10 Monster Movies That Totally Screw With Your Brain
2. The Rage (2007)
Robert Kurtzman’s awesomely trashy madness fest from a decade or so ago stars Andrew Divoff as mad Russian scientist Dr. Vasilienko, who discovers a cure for cancer, but is framed and committed to a lunatic asylum by the pharmaceutical industry to prevent him from publishing it and ruining all their lovely cancer profiteering.
When he escapes, he’s genuinely loony… and determines to get his revenge the only way a mad scientist knows how: by inventing a zombie-creating rage virus and unleashing it upon the world unless they tell everyone how he defeated the big C.
Naturally enough, one of the test subjects breaks free - and when they die and are eaten by carrion birds, the vultures become mutated rage birds of doom, and begin attacking people and spreading the virus still further.
A group of kids (naturally enough, again) become the birds’ first victims, reaching sanctuary from the avian horrors in Vasilienko’s own bunker, which is where things get really weird.
We’re talking those insane mutant vultures, a murderous dwarf babbling nonsense while wearing the face of a little girl, zombie anal impalement (complete with flying CG sh*t), massive mutant leeches and of course the gratuitous killing of bright young things whose only crime is premarital sex and congenital stupidity.
It’s pretty much total raving lunacy from beginning to end, made on a clearly limited budget by a filmmaker who was having far too much fun to stop. I could probably put together some Freudian subtext or critical analysis, but why ruin it?