Lisa, Lisa

mostly accurate

Lisa, Lisa
aka Axe
aka The Virgin Slaughter
aka California Axe Massacre
Director: Frederick R. Friedel
Released: 1977 (filmed 1974)
Starring: Leslie Lee, Jack Canon, Frederick R. Friedel, Ray Green, Douglas Powers
Running time: 65 min
Genre: exploitation, horror, rape & revenge

Get me a glass of water, then drink it yourself, it’ll give you something to do. Dusk. A slim girl in the distance (It’s totally Lisa!) walks swiftly across a lawn and enters a creepy-looking, rural farmhouse with a big scary tree in front of it.

Later that evening, in the big bad city, three graduates (or possibly drop-outs) of the Tarantino Academy of Criminality are powerwalking through the lobby of an apartment building in their best business/crime suits. Feet. Feet. Feet. Chandelier. Chandelier. Chandelier. Elevator. One, two, three, four, ninth floor. Steele (Canon) and his large, dim-witted associate, Lomax (Green), looking so much like wannabe Jules and Vincents, step out of the elevator followed by their sloppy, Bob Ross-lookin’, ‘fro-master understudy, Nice Guy Billy (Friedel). Seems another associate of theirs, a gentleman named Aubrey, has messed up, crossed them in some way. Perhaps he missed a payment or slighted someone he shouldn’t have? (No1curr!) They break into Aubrey’s apartment and wait for him to return, Billy watching from the window as Lomax, who seems oddly fascinated and possibly aroused by all sorts of different fabrics, plays with one of  Aubrey’s blouses. They catch him slippin’ and get the drop on him as he comes in with his lover Harold. Nice Guy Billy stays at the window, keeping a lookout for any happy little policemen as Lomax and Steele torture, humiliate and beat Aubrey. Harold covers his eyes and I think he cries a little. Not satisfied with the thorough thrashing he’s just handed out, Steele whips out his straight razor to Mr. Blonde Aubrey’s nose off, but Billy intervenes. Aubrey is already dead. With the window clear and seeing what happened to his man and expecting the same, Harold, not really being the stoic sort, saves himself the torture by jumping out the window to the pavement twelve nine floors below. With two deaths worth of heat on them now, the trio head out to the country to find a nice place to lay low, have some fresh fruit, and wait for all of this to blow over.

cue “little green bag”

marvin, vincent, and jules

only the first unspeakable shirt

Back at the creepy farmhouse, a pretty, if sad and tired-looking young Lisa rolls her paralyzed granddad through the house and checks the fridge for breakfast fixings.

On the road, the Criminals Three stop off at a small, rural, roadside gas and grocery. Not having much  of an appetite after an evening of murder and whining about not knowing there was going to be murder, Billy stays in the car and asks for just some nuts. There’s nuts alright. Steele, completely missing the point of going out to the country to lay low, flips shit when his fruit isn’t fresh enough and chucks it at the poor, timid cashier. She tries to avoid trouble by offering to give him some of the fruit. Sensing her fear and being a Grade A psychopath, he pounces. With help from Lomax, he terrorizes the poor checkout girl with the really ugly shirt. They toss some fruit and shoot the place up. Apple. Bang. Apple. Bang. Apple. Bang. Melon. Clumsy double entendre about melons. They force her to remove her unfathomably ugly blouse. Humiliation. Abuse. Catsup and cola bukkake. Billy gets his nuts (which he doesn’t even eat after all of that trouble) and they’re back on the road.

Lisa, meanwhile, is gathering up the day’s food. Eggs for breakfast. A freshly beheaded chicken bleeding all over the sink for later. She takes gramps up a raw egg for breakfast. Washes him. Prepares to shave him, but never quite gets around to it, due to the Reservoir Dunces pulling up outside. They snoop around a bit and force their way inside. A secluded farmhouse, defended only by one small girl and a quadriplegic old man makes for a perfect place to hide out for a few days. Not given much of a choice, Lisa accommodates them the best that she can, cooking for them, making up rooms. Nice Guy Billy, sickened by the brutality of his companions, wants to help their new hostages, keep them safe, but a late night fabric groping session cranks Lomax’ perv dial to eleven and he sneaks into Lisa’s room for a sickening sexual assault. There’s more to Lisa than they know, however, and she will only tolerate so much before she decides to take action … WITH AN AXE! Well no, actually with a straight razor. BUT THERE WILL BE AN AXE. Eventually.

