Line #39 Film/BloodRage


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3	%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.
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6	[[quoteright:317:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/BloodRageNew_6711.jpg]]
7	[[caption-width-right:317:This cover more or less encapsulates the SlasherMovie genre perfectly.]]
8
9	->''"Identical twins with brutally different personalities!"''
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11	''Blood Rage'' is a 1987 SlasherMovie, which is also known as both ''Nightmare at Shadow Woods'' and ''Complex''.
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13	In 1974, while at a DriveInTheater with his mother Maddy, and his twin brother Todd, a young boy named Terry Simmons brutally murdered a fellow moviegoer and framed Todd for it. Traumatized by witnessing what his brother had done, Todd fell into a catatonic state and was placed in a mental institution, while Terry went on to live a normal life with their mother, even getting a girlfriend named Karen. Unfortunately for Terry, a decade after the murder, Todd starts to come out of his shell, and regains the memories of what really happened all those years ago; he subsequently manages to escape the asylum on Thanksgiving. This, coupled with Maddy's intention to marry her boyfriend Brad (who owns the sprawling apartment complex where they live) causes Terry to snap and go on a killing spree.
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15	The film has a bit of a convoluted history. While made in 1983, it was [[TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment shelved until 1987]], when a severely cut version of the film (dubbed ''Nightmare at Shadow Woods'') showed up in a few theaters, while that same year the original uncut version of the film was released on VHS by Prism Entertainment. Some seventeen years later, ''Nightmare at Shadow Woods'' was released to DVD by Legacy Entertainment. Arrow Video released the film on Blu-ray in 2015 with both cuts, plus a third version combining all the footage of both cuts.
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17	The film (the ''Blood Rage'' version, that is) is also known for being gory as Hell.
18	----
19	!! This film provides examples of the following tropes:
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21	* EightiesHair: All over the place. Even [[ExactlyExtyYearsAgo ten years]] ago in 1974!
22	* AMinorKidroduction: The main characters are both introduced as children ten years before the events of the story.
23	* AnArmAndALeg: Before slicing his head open, Terry cuts one of Brad's hands off.
24	* AutoErotica: It's a horror film that features a DriveInTheater, it's to be expected.
25	* AxCrazy: Terry upholds this in proud slasher tradition, even making his first kill with a little ax tool.
26	* BatterUp: After being told Todd is skulking around, Artie decides to look for him, arming himself with a baseball bat beforehand.
27	* BigEater: A lot of Maddy's solo scenes consist of her binge eating.
28	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Terry is killed, but Maddie chooses to kill herself rather than accept that her "beloved son" was the true murderer.]]
29	* BloodIsSquickerInWater: After hacking open Gregg's throat, Terry shoves him into a nearby pool. Terry himself later falls into the same pool after his mother unknowingly shoots him to death.
30	* [[BloodSplatteredInnocents Blood Spattered Innocent]]: Todd in the opening, when Terry smears some of his victim's blood on him.
31	* CainAndAbel: [[spoiler:Todd]] is the Abel, [[spoiler:Terry]] is the Cain. [[spoiler:Though in the end, Todd can't bring himself to kill Terry and Terry fails in his attempt to drown Todd]].
32	* CassandraTruth: No one believes [[spoiler:Todd]] when he tries to warn them about his psycho brother. The doctor has her suspicions, [[spoiler:but is killed before she can do anything]], and the little girl who listens only gets told there's "a bad man" about, with no mention of identity.
33	* CatScare: Dr. Berman's assistant, Jackie, steps on one while looking for Todd. Plus there's Andrea and Gregg pranking Karen and Artie by pretending to be dead and the killer, respectively.
34	* TheCavalryArrivesLate: Police sirens are heard approaching just after Terry and Maddy both die.
35	* ChaseScene: Terry chases Karen around the apartment complex several times.
36	* DeathByMocking: Andrea and Gregg jokingly rib Terry about his "crazy" brother. Terry does ''not'' take it well, [[spoiler:and later kills them both to boot]].
37	* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: Julie's only with Bill to secure a financial future for herself and her baby. Artie has a crush on Karen, who only sees him as the classic "like a brother to me" kind of friend. And Gregg is essentially a prototype for what would eventually become known as the gamer archetype. Hope you liked learning about these folks, because none of them survive!
38	* DidIMentionItsChristmas: It's only mentioned it's Thanksgiving once or twice.
39	* DisappearedDad: The father of the two twins is completely absent from the movie with no information at all about his identity or fate.
40	* DontGoInTheWoods: The apartment complex has a nature walk. It gets used.
41	* DramaticDrop: Terry, when his mother walks into the pool house after he corners Todd and Karen there.
42	* DriveInTheater: The setting for the first ten minutes of the movie. After that, there's a 10-year time skip to the present day.
43	* DrivenToSuicide: Maddy shoots herself after realizing she killed [[spoiler:Terry]], the son she really wanted. [[WildMassGuessing Maybe]].
44	* DudeNotFunny: Gregg gets called out for making jokes about having a welcome-home party for Terry's crazy brother and how he's just as crazy as the rest of the family.
