Blood Trails

Dave Murray of Arrow in the Head gave Blood Trails a 1/4, and wrote, "Now, talk about your wasted potential! What could have been a grueling and bloody slasher flick was ruined by poor performances, shoddy editing and a piss poor narrative that dragged the whole film to the bottom of a mountain stream" and "It was uninspired and mostly boring, with no direction, no tension and a lack of any relevance to the subgenre it tries to emulate. Let's face it. The world's first bicycle slasher flick is a lame duck."^[1] Dread Central's Mike Phalin was similarly critical of the film, which he referred to as "shitty" and "empty and soulless" before giving it a 1½ out of 5.^[2] The same grade was given in a review written for Hysteria Lives! by Justin Kerswell, who noted that Blood Trails suffered from "A paper thin plot, uninvolving characters, epileptic camerawork, a migraine inducing soundtrack, a surprise free 'climax' and a vein of head-slapping stupidity the size of the Grand Canyon".^[3]

A 2/5 was awarded by Scott Weinberg of DVD Talk, who opined that "The flick feels like it wants to be a stark, dark and female-empowered shocker like High Tension, yet it fails on nearly every count. The killer is silly, the victims are stupid, the heroine is kind of a nut, and the biking starts to get on your nerves after a while. It's like a Schwinn promotional video that somehow got turned into a half-baked slasher turkey".^[4] The film received a positive critique from DVD Verdict's David Johnson, who found Blood Trails to be "a well-done little movie" overall, opening his review with, "I was pleasantly surprised by this effective little suspense thriller. You can number the cast on one hand and the plot is as simple as it gets, but director Robert Krause has forged a well-executed, lean, mean stalker that is bolstered by strong performances and a jet-like pacing and some beautiful photography".^[5]

• Official website
• Blood Trails at IMDb