







Dir. J. Christian Ingvordsen, Danny Kuchuck





Mark Trex has no chill. But you can’t really blame him. You’d have no chill either if you were a convicted serial killer, recently escaped after spending 10 years in prison and on a quest to open a gateway to Hell by murdering the members of the death metal band you loved when you were a kid. Or something like that. He also has frequent hallucinations in which he’s attired in a loin cloth and battling a sword-and-sandal demon knight to the death. So Mark Trex really doesn’t have anything to be chill about. He’s the villain of Blue Vengeance, and he’s a shining star.





Essentially a police procedural with slasher elements, the story is pretty standard fare; maniac escapes from prison to continue his reign of terror and the cop who put him away the first time has to track him down again and take him out for good. But it’s the weird details that makes Blue Vengeance stand apart and in particular, Trex’s over the top character. He’s wild, illogical, seemingly killing just for the hell of it. After offing two men while hitchhiking home to NYC (nobody seems to pay any mind to his blood-stained white t-shirt) he returns to his mother’s apartment where he argues with her and then goes to his room to blast music and shred guitar like a pissed off 16 year old - the age he was when he was first captured 10 year prior. He also has a cache of medieval weaponry intended for his main targets: Warriors of the Inferno, a satan-centric metal band that has broken up since Trex’s incarceration, signifying a betrayal in his eyes. How Trex is able to get close enough to anyone to kill them is a mystery as everything about his physical presence screams “I’m going to murder you”.





As Trex leaves a bloody path through the underground music scene, the only one on his trail is his nemesis, our much less interesting protagonist, Officer Mickey McCardle (played by the film’s director). McCardle accidentally shot and killed his partner in a strobe-lit house of mirrors built by Trex before subduing the killer (don’t watch this movie is you have photosensitive epilepsy btw), so he’s take it upon himself to get Trex once again. This is a problem because a). he’s not a homicide detective, and b). Trex has successfully faked his death via car fire, so McCardle’s the only one who still believes he’s out there. He teams up with Tiffany, a photographer who frequents the club owned by one of Trex’s victims. Their investigation is mostly unexciting to watch, except for when McCardle beats up Tiffany’s drug dealer and just kinda leaves him lying in the street. The position of the drug dealer on the ground and the way he’s framed as McCardle and Tiffany walk off is just amusing to me. There’s also a great bit where Tiffany rescues McCardle from police custody (due to a frame job by Trex) by holding two cops up with a toy Uzi spray-painted black. But again, McCardle and Tiffany’s screentime doesn’t amount to much entertainment before they finally come face to face with Trex, but it sure is worth the wait. In the final act, there’s a cartoonish chase scene across the Brooklyn Bridge involving McCardle getting trapped in a net and Tiffany chasing Trex on a bicycle she’s stolen from a hapless extra, a fight in an abandoned industrial warehouse with more medieval fantasy hallucinations, and the piece de resistance; a jousting match between Trex astride a motorcycle and McCardle astride the same stolen bicycle, which is as gloriously silly and awesome as it sounds.