45	* TheEighties: From the hair to the clothes to the music, the whole movie is a perfect encapsulation of the eighties decade in general and the slasher film genre as defined during that period.
46	* EnfantTerrible: Young [[spoiler:Terry]] in the prologue is still crazy enough to hack a moviegoer to death with an axe.
47	* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: Though in [[spoiler:Terry]]'s case, it's a distinctly Norman Bates kind of love.
48	* EvilTwin: Played with as no one can tell the film's two twins apart, not even their mother, even though they have subtly different hairstyles and completely different mannerisms.
49	* FanDisservice: Andrea and Gregg's sex scene is interrupted when Terry appears and hacks them both up.
50	* FanService: Julie's sexy negligee.
51	* FanServiceExtra: The first victim's girlfriend, who runs away gratuitously buck naked after her paramour gets an axe to the face.
52	* FightScene: A brief one between Todd and Terry, in a pool.
53	* FinalGirl:While Karen isn’t the only survivor she is the only female character to survive.
54	* ForkFencing: How Artie meets his end.
55	* ForTheEvulz: Most of Terry's victims are completely random, and are killed for no discernible reason.
56	* FreudianExcuse: Along with Todd escaping the asylum, Maddy announcing she is going to marry Brad also seemingly causes Terry to snap.
57	* GigglingVillain: [[spoiler:Terry]] might have Jason's prudish distaste for sex and love of machetes, but one thing he ''doesn't'' share with the more classic slasher is a silent stoicism. If anything, he's more like Chucky once he lets the mask slip.
58	* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Maddy, after being told it was actually [[spoiler:Terry]] she shot to death.
59	* {{Gorn}}: The uncut version is very gory. Averted in the Nightmare at Shadow Woods version, which excised much of the gore.
60	* GoryDiscretionShot: Maddy shoots herself in the head but her blood is shown splattered on the floor as the handgun falls from her grasp.
61	* GroinAttack: Karen briefly escapes Terry by hitting him in the balls with a phone.
62	* GrossUpCloseUp: Used for Brad's severed hand and mutilated head, and Terry yanking his machete out of the dead Julie's chest.
63	* [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe Half The Woman She Used To Be]]: Doctor Berman gets chopped in half by the killer after unwisely separating from her assistant and running off alone into the woods.
64	* HighPressureBlood: When Brad gets his hand cut off.
65	* HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday: It's probably the best Thanksgiving horror film out there.
66	* HystericalWoman: Maddy just goes completely to pieces when she hears that Todd has escaped the mental institution and spends much of the film hysterically shrieking at a telephone operator to connect her to her boyfriend, even though she could just walk across the complex to his office and save herself the histrionics at any time.
67	* IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace: Shadow Woods Apartments.
68	* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: Jackie gets a machete to the gut seconds after unwisely telling Terry that Dr. Berman suspects him of being the true killer.
69	* ImprobableInfantSurvival: While he kills her and her boyfriend, Terry leaves Julie's baby alone.
70	%%* ImpromptuTracheotomy: See directly below.
71	* ImprovisedWeapon: Terry stabs Artie in the throat with a big fork, and as mentioned above, Karen attacks Terry's nuts with a phone.
72	* {{Irony}}: Todd tells a little girl there's a bad man on the loose, and to go home and lock the door, and to not let anyone in, no matter what they say. When Karen later comes banging on the door while running from Terry, the girl refuses to let her in.
73	** When Brad gets his hand cut off, a preacher on the nearby radio says something to the effect of "an eye for an eye, and a hand for a hand".
74	* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler: After framing his twin brother Todd for a murder he committed as a child, it is satisfying to see Terry on the wrong side of Twin Magic as he gets shot by his mother, thinking he was Todd.]]
75	* LadyDrunk: As if being hysterical and delusional weren't enough reasons to make the audience dislike Maddy, she's also a lush.
76	* LastNameBasis: Artie almost exclusively refers to Terry as Simmons.
77	* LickingTheBlade: Done by Terry once or twice, usually when he's reusing the "It's not cranberry sauce!" line.
78	%%* MacheteMayhem: Terry's main weapon.
79	%%* MadeOfPlasticine
80	* MadnessMantra: By the end, Todd is reduced to yelling "I'm Todd!" while banging his head against a wall.
81	* MenacingStroll: Terry's highest level of speed.
82	* {{Manchild}}: [[spoiler:Both the Simmons brothers]], although in [[spoiler:Todd]]'s case it's a result of his trauma. [[spoiler:Terry]] is more of a PsychopathicManchild.
83	* NiceGuy: Despite having been framed for a murder he did not commit and spending 10 years in an asylum away from civilization, Todd, while socially awkward, is a good person. He even tells a little girl to go home and be safe when the killing spree begins.
84	%%* [[MrExposition Ms. Exposition]]: Doctor Berman.
85	* NewAgeRetroHippie: A horny one appears as a viewer at the drive-in at the start of the film.
86	* OffscreenTeleportation: Furthering the Jason parallels, [[spoiler:Terry]] does this several times while stalking his victims.