a little casual humiliation

cashier wept

say “what” one more time

The sharp edge of suspense slams hard into fear. Written as well as directed (and starred in) by Friedel and distributed by trashy exploitation peddler Harry Novak, Lisa, Lisa is a short (barely feature length), and decidedly un-exploitative exploitation film, with advertising far more lurid than the actual movie. Filmed in just eleven days on a shoestring budget, supposedly without the option of retakes, it overcomes its limitations to be an interesting and somber little flick that hints at more than it shows, but somehow still found itself lumped in with the real Video Nasties on the British Board of Film Censorship’s list of banned movies.

Fisty: I must confess: I have a particular fondness for little regional exploitation or horror flicks like this. And that makes me pretty un-objective, but then again, all of these reviews are pretty fucking subjective anyway. But yeah, this went way better than expected. I was actually a bit disinterested in it based on the title and it being a Video Nasty. Yawn, I though, another one. But the reality of Lisa, Lisa  was entirely unexpected.

Bill: It really isn’t what you expect it to be. It has one of those awesome trailers that make you think you’re about to see the most violent and perverse movie ever filmed, but that’s really all misleading hype. I don’t think it was ever meant to be the sleazy slaughterfest they sold it as. It’s more reserved than you’d think it would be, based on re-titles like California Axe Massacre as well as its Video Nasty status. There’s really no extended, uncomfortable assault scenes, like in Night Train Murders or Last House on the Left.

medium cool

things can only get worse from here

premonition, memory, fantasy?

Fisty: Yet more evidence for the Video Nasty craze being so much hype! That isn’t to say, however, that there isn’t some genuinely weird and perverse stuff going on here. It’s just that much of it is–dare I say it?–understated.

Bill: … or we’re just jaded and desensitized. They do show the sawing of razor on flesh after a simulated rape, or at least attempted rape. It doesn’t look to me like Lomax was all that successful. I’m not sure if you were meant to believe he was and it actually happened or if  it only almost happened. Regardless, there was that razor/flesh moment. The grocery store scene was pretty rough. I mean, they didn’t make her pee her pants, stab her to death, or play with her guts, but they did still terrorize and humiliate the girl. And the murder of Aubrey was pretty violent, with lit cigars stuffed in dude’s mouth and all, and his nose almost coming off. I’ve been thinking about it and I’m wondering if maybe the movie has a sharper edge than it initially seemed to me. It may not be I Spit on Your Grave or Maniac, but maybe it is a little rougher than I was initially giving it credit for. Maybe it’s only understated when compared to other movies of the type? I mean, there was definitely more blood in this than you ever see in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

the big bads

the many faces of lisa

see any happy little trees up there?

Fisty: Slow down there, turbo! I never said it WASN’T rough. I was genuinely on edge during a lot of the movie, because it was so understated in many ways, yet the vicious perversity of the opening scene informs us right off the bat that these dudes are capable of anything. During the market scene I was convinced that there was no way the poor clerk was getting out alive, and that all the indignities heaped upon her were merely a precursor to an ignominious death. (Is that a spoiler? Is Bill going to yell at me now?) And once the Original Tripso Trio arrived at The Farm (Tangent: I’m going to go ahead and proper just about all the nouns in this here joint because Lisa, Lisa is some metaphorical-allegorical shit, yo.), I removed myself from the couch to my tenter and settled in on the hooks because SOMETHING WAS SURE TO HAPPEN.

And eventually, it did. But first I had to wait –on tenterhooks!–while Lisa drifted about in her ivory dress, tending chickens, collecting eggs, killing them, preparing meals, shaving her grandfather, staring at eggs, watching chicken blood drip (still more exciting that watching paint dry!), and so on. Do not get me wrong–all of this builds tension (and confusion) admirably. And it also serves to make us all a little uneasy. Who is Lisa, really? And her grandfather? Where are her parents? What happened to Gramps? Is he afraid of her? What happened to Lisa? Did anything happen to her, or is she just … that way? None of those questions are ever answered, but Friedel gives us just enough–a mere taste, really–to speculate.

fore-something or other

small pleasures

only the lonely

Bill: Okay. That’s good. I was just worried that we were underselling the brutality of the movie and making it sound like a particularly boring Lifetime drama.  Also, stop spoiling things.

