A proper old-school splatter movie, THE RAGE isn’t afraid of over-the-line bad taste shtick and revels in a delicious anything-goes approach that cheerfully riffs on everything from BLOODSUCKING FREAKS to 28 DAYS LATER. See! Kids being gruesomely killed! See! A deranged midget lament “I’m tired of screwing dead girls! I want a nice warm cooch!”. See! Andrew Divoff, vein throbbing prominently in forehead, slicing the ham thick and fatty as he convincingly enhances his bid to be this generation’s Next Best Thing to Vincent Price! Producer/cinematographer/director Robert Kurtzman, who helmed WISHMASTER, has made another fun fan boy gore flick.
Genius mad doctor Divoff – with suitably villainous accent – once had good intentions to cure the Big C but The System fucked him over and instead he decided to become a self-styled “liberating angel”. He wound up creating a genetic, infectious disease that he now plans to use in a bid to bring plague-like devastation to the capitalist world he hates so much. His experiments with this “Rage” mutagen result in one of his super-strong, deranged subjects breaking out of his lab. Cut to : a Winnebago full of E-dropping, sexually experimental hot young things – led by bisexual hottie Erin Brown, no less – attending a sub-Slipknot outdoor gig. Ah, come on, you can guess the rest.
THE RAGE doesn’t pretend to be big on originality. Kurtzman “borrows” from innumerable mad scientist flicks, takes key aspects from the 28 DAYS/WEEKS LATER movies and quotes various Cronenberg films as the fast-acting virus turns ordinary folk into homicidal loons. His debt to RE-ANIMATOR is openly acknowledged with some amusing shenanigans featuring a headless body and its still-active, talking noggin.
What THE RAGE does have is a spirited sense of fun. There’s an abundance of 80’s-style kiss-off lines like “Suck on this, motherfucker!”, some superb retro-splatter make-up effects, frenetic pacing and, best of all, a sequence in which a big-titted topless bimbo gets her eyeball plucked out and eaten after slasher-style sex in the middle of nowhere. In fact, this movie is so much fun in its enthusiasm to transcend its tiny budget that we can almost forgive the predictably dire CG explosions and some vastly over-used, cartoonish CG vultures that should have either been nixed or given a reduced role.
Brown, who has real scream-queen potential, is as cute and appealing as ever, and walks off with one show-stopping moment in which she calls the aforementioned evil midget a “fucking evil Oompa Loompa!”. (The scream needs work, though). Reggie Bannister is ironically cast as Uncle Ben, a mild-mannered family man (yep, there’s a goofy PHANTASM reference to accompany all the nods to THE BIRDS) who gets infected early on and breezily hacks up his own wholesome nephew. Divoff has a ball as he gropes Brown and asserts “I’m not a sadist” prior to slicing open a screaming victim’s skull with a scalpel. And that midget, usually seen wearing a blonde wig and someone else’s face, effortlessly steals the movie during a suitably OTT finale that showcases the defiantly delivered line “Pick on someone your own size, you half-pint transvestite freak!”.
There will probably be smarter, more original low budget straight-to-DVD horror flicks out this year, but THE RAGE – enhanced by The Midnight Syndicate’s full-blooded score – is going to be hard to beat on the level of pure entertainment.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
