Primal rage (1988)

Sam Nash and Frank Duffy are two schoolreporters on a Florida university. Sam, having tasted the glory of investigative journalism, is looking for the ultimate scoop, something that will propel him into stardom and a job at a real newspaper. Frank, on the other hand, is a more laid back type of guy who likes to smoke weed and party. One day Sam rescues two young girls from a trio of perverts who likes daterape and attraction is instant between him and one of the girls, Laureen. Her roommate, Debbie, has a lot of baggage of her own since returning to school after some time passed after an abortion. Sam introduces her to Frank and what do you know, another couple is slowly formed. Life is a bit better now for the young people in love. That is, until Frank is bitten by a baboon infected with a rage virus invented by Bo Friggin Svensson. Umberto Lenzi wrote this, you know.

So the first half of this movie is your basic teen movie, and a fairly dull one too. Not really bad, just boring. The actors are ok, but Patrik Lowes (Sam Nash) fake shiny teeth are pretty obvious and most annoying. When the mad baboon enters the picture, things get somewhat better and it turns into a fun little cheeseflick towards the end when the three daterapists are infected and go around killing people while dressed as Death with red blinking eyes. There is quite a lot of violence from time to time but for some reason the kills seems to miss that lovely red stuff that we like. Like they forgot it or something. One scene is even edited to hell, when a guy gets a spear through his jaw and out the top of his head. I own the italian dvd, could it be cut? Anyway, this is a Rambaldi family affair with Carlo on sfx, his son Vittorio on direction and son number two, Alex on make up. Vittorio does a decent job, it's just that the first half is so pedestrian that you might have a problem getting to a point where it gets interesting. The last half makes it somewhat worth the wait though. It could have been more gory, but it is decent entertainment. Add a Claudio Simonetti score and a really cheezy 80s popsong that is repeated several times during the movie and we have ourselves a decent little timewaster that works just fine if you are a fan of italian horrormovies from the eighties.