I love that so much is left unexplained. I feel like most movies, especially modern movies, have a tendency to over-explain things, spoon-feeding you a bunch of unnecessary background info. What did Aubrey do to deserve his beating? Where are Lisa’s parents? Where did that clerk get such an ugly blouse? What is the ideal tomato soup/blood ratio to keep someone from realizing they’re eating blood? Who cares? This is the story of  Lisa and the Three Thugs and you get only what you need to understand what happens when they meet. All the other details are left to you to ponder and that vagueness and ambiguity is good. They keep you thinking and wondering long after you’ve finished watching.

I’ve gone back and forth wondering if gramps was trying stuff with Lisa and that’s how he ended up in that chair to begin with. She does tend to go for the neck (at least she did with Lomax and the chicken) and that would support the idea of her injuring him in a way that could cause his paralysis. And this would also provide some insight into why Lisa seems so emotionally stunted. But it also could’ve been a disease or accident that left him like he is and Lisa might just be … that way. Concerning the scene in which grandpa sees Lisa in action and gets a faceful of blood spatter: I saw him shaking and thought that meant he was terrified, terrified of Lisa and what she was capable of, but you had a different interpretation, that that was an excited glee in gramps. This was maybe the most excitement he’s seen since he’s been in that chair and he’s loving the carnage. It’s just like the war! The great thing about Lisa, Lisa is that both views are valid. It could be either and you can easily make a case for both.

look…

i’m just not okay

being flippant right now

But I really do think he was scared. Lisa is just a scary person. She doesn’t seem to realize that people aren’t eggs. She breaks an egg … oh well! She kicks some dirt over it to cover up her accident and goes on her way. She kills a man … oh well! She hacks him up and sticks his pieces in a trunk to hide her crime.  No difference. Actually, even adding the “oh well” is wrong, because she never has so much as an “oops” look on her face. No matter what she is doing, being attacked, struggling, cooking dinner, eating a cookie or killing someone, her expression never changes. She’s empty. Michael Myers emotes more than this girl. And it’s more than just the way she deals with the crimes with no emotion, it’s also how she cares for her grandpa. She doesn’t seem to recognize him as a human being either. She never speaks a single word to the man. She never reassures him or defends him or tells him what she’s about to do or why. There’s no, “Good morning, grandpa,” or, “I’m going to go get started on breakfast now.” He is completely helpless as scary strangers are loose in his house and she never even acknowledges that this could be traumatic for him. He’s not a person she cares for, he’s just a list of things she needs to do each day. The only time you get a hint at any kind of inner feelings is in a brief moment where she contemplates suicide and you see how lonely she might be feeling. But even then, her face is blank. Ending herself would just be another chore. It’s sad, sure, but even more so, it’s chilling

Fisty: Even when she’s disposing of the first body, it seems to be a vague sort of nod to the etiquette of dealing with houseguests (Never leave a corpse where a guest will find it!) rather than an impulse born of of fear. I’m not sure whether I’d consider self-preservation to even be one of her motives in disposing of the first corpse, as her suicidal gestures and cavalier chicken & egg consumption seem to indicate someone with a decidedly laissez-faire attitude toward life and its preservation.

Whatever the reason is for Lisa’s (apparent) impassivity and quiescence, we’ll never know it. That she waits until Lomax’s rape attempt to strike may hint at a history of sexual abuse. Perhaps it was Gramps, and that is the reason she cares for him with her casual cruelty. Perhaps it was before that, with one of her missing parents–could that be why they’re AWOL? It may have not been familial at all, but a My Sweet Audrina moment under a golden raintree. Or perhaps she’s simply schizophrenic, or even brain damaged somehow, whether via birth defect or neglect. Maybe it’s solipsism syndrome, which would explain how Lisa treats everyone else in the film as though they were things without meaning. I CAN DO THIS ALL NIGHT, FOLKS! Maddening as it is, we can only speculate.

