BLOOD FRENZY (1987) was a perfect Slasher Search suggestion from Mr. Majestyk. It’s exactly the type of movie I was digging through for years and I don’t know how I missed it, since it’s one of the remaining VHS tapes in the “Stalkers and Slashers” section at Scarecrow Video. My only guess is maybe I was scared off by the story credit for Ray Dennis Steckler. But also I really don’t know that guy’s movies so I maybe would’ve had to be mixing him up with Jim Wynorski or somebody.

Anyway I would classify it as a bad movie, but the type of bad movie that brings me comfort. It’s shot without any grace or sense of style, in a bland location, and most of the cast either read the lines like they’re not clear which word to emphasize in any given sentence, or like they’re a hungry community theater actor throwing their entire being into every squint or turn of the head. Each of their characters is introduced with one psychological condition that determines most of what they do in the movie. There’s not much thought of doing anything else with them.

The premise is that psychiatrist Barbara Shelley (Wendy MacDonald, WILD CACTUS) brings a disparate RV-load of patients out to camp in the desert near an abandoned mine as part of an unorthodox therapy method. Stan (John Clark, “Newscaster,” RAW DEAL) is a severe alcoholic who’s just allowed to drink throughout the trip. Rick (Tony Montero, 3 episodes of Falcon Crest) is a combat vet who open carries a big hunting knife and spends most of his time talking about Vietnam, occasionally doing things like yelling “Incoming!” and diving out of the way of imaginary bombs. Jean (Monica Silveria) is nice and timid and afraid of being touched. Dory (Lisa Loring, the original Wednesday Addams) is said to be a “bitter” lesbian; mostly she just acts bitchy. Cassie (Lisa Savage, “Michael’s Mistress,” BEACHES) is a nymphomaniac always getting turned on by everybody. And Dave (Hank Garrett, DEATH WISH)’s condition is that he’s just a total asshole who is belligerent to everyone, including openly laughing at Rick’s PTSD.

It’s a whodunit slasher. The opening shows a little girl (J’Aime Cohen) being terrorized by her drunk father (Carl Tignino) for annoying him by playing with her jack-in-the-box. The camera keeps awkwardly framing a tube on the floor shaped like an oversized Lifesavers roll, and then the father trips over it. While he’s down the kid slashes his throat (a well done, gruesome makeup effect) with a weirdly shaped trowel thing. The now blood-soaked jack-in-the-box will make a return – unfortunately the murder weapon and the murder Lifesavers thing will not. Still, great product placement for that company, I’m sure they got a huge boost from this, like Reese’s Pieces in E.T.

After that prologue, when we go on this camping trip, we know somebody’s gonna start killing the others. Barring some trickery, one of these four women must be the little girl and therefore the killer, right? I figured there were two possibilities that they would think would be surprising, and one of them they were immediately hinting about, so I was sure it was the other one. I was wrong! It was not the obvious candidate, I felt. (Okay, maybe it would’ve been obvious if SPOILER I knew who was the one somewhat known actor. I didn’t recognize her. After the reveal she has a fun time going mega.)

Most of the characters don’t know this has anything to do with a little girl and a jack-in-the-box, so when one patient turns up with his throat slit everybody suspects the confused combat vet who previously threatened him. Rick is the one who doesn’t like the doctor’s plan of just waiting around with the corpse, and tries to find help. They decide they should pair up and go in different directions, and no one could’ve predicted they would start finding each other dead one by one.

Of course the action eventually moves to the mine, and the jack in-the-box is there. You always want to bring a memento from your childhood trauma to your killings. At first I was a little bothered that WHO THE KILLER IS SPOILER the lesbian turned out to be the killer, but at least her liking girls doesn’t seem linked to her damage. It’s just something she enjoys that’s not as negative as slitting throats. I did like the twist that also her brother (who grew up to be a mindless henchman type) is there helping her. It’s a revenge plot against the doctor for locking him up when he was a kid (they thought he killed the dad).

Most things are wrong with this movie. The kills are all pretty much the same. The story is dumb. Nuance was banned from the set. But there’s a part where Rick supposedly dynamites himself and they just depict it by having him go off screen and then there’s a sound effect. It seems like it’s a cheat to avoid having to create an explosion, but it’s really that he’s faking his death to hunt the killer. The magic of cinema.

I read that it came from an old Steckler script called WARNING – NO TRESPASSING. Veteran porn director Hal Freeman (SEX RINK, STIFF MAGNOLIAS, and of course the long-running CAUGHT FROM BEHIND franchise) hired his regular screenwriter Ted Newsom to rewrite it so both could branch into mainstream, non-fuck movies. It did work for Newsom, who later scripted THE ALIEN WITHIN, TEENAGE EXORCIST, and genre movie documentaries including ED WOOD: A LOOK BACK IN ANGORA. I’ve actually seen that one!

Judging by BLOOD FRENZY, Freeman doesn’t have nearly as much personality as Ed Wood, but there is some charm to his brand of brain dead clunkiness. Not a huge amount, but some. I’ll take what I can get. Thanks for the tip, Majestyk.