Blood Massacre (USA, 1987) 73 min color DIR-EDITOR: Don Dohler. SCR-PROD: Barry Gold, Dan Buehl, Don Dohler. MUSIC: Daniel Linck. CAST: George Stover, Robin London, James DiAngelo, Thomas Humes, Lisa DeFuso, Richard Ruxton, Don Leifert, Lucille Joile, Grace Stahl.
This solid suspense film is perhaps best described as In Cold Blood Meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: a morally ambiguous fable that is less about the good guys versus the bad guys, than a game of survival between two evil parties. A gang of thieves, with the psychotic Rizzo (George Stover), who kills a waitress in the opening, and his cohorts, Jimmy (James DiAngelo) Monica (Lisa DeFuso) and Pauly (Thomas Humes), rob a video store, and then make a getaway in a car that runs out of gas. They carjack Elizabeth Parker (Robin London) at gunpoint, and force her to drive them to her nearby home. The crooks meet their match, as they accidentally wind up with the Cleaver Family From Hell. Of course, we suspected something was up, when after the Parker family takes in another boarder, Bonnie (Lucille Joile), we learn that they always seem to have a room for rent…
The first third of the picture is a murky, grimy affair, as we witness the thieves at work. Then this shifts to dark comedy right around the time we see blood splatter on an Endless Love poster in the video store robbery. Interestingly, when the crooks arrive at the Parker home, the family doesn’t appear to feel threatened by them. Mom (Anne Frith) is more concerned about her aerobics-loving daughter Chrissy (Grace Stahl) helping with dinner, and since Dad is played by Richard Ruxton (in a performance matching his high comedy in Galaxy Invader), this assuredly becomes an engaging farce. In many of Dohler’s films, the squeaky-clean suburban Maryland milieu is depicted in outrageously cartoon extremes.
Then the film shifts gears again when we see perhaps the most infamous scene in Dohler’s work. Rizzo is sent to keep an eye on Elizabeth while she showers, and then she comes onto him; they kiss while smearing blood over each other from self-inflicted wounds. This moment isn’t so much disturbing as kinky, but it sets the tone for the remainder of the picture. It becomes more apparent than ever that the robbers have no idea what kind of family they’re dealing with. This becomes an extremely bloody affair, as the Parkers exact their violence (which is more out of, um, appetite than revenge), topped with a real “huh” of an climax, when the surviving Parkers pull their skin off to reveal that they’re aliens or something, and we are left with an open ending to show how the evil continues.
Blood Massacre is definitely of its time, with its blue gels, overexposed backgrounds and dry ice. It is truly the odd-picture-out of Don Dohler’s filmography. Not only is it stylistically different from all of his other works, it also has the most bizarre production history: that is, more than the usual problems associated with low-budget filmmaking.
Don Dohler began shooting this sordid tale on video, and the backer was so impressed with the footage that he had the director redo the project on film. After shooting, he assembled a rough cut and submitted it as a preview to his investor, who then disappeared with the footage. And then the film trickled out on video in 1991, in the very rough cut that Dohler had handed in a few years back, with the bizarre ending still incomplete. It is unfortunate that we can only view Blood Massacre in such an unfinished state. However, the jagged cuts, blotchy colour and sometimes primitive sound design (they had lost the soundtrack for the video store robbery scene) add to the feel. Such a film about depraved people shouldn’t look pristine. Massacre Video recently included this film as an Easter egg on its Blu-ray for Fiend. My review copy comes from a DVD four-pack of obscure horror films. Dohler sort of vindicated himself by remaking this as Harvesters.
Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #22, “Cheap Horror Movies …and Why We Love Them”.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.