aftermath

lomax could be a real drag

here’s lisa

However, Lisa only APPEARS to be entirely passive until the attempted rape. Though her protests at the presence of the Not-Quite-Ready-for-Tarantino Gang appear to have no force behind them, and though she meekly acquiesces to their home invasion, the lady doth in fact protest. She subsides again into her apparent apathy, perhaps feeling like it’s best to ride the storm out and have them on their way–but not before contemplating suicide as an out, that is how much she dislikes or fears their presence. But it is at that moment there before us in the mirror that she suffers an existential crisis, undergoing a seachange into something rich and strange–and not a little violent. Blink, and you might miss it, but the violation of her person by Lomax is a moment Lisa prepares for, and her actions then are not at all impulsive. It is the invasion, not the attack, that is the wellspring for all her further actions. Or… I’m full of shit and she was always that solipsistic monster.

Bill: I’m not sure her suicide contemplation was really as transformative a moment as you think it was. I think she probably has the same moment in the mirror everyday.  She has nothing to live for. She feels no love, has no wants, no desire for or prospects at romance, no goals. If gramps is just a chore, she is just a chore-doing machine. She has nothing that gives her any kind of joy, except maybe, MAYBE, she gets a little from her cookies, if she is even capable of feeling joy. She does seem lonely and, I guess, trapped in her non-life, but when Bob Ross showed interest in her, I never got the sense that she ever even considered him as a way out. But she did seem to let him think he might be her savior, maybe just to protect herself or–I think more likely–as a way of biding time and waiting for her moment. Maybe Lomax’s attack triggered her violent turn, but she was a bit empty even before that. I think she probably already was that “solipsistic monster” and Lomax’s rape play just forced her to move up the timetable on what was possibly already something she was considering. I’m not so sure these are her first victims. I have no concrete reason for thinking it, but I think she has killed other people that came to the house before. Maybe just some dumb kids traveling the country or, more likely, a traveling salesman or drifter farmhand that sought to take advantage of her situation.

who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him

this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine

axe-ing for it

And I’m sure that I’d know all of this for sure if I could only figure out what all the broken eggs mean. They have to mean something! There has to be some symbolism to the fucking eggs! It’s maddening. I can’t stop thinking about the eggs and what they could mean. There’s some secret code that I’m just not figuring out. Lisa is actually easier to find some message in. Lisa could represent, especially through her murder of the guys and how it equates with her casual killing of the chicken, rural folks’ more realistic views of life and nature. City people don’t kill their own chickens. They don’t deal with death daily. So we city peeps can see the country people as being harsh or unfeeling, like Lisa. And that freaks us out. But those damn eggs…

Fisty: I’m convinced the eggs and chickens are just symbolic of how indifferent Lisa is to all other people, or the world, really. They’re irrelevant to her, just things as carelessly dropped or killed and eaten as cared for. Which maybe tells us all we need to know about her background and upbringing.

out, damn spot

hell is murky . and also lisa.

RIFE WITH MEANING

What you mentioned about the gang’s perception of Lisa (and ours as well) as city dwellers looking askance at country folk plays into my Big Theory about the film, namely that it’s a riff on “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.” You remember that one, right? The fable where the city mouse visits the country mouse and scoffs at his simple pleasure, then the country mouse visits the city mouse where they dine like kings but end up chased off by some dogs? That’s Lisa, Lisa! But like, there’s murder instead! The big, bad city gents come rolling into the bleak countryside looking for a cozy little mousehole, and maybe a little humiliation of the weak to boot. While they think the country is a gentle, quiet place populated by rube and bumpkins, to be used and abused as they please, they find instead that it is a place far more savage than they can handle. They are not, however, the bumbling but civilized middle class victims of films like The Hills Have Eyes or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Steele’s gang are thugs, violent and murderous, but they’re also fish out of water in the country, and when in Lisa’s milieu, they find that her mute and dispassionate brutality easily triumphs over their machinations; they’re as fragile as the eggs she casually and ruthlessly crushes. Aesop concludes his fable with the moral that it is better to live in peace than in continual fear, and Steele’s gang undoubtedly wish they’d never fled the city they understand for the inexplicable terrors of the empty countryside.

