Bloodrage (1979)

Early on I had relatively high hopes of "Bloodrage" shaping out to be a pretty gritty serial killer joint, but as time wore on I was more let down by how slow and light on kills it was. Looks like Joseph Zito (credited here as Joseph Bigwood - who should've made this a porno with a pseudonym like that) didn't quite hit his stride until a few years later with "The Prowler" and then "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter".

A sexually embittered young man kills a part-time country prostitute and, after disposing of her body where he's convinced it'll never be found, he moves out to the mean streets of '70s New York where we hear through some very inconsistent inner voice-over monologue that he can continue to kill, undetected, in these dense, scummy urban streets. Meanwhile, a local rural cop and longtime 'john' of the dead hooker goes looking through NYC for her whereabouts, having prior knowledge that she planned on stripping there as the boyish killer goes on angrily murdering young women.

What few kills there were happened to be fairly mean and misogynistic and there's a decent amount of female nudity to keep things rolling along. Also, Lawrence Tierney has a small, random part as an expectedly gruff cop and I really dig anything set in this era of sleazy shithole New York to some degree. Aside from these moderate 'perks', "Bloodrage" is still pretty dull and the 'action' (kills) were too few and far between for my liking. I DID, however, crack up at this things' totally out-of-nowhere and abrupt ending. Kudos for that! Still doesn't make the overall movie worth one's time, hate to say.