That’s Not Cranberry Sauce: 1980s Slasher ‘Blood Rage’ Remains a Thanksgiving Highlight

When it comes to Thanksgiving Horror, the 1980s slasher movie Blood Rage has emerged as the reigning holiday champion for many fans. To be fair, the pickings are slim – Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving is the most recent example – but this slasher is cut from the same charming cloth as the likes of Pieces and The Mutilator.

In other words, it delivers on both wackiness and gore.

Originally filmed in 1983, Blood Rage (also known as Slasher) didn’t get released until 1987, and that was a heavily edited version under the title Nightmare at Shadow Woods. It wasn’t until the film hit VHS that the gore was restored, though it still remained a rather obscure title until Arrow Video’s Blu-ray release pushed the slasher into the spotlight back in 2015.

What is Blood Rage about, you ask?

As kids, twins Todd and Terry get bored at a drive-in theater while mom Maddy Simmons (Louise Lasser) is getting frisky in the car with her date. Terry stumbles across another couple having sex in their car and takes a hatchet to the poor guy’s face. Before the crowd gathers, he puts the weapon in his brother’s hand and lets him take the fall.

Poor Todd spends the next 10 years in an asylum… until he breaks free on Thanksgiving, of course. It’s the perfect excuse for Terry to unleash his inner homicidal maniac, and Thanksgiving becomes one brutal bloodbath in the neighborhood of Shadow Woods.

Thanksgiving may not be quite as prominently featured during Todd’s murder spree, but the film does nail the theme of family. Family driving you nuts during the holidays, specifically.

Both played by Mark Soper, Todd and Terry are understandably strange having been raised by Maddy. Lasser was a well-known television and soap opera actress, and she imbues Maddy with an over-the-top eccentric naivety. Inexplicably, she’s all but shunned Todd, and wholeheartedly believes her angelic Terry could do no wrong. It results in a tragic but quite humorous ending.

That the often-laughable dialogue is pretty silly only furthers the quirkiness of the Simmons family. Terry has a penchant for uttering the line, “It’s not cranberry sauce,” whenever blood is spilled, and it’s so silly that it works. The line has become iconic in its own right.

Of course, what really makes Blood Rage so fun is the gore. The special makeup effects were created and executed by Ed French (Creepshow 2, C.H.U.D., Terminator 2: Judgment Day), who also played the role of Bill. French injected a brutal sense of realism to the kills, catching you off guard from the opening scene’s hatchet to the face. When Terry decides to off mom’s new fiancé, it starts off with a not-so-plausible machete to the hand that ends in a gnarly splitting of the head, with oozing grey matter spilling out. Nearly all of the deaths are inventive and gory thanks to French’s work, which brings the realistic carnage to an otherwise silly movie.

Though Terry’s affinity for cranberry sauce has become the tagline and mantra of Blood Rage, this 1987 slasher gem can really be summed up with another cheesy line: “The turkey was perfect!” The film is one big turkey at the end of the day, and I mean that as a compliment.

Blood Rage is a Thanksgiving slasher that serves up a reminder to give thanks to boutique Blu-ray distributors like Arrow Films who unearth these forgotten gems. And thanks to artists like Ed French who deliver glorious gore that’s anything but cranberry sauce.

You can currently rent/purchase Blood Rage via Fandango at Home for $2.99.

Editor’s Note: A version of this article was published on November 22, 2018.

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