J.M. catches his wife in bed with another man and, in a moment of rage, kills her with a baseball bat. Shocked by his own actions, he cleans up the blood, prepares her body for disposal and… well, he can’t bring himself to get rid of her. J.M. is still in love with her, so he packs up her body and heads out to the farm where they were married. And once there, he feels pursued, cornered – whatever it is, he’s not alone. And the accidental corpses continue to pile up.
Like his previous effort, “Ghost of the Needle”, director Avenet-Bradley proves that he knows his way around a psyche and can produce a quirky, off-beat script that delivers suspense over gore. Also like “Ghost of the Needle”, “Cold Blood” isn’t always successful (J.M. is a bit too casual transporting his wife’s body at times, and her dead weight seems to fluctuate from scene to scene), but it never once gets boring (and it’s rarely predictable), it has a positively killer ending, however, no pun intended. Most of the time, you’re sitting wondering where it’s going to go next. The acting is excellent, particularly Walker as J.M., the sympathetic passion-killer
Avenet-Bradley has a love for the genre that is evident, and doesn’t seem to be afraid to craft a story that makes the audience think. Unlike Hollywood auteurs who take viewer-idiocy as a given. This is the kind of movie that was made for horror fans, not the poseurs who clamor for remakes and sequels.
The Heretic Films DVD is another collector’s dream, coming packed with a director commentary, deleted scenes, a decent-lengthed “making of, deleted scenes, “the songs behind the story” and 6 hidden easter eggs. Pick it up and give it a shot!
