For the 1963 adventure film starring Robert Mitchum, see Rampage.

Rampage
File:Rampage ver2.jpg Promotional film poster
Directed by	William Friedkin
Produced by	William Friedkin David Salven
Screenplay by	William Friedkin
Based on	Novel: William P. Wood
Starring	Michael Biehn Alex McArthur Nicholas Campbell
Music by	Ennio Morricone
Cinematography	Robert D. Yeoman
Editing by	Jere Huggins
Distributed by	Miramax Films (USA)
Release date(s)	October 30, 1992
Running time	97 min
Country	USA
Language	English

Rampage is a 1987 movie directed by William Friedkin. It was filmed in Stockton, California in 1986 and received nationwide American release in 1992.

Synopsis[link]

Charles Reece (Alex McArthur) is a serial killer who commits a number of brutal mutilation-slayings in order to drink blood as a result of paranoid delusions.

Reece is soon captured. Most of the movie revolves around the trial and the prosecutor's attempts to have Reece found sane and given the death penalty. Defense lawyers, meanwhile, argue that the defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity.

The prosecutor, Anthony Fraser (Michael Biehn), was previously against capital punishment, but he seeks such a penalty in the face of Reece's brutal crimes after meeting one victim's grieving family.

In the end, Reece is found sane and given the death penalty, but Fraser's internal debate about capital punishment is rendered academic when Reece is found to be insane by a scanning of his brain for mental illness. In the ending of the original version of the film, Reese is found dead in his cell, having overdosed himself on antipsychotics he had been stockpiling. In the ending of the revised version, Reese is sent to a state mental hospital, and in a chilling coda, he sends a letter to a person whose wife and child he has killed, asking the man to come and visit him. A final title card reveals that Reece is scheduled for a parole hearing in six months.

Influences[link]

Charles Reece is loosely based on serial killer Richard Chase.^[1] The crimes that Reece commits are slightly different from Chase's, however; Reece kills three women, a man and a young boy, whereas Chase killed two men, two women (one of whom was pregnant), a young boy and a 22-month-old baby. Additionally, Reece escapes at one point - which Chase did not do - murdering two guards and later a priest. However, Reece and Chase similarly had a history of mental illness and an obsession with drinking blood. Like Reece, Chase was also sentenced to death, but he was found dead in his prison cell, an apparent suicide, before the sentence could be carried out.^[2]

Release[link]

Rampage was originally shot in 1987; it played at the Boston Film Festival in September of that year, and ran theatrically in some European countries in the late 1980s. Plans for the film's theatrical release in America were shelved when production studio DEG, the distributor of Rampage, went bankrupt. The film was unreleased in America for five years. Director William Friedkin re-edited the movie, and changed the ending (with Reece no longer committing suicide in jail) before its USA release in October 1992. The European video versions usually feature the film's original ending.

DVD release[link]

As of 2010, the film has been released on DVD only in Poland, by SPI International.

Soundtrack[link]

The film's score was composed by Ennio Morricone and was released on CD by Virgin Records.

External links[link]

• Rampage at the Internet Movie Database
• Rampage at AllRovi

Footnotes[link]

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