In short: Blood Frenzy (1987)

Psychiatrist Dr Barbara Shelley (Wendy MacDonald) takes a van-load of incongruous patients out into the desert for a weekend of confrontational therapy. Clearly, putting a group of people whose psychological problems have nothing whatsoever to do with each other together in the desert will be extremely helpful for everyone’s mental health. Well, at least they’re bringing beer for the alcoholic, and the nymphomaniac has the opportunity for a lot of sex. That’s how psychiatry works in the real world, too, right?

This being a slasher movie and all, it’s (fortunately) not going to be all party all of the time, so someone really into their jack-in-the-box version of “Pop Goes the Weasel” is going to go on a bit of a killing spree, stranding the group without food or water (but with beer), for better killing.

Hal Freeman’s Blood Frenzy, as re-written by him from an initial script by Ray Dennis Steckler, is one of the more entertaining slasher movies from this phase of the genre. At least, it does have a degree of originality, won by using a different type of victim to your usual gang of teenagers. As you can imagine, the film’s interpretation of the mentally ill still manages to fit rather well into the types we know and love (ha!) from your less creative slashers. But given the general lack of creativity in the sub-genre, I take what little morsels of originality I can get.

As you can imagine, the portrayal of the mentally ill here is highly dubious, completely divorced from reality or actual psychiatry, and fleshed out by the semi-professional actors with great glee and little knowledge of the material. One could be offended if one wanted, but then, these idiots are only there to be murdered in alas relatively conventional ways anyway.

On the gore side, there’s little to write home about here, but I do like Freeman’s use of daylight and the desert quite a bit. On principle because that’s just not what you use in a slasher by convention (even though Halloween has some cracking daylight sequences), but also on account of the good handful of scenes when the director squeezes moments of actual mood and tension in between the indifferent knifings and the mugging.


In fact, there’s more than enough of that to turn Blood Frenzy into something of a minor recommendation among films from the dying phase of the first great slasher wave. Obviously, if you don’t like the cheap and seedy parts of this invariably cheap and seedy horror sub-genre at all, this is not going to change your mind.