Ah, the 80's...big hair, twelve step programs, bad slasher films..."Blood Frenzy" features all three, in a way that is at least mildly interesting. The central plot device involves a therapy group cavorting around Death Valley for a weekend "away from it all" in the 110 degree sun! Just as they are settling into their weekend digs (the whole thing would fall apart as a premise now because of cell phones) , the slicing and dicing starts. Of course, the van they came in has been sabotaged, so they have to figure out how to get away from the crazed killer, while dealing with their own psychological problems. This film is quite similar to the far better "The Hills Have Eyes". The dialog is sometimes laughably bad (the last line of the movie is "It's over"...) and the acting rarely gets to a level above your average student film. That said, there is something almost endearing about "Blood Frenzy", maybe in the way it encapsulates the first wave of Straight-To-Video movies, when local Mom and Pop stores were filled to the brim with cheap, knocked off junk like this. No one is ever going to do a delux DVD remaster of "Blood Frenzy", and even at a distance of 15 years it seems almost as quaint and dated as a 1950's low budget drive-in movie. To me, this is part of its off-the-wall charm, but if anyone actually wants to watch an atmospheric horror flick...avoid this title!I gave this movie a rating of **** , largely for personal nostalgia for this kind of stuff, but the actual rating in any sort of objective sense would really be a * or at best a **! Enjoy!