In most horror hixploitation films the rural inhabitants are depicted as grim or manic bogeymen, inbred or even mutated, and with all manner of undesirable behaviors and perverse desires. Lisa, Lisa is then a contradiction, for Lisa and her grandfather are eerily silent and seemingly placid. Here it is the city dwellers who swagger and boast; when they transgress they do it knowingly, purposefully. In punishing them for their misdeeds, Lisa recalls John and Estelle Collingwood in Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left. It’s impossible to not draw parallels, for both films feature criminals on the run taking refuge in the country and a sexually assaulted young girl, with revenge taken for the crime. Obviously, Lisa survives the (attempted?) rape and exacts her own revenge, and neither does her revenge feature the same torment as that of the Collingwoods’ descent into savagery, but like LHotL, Lisa, Lisa too is a deeply sad film.

meat’s meat, and a man’s gotta eat

axe

ME TIE DOUGHTY WALKER

Stay away from Lisa! In Lisa, Lisa we have perhaps one of the finest examples of what a bizarre and convoluted mess the whole Video Nasties uproar really was, as well as a stellar example of a once thriving regional movie scene. While brutally violent and often deeply uncomfortable, Lisa, Lisa is hardly the immoral or obscene bogey of the Video Nasties craze. Lisa herself is amoral as an animal, and both she and Friedel come down hard on the depravities of the gang…with Lisa’s own depravities. Yet for all the violence and startling grotesquerie, Lisa, Lisa is an often quiet, suspenseful (dig that jarring, atonal score!), even thoughtful meditation on mental illness and family, in the form of a horror/exploitation film. A wonderful remnant of a cheap, fly by night & the seat of the pants era of regional filmmaking, don’t miss this slice of Americana.

Note: A recent interview of Frederick R. Friedel by Shock Til You Drop dropped a bomb about a remake of Lisa, Lisa being in the works, perhaps within the next year! Let’s hope whomever helms this one doesn’t take the Zombie approach of cramming in exposition… 

The Toolbox Murders

there isn't a single thing wrong with this poster

The Toolbox Murders
aka Der Bohrmaschinenkiller
aka La masacre de toolbox
aka Lo squartatore di Los Angeles
Director: Dennis Donnelly
Released: 1978
Starring: Cameron Mitchell, Pamelyn Ferdin, Wesley Eure, Tim Donnelly, Aneta Corsaut, Kelly Nichols (as Marianne Walter)
Running time: 93 minutes
Genre: exploitation, slasher, thriller, psychodrama, video nasty

“If I had a hammer…”: Toolbox Murders shows its giallo roots in an extended opening credit sequence of a black-gloved killer driving though darkened city streets. Only, instead of a pimptastic score by the likes of Riz Ortolani, we hear a more generic thriller/psychodrama piano score, overlaid with the sounds of a hellfire n’ brimstone preacher on the car radio. The vehicle cruises smoothly along, but then FREEZEFRAME! The sound of screeching tires! Illuminated by arc-sodium lights, a car has crashed on the side of the road. A young girl tumbles out of the passenger side door. A crowd gathers as paramedics place her on a stretcher. She’s young, blonde, with a bloodied face and staring eyes. Her hand falls limply off the stretcher as they cover her face. Something Significant has happened. Cruising resumes, and the Mercedes pulls up outside El Patio del Sequoia apartments, and a man with a toolbox gets out and enters the complex. Once inside, he cuts a gruesome swath through the apartment’s female residents, beginning with faded beauty and lush Mrs Andrews. Though surprised by the killer’s appearance, she clearly knows him … . Finishing her off with his powerdrill, our skimasked killer hums a little tune and contemplates his work.

ineffective mask wearing 101

Meanwhile young divorcée Debbie arrives home and–in one of the least logical sequences in movie history–prepares to take a shower fully dressed, for the sole reason of creating a wet shirt effect and leading to a lengthy change of clothes. Fortunately, boobage redeems the scene. Debbie evidences poor decision-making skills when she pops into the apartment hallway in her underclothes to pick up some … debris left outside the door? Fortunately, our killer happens upon her and, popping her on the chin in a singularly goony moment, renders her unconscious and bears her off to the firestairs, where she is summarily dispatched with the claw end of a hammer. He then removes her corpse from the stairwell and carries it BACK to her apartment (and we thought only Debbie was crazy!), where he lays her out on the floor only to be interrupted by roommate Maria. Pissed at Debbie for leaving trash in the hallway, Maria is both shocked and saddened by her grisly discovery, then surprised by our killer. The shock renders the poor sap apparently speechless, and when the slayer slaughters her with a screwdriver, it’s all Maria can do to sum up a sorry little scream. (That was excessive, and I am sincerely sorry!) The killer then takes a moment to spy upon the neighboring Camelot Apartments, where a temptress gyrates in her underwear before a wide open window, while one floor below an innocent schoolgirl chats on the phone. His bloodlust not yet sated, the killer ventures back into the hallway, where he opens a door and glimpses a couple discussing the merits of drugstore wine. Discouraged by the presence of a man, the killer leaves and the killing stops … for the evening.

