Sunday Viewing:: Bloodrage (1979) Presented By Crafty Pants Carol

Today we have an especially special rarity thanks to our good pal Crafty Pants Carol! It's Bloodrage (1979) (not to be confused with that OTHER BLOOD RAGE from 1987). It's directed by JOSEPH ZITO, the underappreciated dude who brought us THE PROWLER and FRIDAY THE 13th PART 4: THE ALMOST ENDING. It's about a misanthropic ne'er-do-well who finds himself killing hookers so you might want to ask yourself, "Do I mind movies in which many prostitutes are killed?" before you watch it. Personally, I think hookers are fascinating and should not be murdered but I also take into account that the psychopath in this movie works at a YOO HOO bottling plant and I can't honestly say how my own brain would handle that. I might quit before I killed a hooker but who knows, maybe not. The most important thing is that this movie is filmed in New York in the late seventies and it's totally worth it for the seedy atmosphere and all the mesmerizing secondary characters that inhabit its raunchy halls. That reminds me, I'm sad to say a nice non-hooker doggy also gets killed which I wasn't happy about but thankfully a cute kitten poster is prominently displayed in many scenes to balance out that atrocity.

Also windows! So many creepy windows! At the risk of sounding like a peeping Tom, I think windows in movies are the coolest things ever because it's like a frame within a frame. While the viewer is watching the screen, the character is watching the window and its like some kooky mirror effect like you're trapped inside a M.C. ESCHER print on some stoner art student's dorm room wall. Anyway, I love this movie! It stinks on some level because it's partially ramshackle and clearly some important scenes were never filmed and we just have to deal with dialogue band-aids to hold the thing together but then again, it has a very convincing nihilistic flavor that would make it snuggly bedfellows with HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER , CANNIBAL MAN & THE KILLING KIND. I'm not proud to enjoy a movie with such a high dead hooker quotient (yeah, right) and yet I must acknowledge the fact that BLOOD RAGE is a success in expressing a completely horrific and dismal atmosphere and there's no better time or place to capture it than when and where it does. I'm also allowing it extra points for making me want a HEAVEN CAN WAIT poster because I don't even like that movie.