87	* OffWithHisHead: Bill gets his head lopped off and hung up with an extension cord to scare Julie.
88	* OnlyInFlorida: Sadly there are no "Florida Man" headlines since this movie predates the Florida Man meme.
89	* PeekABooCorpse: While fleeing from Terry, Karen stumbles across several bodies.
90	* PoolScene: The film's climax takes place in one. There's an earlier scene where Terry and his friends all hang out at said pool, but it's only on the censored ''Nightmare at Shadow Woods'' VHS version (which cuts the much more important hospital scene to make room for it).
91	* PsychopathicManchild: Interestingly, ''all'' the main characters can be said to be this. Maddy is an overgrown little girl in denial, [[spoiler:Terry]] is a bigger Chucky who just wants to "play" with his victims in the most violent ways possible, [[spoiler:Todd]] is stunted to the point where he tries to push one of the killer's victims back together, and Karen is a hysterical ninny.
92	%%* ReactionShot
93	* {{Recut}}: The extremely cut down ''Nightmare at Shadow Woods''.
94	* RuleOfThree: Terry cracks "It's not cranberry sauce..." in regards to his victims' blood at least three times.
95	* TheScourgeOfGod: Jackie gets killed shortly after deciding to take a marijuana break.
96	* ScreamingWoman: As Terry approaches her with his machete, Doctor Berman just stands there with her mouth hanging open.
97	* TheSeventies: The first ten minutes of the film take place in 1974, though most everybody is still dressed like it's the eighties anyway.
98	* SexSignalsDeath: Lots of it, also in proud slasher tradition. The first victim, Bill, is killed while having sex with his girlfriend Julie (who escapes by running away buck naked).
99	Later Andrea and Gregg also fall victim to [[spoiler:Terry]]'s Jason-esque prudishness.
100	* ShowerScene: Features both a male (Terry, washing blood off) example and a female (Andrea, washing off the makeup she wore to prank Karen and Artie) example.
101	* TheShrink: Doctor Berman, who is good enough at her job to draw out Todd's repressed memories yet somehow enough of an idiot not to call the police or at least not wander off by herself in classic slasher victim tradition.
102	* SingleParentsAreUndesirable: Between her parental favoritism, hysterics, and copious drinking, audiences will wonder what on Earth Brad sees in Maddy. She does keep a clean house at least?
103	* SlashedThroat: This is how [[spoiler:Gregg]] goes out.
104	%%* SoundOnlyDeath: Andrea's death.
105	* StraightEdgeEvil: Terry does not drink alcohol. Even during the Thanksgiving dinner, he does a toast with a glass of milk.
106	* StrugglingSingleMother: Maddy's struggle is with sanity more than it is with finance. She mostly seems successful in finding men to attach herself to and making ends meet in between.
107	* SuperStrength: [[spoiler:Terry]] has Jason levels of strength despite supposedly being an ordinary human teenager. He completely bisects one of his victims with a single axe swing.
108	* TakeThat: One of the film's taglines is "Not all the evil is on [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Elm Street]]..."
109	* ThanksgivingDayStory: Mostly so the killer can make repeated wisecracks about how "That's not cranberry sauce" as he kills his victims.
110	* ThemeTwinNaming: The film's twins both have names that started with T, Todd and Terry.
111	* TitleIn: 1974 - Jacksonville, Florida and Ten Years Later.
112	* TooDumbToLive: Naturally, given that it's a slasher film played straight.
113	** Jackie. Even though he knows a dangerous killer is out and about, he still feels like it's a good time to toke up, and when [[spoiler:Terry]] arrives he lets it slip that Dr. Berman suspects he might be the real killer.
114	** Dr. Berman. She has helped [[spoiler:Todd]] unearth his buried memories that strongly implicate his brother of being the true murderer, but she still goes to Shadow Woods with only a single assistant and doesn't bother to have anybody keep an eye on the brother she suspects to be the true murderer. Naturally said true murderer quickly comes after her, and instead of trying to shoot him she just screams like a ninny.
115	** Julie. After finding her boyfriend's severed head, she, instead of immediately running away with her baby, decides to grab a big coat and struggle to put it on. Also, no one bothers to call the police or hold up somewhere, even though they know there's a potentially dangerous killer lurking about.
116	* TheUnfavorite: Maddy prefers Terry to Todd. [[spoiler: She has lost her mind in the end to the extent that she shoots the killer thinking he is Todd and ends up shooting herself when she finds out it was Terry.]]
117	%%* UnluckyChildhoodFriend: Artie, to Karen.
118	* WordSaladTitle: This film has no fewer than four different titles. It was originally called ''Complex'' (like an apartment, not [[UsefulNotes/OedipusComplex Oedipal]], although with the way this film's killer acts you'd be forgiven for thinking so). The director renamed it to the much more generic and direct ''Slasher'', which was then changed to the film's most well-known title, ''Blood Rage''. Unsatisfied with just three titles, the film snuck one more in when it was renamed yet again to ''Nightmare in Shadow Woods'' for its VHS release.

Context Film / BloodRage