The next morning briefly introduces us to the Ballard family: Matriarch and alcoholic B-girl Joanne, perky teenager Laurie (Pamela Ferdin, also the voice of Charlotte’s Web‘s Fern Arable and Charles Schultz’s Lucy van Pelt!), and older brother Joe.

Evening falls again, and we meet Dee Ann (played by Penthouse Pet and future porn star Kelly Nichols!), the window siren from the previous night. As she all unknowing draws herself a bath, the Toolbox Murderer approaches the Camelot Apartments, eponymous toolbox in tow. What follows is surely one of the most gratuitous nude/masturbation scenes in all slasherdom as Dee Ann soaps up an lets Calgon take her away to her special place to the dulcet tones of George Deaton & Terry Stubbs’ “Pretty Lady.” After she achieves orgasm, Dee Ann comes out of her stupor to the sound of the killer’s humming. As suits her more sexually forthright character, when faced with his nailgun Dee Ann not only actively tries to evade him, but also fights back, scrambling around her apartment naked and wet as a frog and tossing vases. She feigns submission, offering him “anything,” but tries to run again, finally catching a nail to the abdomen. The killer props her up beneath a nude poster of herself, then nails her right through the head. End “Pretty Lady.”

get out of the way, mr bubble!

Finished with the whores of the world–for now–the killer sneaks downstairs to the Ballard apartment, where Laurie is again demonstrating her virtue by refusing to sneak out (presumably with a boy). After all, she doesn’t want to end up like her mother said, “either divorced or with a bunch of kids and a crappy job like [hers].” Who knows how she’ll end up, however, since the killer kidnaps her. At least she isn’t dead yet! When Joe gets home late that night, he finds the security chain cut and Laurie missing. Jo Ann stumbles in moments later, and orders Joe to go looking for his sister–and that’s when we hear the shrieks from the discovery of Dee Ann.

Convinced that Laurie’s disappearance is related to the murders, Joe pleads for help from the police, who are content to dismiss her as a typical runaway teen. Total Dick in Charge of the case Sergeant Cameron scoffs at Joe’s concerns, mocking the poor guy, who departs in a huff, vowing to find his sister himself. Sgt Cameron is no Lt Fuller. Armed with earnestness, Joe goes to El Patio del Sequoia looking for clues, and meets up with the super’s nephew Kent. Kent enlists Joe’s help to clean up the bloodied apartments, and Joe in turn enlists Kent in the search for Laurie. With the murders largely over at thirty minutes in, and the murderer revealed to the audience at fifty minutes (for any halfwits who haven’t yet figured it out), The Toolbox Murders takes a sharp turn into psychodrama as the young men investigate Laurie’s disappearance, and scenes of their search alternate with Laurie’s plight as a captive, leading up to a truly bizarre dénouement.

fern shouldn't have tried to leave wilbur

Banned in the UK as a Video Nasty, The Toolbox Murders is preceded by a reputation for unmitigated sleaze–a reputation that’s not entirely undeserved. But the low budget, competing storylines, and pedestrian direction give it the feel of a made-for-TV movie.

