of the movie is "It's over"...) and the acting rarely gets to a level above your average student film. That said, there is something almost endearing about "Blood Frenzy", maybe in the way it encapsulates the first wave of Straight-To-Video movies, when local Mom and Pop stores were filled to the brim with cheap, knocked off junk like this. No one is ever going to do a delux DVD remaster of "Blood Frenzy", and even at a distance of 15 years it seems almost as quaint and dated as a 1950's low budget drive-in movie. To me, this is part of its off-the-wall charm, but if anyone actually wants to watch an atmospheric horror flick...avoid this title!I gave this movie a rating of **** , largely for personal nostalgia for this kind of stuff, but the actual rating in any sort of objective sense would really be a * or at best a **! Enjoy!

A four is generous. This is a mediocre low-budget slasher with poor gore effects (that it inexplicably dwells on, so you really have time to appreciate how unconvincingly rubbery that neck-slashing looks) and dumb characters. The premise is entertaining--a psychiatrist takes a group of patients out to the desert for presumably healing encounter-group-type work--but even by the usual know-nothing standards for such subjects, "Blood Frenzy" really botches it. The characters are all one-note caricatures of various conditions (nymphomania, alcoholism, frigidity, anger management, post- Vietnam PTSD, and what seems to be simply a case of "bitchy lesbian"), and it's ridiculous that anyone would think they could all be treated together. But OK, it's a slasher film, we're not here for realism.

The "name" actor here is Lisa Loring, who plays the lesbian, which in this kind of movie of course means she's a "man-hater" and puts the make on every woman in sight. (She also wears too much makeup that still seems to be perfectly fresh after a couple days' desert camping and various travails...but there I go, looking for realism again.) Hoo man, she is terrible. She starts out yelling and just gets hammier. The other actors are adequate given their silly roles and sometimes sillier dialogue.

You don't expect a lot from a movie like this, but it really does a poor job of building any suspense, delivering shocks, and other horror basics. By comparison "The Hills Have Eyes" is a masterpiece of complex plotting (among other virtues), if we're talking stuck-and-terrorized-in-the-desert movies in general. Why DID I give it a four? Well, you know--we'll all seen worse.

Nowadays it's hard to come by this movie. The copy I found is very bad, audio and footage were damaged (and I even think it was a fandub?) and it's all in all a trouble to find this movie and then additional trouble to watch it and more than 90% of people won't endure such trouble to watch this movie. But those who do (and I'm assuming those brave few will be hardcore fans of the horror genre) will find a nice little slasher that obviously had effort put into it. Characters are interesting enough to make the watching of a movie entertaining and the whole thing has a certain kind of atmosphere and charm. It's not scary or creepy, so don't go in expecting a hidden gem, but it's still entertaining if you can appreciate the effort. It's also worth noting that the director of the movie is Hal Freeman, and he was a porn director, so it's no wonder female characters are dressed in a bit revealing fashion, which serves as nice bit of eye candy. All in all, just for the chemistry between the characters and the obvious effort put into the movie, I give it 6/10, but I recommend it only to hardcore genre fans, because everybody else won't finding anything here that's worth their time and can safely regard the rating as it currently is, a 4/10...