Writer-director Savvas D. Michael‘s Red Rage is what might result if Panos Cosmatos, director of the recent acid trip, Mandy, had decided to make a Tarantino-inspired Western. This weird-out of a movie is awash in rich colors and smoky atmospherics. Couple that with the outsized performances by a uniformly excellent cast channeling lunatic characters, and you have entertainment that sure is peculiar but never, ever boring.
A drought, we learn, has hit Covet County. It, however, isn’t due to a water shortage but to a scarcity of the highly addictive designer drug, Red Devil. Drugs are bad, but Red Devil is downright nefarious. Withdrawal from this demonic dope transforms a user into a writhing, screaming, and borderline convulsive mess of a human. Just ask Covet County’s resident junkie, Riley (Jamie Crew).
“…a scarcity of the highly addictive designer drug, Red Devil.”
As Riley wanders about Covet County on the perpetual search for his next high and shooting anyone who won’t give him a taste, suave Oscar (Jack Turner) and his sexually voracious and hot-tempered wife, Ella (Fernanda Diniz), are on a mission from God to rid the world of this scourge on humanity and at the same time rescue Oscar’s younger brother from the grip of Red Devil. Such is their fearsome reputation that the two are thought by many to be urban legends.
As Oscar and Ella go about their work demanding caches of Red Devil from dealers at gunpoint, lonely loser pot dealer, Hugo (Ian Reddington), keeps Covet County high on his premium bud, a hybrid concoction he calls Triple Cream Dream. Desperate for companionship, Hugo is ecstatic when his friend Gabriel (Matt Lapinskas) shows up at his pad to hang out.
"…the kind of movie where everyone does everything at gunpoint..."
I thought Hugo was played by the Q-Anon shaman, my bad.