Fisty: Holy shit. TTM exceeded my expectations in so many ways. It’s so very, very sleazy, and so very, very nasty, and so very, very bad. It’s a home run of fucking trashy-ass, exploitative cinema. It’s easy to see how it earned its spot on the Video Nasties list; the first thirty minutes is almost nothing but violent murder and nudity. But then after that bang up start the movie settles into a curious police procedural thriller format that, for all its smuttiness–and yes, it is still very sordid if you’ve got the eyes to see it–it very draggy and uninteresting but for the scenes of Cameron Mitchell’s (Blood and Back Lace) lunacy and Ferdin’s terror. Only in the final fifteen minutes does violence appear once more, and it’s of an entirely different breed. By then, many of even the most dedicated horror fans and gorehounds may have passed out from sheer boredom. It takes a certain amount of patience–and attention span–to appreciate TTM’s tacky charms.

sailing the good ship lollipop to crazyland

Speaking of tacky charms, I did love the look of the movie. I know it’s ugly in that special 70s Saturday Night Special Movie way, but it had a certain nostalgic charm for me. It looked like shitty movies I grew up watching in school (though I grew up in the 80s, it was in Hawai’i, where the 70s had a long reach–especially in the school system). The California setting was probably a big part of it: so sunny, so squalid, so semi-suburban. There are still tacky apartment open-air buildings like the Camelot and El Patio del Sequoia all over the West, and I’ve lived in a few of them.

Bill: It took me three tries to get through the whole movie.  Though, admittedly, I made the first two attempts when it was late and I was tired, so it probably had more to do with my condition than the drag in the middle of the flick.  I was even dozing a bit during the first thirty minutes and there is nothing sleep inducing in that bit of film.  Boner inducing, sure, but sleep? I think, maybe, I could’ve been lulled further into a restful state by that made-for-TV movie quality it has. Kind of like what happens when I watch Matlock, except Matlock is usually less bewildering.  There are whole segments in TTM that make no sense, like the coffee scene. The cop offers Laurie’s brother some coffee, the kid declines, then the cop goes to get some for himself, but the pot is empty, so he puts the glass down and that’s it. What the hell was the purpose of that? Then there’s the odd fruit-throwing bit that I suppose was meant to show the siblings as playfully close, but just seems awkward. And just why do the cops let all the neighbors stand around looking at all the naked corpses?

debbie's dead

Other parts are just painfully obvious and unnecessary. Like trying to establish the innocence of Laurie by having her do the exact opposite of gyrating DeeAnn? But I do appreciate the seminude dancing.

Fisty: Yeah, the director, Dennis Donnelly pretty much just did TV; this was his sole feature film–and it shows. Too much exposition, weird experimental editing, problems with pacing …

Bill: Who the fuck was in the car that wrecked?

Fisty: Oh my god, Bill. It was Cathy. Dude’s daughter/other dude’s lover.

Bill: But it seemed like she died way before then. Didn’t it seem like he started killing the women right after the girl in the car died? Like, the same night?

Fisty: How could there be flashback shots from her funeral interposed with shots of him entering the building to START the killing spree if she died that night?

Bill: I know the funeral shots were flashbacks, but there’s no break between driving and killing, it all looks the same. Donnelly could have made that a lot clearer. But my framerate was stuttering a bit at the start, so …

Fisty: And you’re abominably literal sometimes … but I suppose if one were drunk, it could be confusing. The editing is mostly shit.

Bill: Debbie’s shower scene is the most bizarre that I have ever seen.  She puts on a shower cap while fully dressed, turns on the water, sees her dress hanging in the shower, steps in still fully dressed, presumably to get her little black dress before it’s soaked, but then doesn’t even touch the dress, steps out and takes her shower cap off!  I am fully convinced that this was originally meant to be a normal, typical shower scene, but they rewrote it into absurdity, just for that wet shirt yumminess, after seeing how hott Debbie the braless wonder looked in her sheer white top.

Fisty: That’s one of my favorite parts–teeth-gnashingly aggravating (as I shriek, “Why? Why are you getting in the shower fully dressed? Why aren’t you even bathing and just putting on a succession of shirts and then removing your pants? WHY?!?” at the television screen) and unintentionally hilarious as it is. I also love the way she goes down like a ton of bricks from the most ineffectual right hook I’ve ever seen. Pretty much all the victims except Dee Ann are ineffective wimps.

not the best place to hide from someone with a drill

Purists will declare that TTM isn’t a slasher, and I’m with them on that. Like Don’t Go in the House, it’s a curious blend of genres, teetering as it does on the edge of sleazy 70s psycho-thrillers and gleefully self-aware by-the-numbers 80s slashers, and coming down straight in the exploitation zone. After the gialli-inspired opening and kills that seem to promise an endless parade of titties and blood, TTM downshifts into an amateur detective psychodrama, a confusing change for many viewers. Though one might argue that amateurs investigating crimes in the face of an inept police force is a clear marker of a giallo, it seems just as likely that Joey and Kent’s sleuthing owes as much to Donnelly’s directing credits in TV–including an episode of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. (And many episodes of Adam-12, Emergency!, Hart to Hart, Charlie’s Angels, The A-Team, Simon & Simon … is a pattern developing? To be fair, most of those were post-TTM, but I think it shows a decided slant.) Knocking any confusion about the killer’s identity out of the way lets the film settle in on the bewilderment of the bereaved on one side, and the suffering of the victim and the lunatic on the other.

Bill: I think the movie may’ve benefited from being more slasher-like.  As much as I’d hate to see a dilution of the concentrated sleaze at the start of the flick, it would’ve been nice to have some tits & murder interludes tossed in somewhere during the Hardy Boys episode in the middle.  That really is the weakest part of the movie.  I mean, you can only get so much entertainment from watching skeevy cops hit on the mother of a missing girl. He really was kind of sleazy. “Look, your daughter is missing and maybe we’ll find her but, in the meantime, can I give you another?”

Fisty: Damn it, I LOVE that singles bar scene! That fucking cop is a real piece of work. And the way Joanne shuts him down? Masterful!

dude, no

Speaking of which, Aneta Corsaut (The Blob) is magnificent as Joanne.  The rest of the casting is pretty spot-on, too: Ferdin evokes pathos as the victimized Laurie, Mitchell–though no longer the hottie of the How to Marry a Millionaire days–chews up the scenery like it’s Red Man.

Its greatest strength is its greatest weakness: The Toolbox Murders makes for a primo exploitation experience because that’s all it was ever meant to be. Tony DiDio reportedly saw a reissue of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre four years after its initial release and said to himself (and his team), “I want to cash in on that.” (My paraphrase.) Don’t go into it looking for subtext on the alienation of the American family in the juxtaposition of an affectionate but struggling family with a highly dysfunctional yet loving one. Don’t look beneath the sleaze for something less sleazy, because it’s sleaze all the way down.

Bill: I think there is one area where it under-sleazes:  The climax of the film.  There’s some real frying pan/fire jumping at the end, but, while you know Laurie goes through a wicked nasty ordeal, they don’t show any of it.  It’s a big change from the beginning of the movie, where everything was very in-your-face.  I guess Donnelly felt he had to be respectful when it comes to letting us know what happened to this sweet, virginal character, but the other victims were just dirty sluts, so their pain doesn’t matter.  Damn it, I want to see the nice girl’s pain and degradation, too!  Eh, it was a true story, according to the bit of text that flashes on the screen at the end, so maybe he was just trying to protect the real Laurie, in case she ever watched the movie.  (My eyes are rolling so hard that I just got dizzy.)

true story, fer sher

Fisty: Can we recommend The Toolbox Murders? Though it at times reminded me of bad 70s afterschool specials in which someone ruined their life by sniffing goofballs in a ditch, I’m going to go ahead and say yes. Though it doesn’t live up to its reputation of relentless blood n’ smut, it has some solid splatter moments, oodles of titties n’ bush, and pure insanity–and all in the first half hour. (Bill: And you really don’t want to be the only one of your friends to have missed seeing that beginning.) Plus, there are tons of familiar TV faces from shows like Emergency!, Land of the Lost, and The Andy Griffith Show–and fucking FERN from CHARLOTTE’S WEB!!! Even the dreck is worth sitting through for Mitchell’s scenery-gnawing performance and Ferdin’s understated terror, a few genuinely chilling moments, as well as an ending that will not only surprise the hell out of most viewers, but will also have them running for the shower. Just remember to take your clothes off before getting in the tub.

Did anyone else notice that the victims in the trailer in no way match up with those in the movie?

PROTIP: Order a pizza just before pressing play.  Your pie will arrive just as the movie slows down, giving you something extra to chew on while you sit through the downtime in the middle of the flick.

The Toolbox Murders is available to Watch Instantly on Netflix!

The Burning

chop chop!

The Burning
aka Cropsy
aka Carnage
Director: Tony Maylam
Released: 1981
Starring: Brian Matthews, Leah Ayres, Brian Backer, Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, Holly Hunter
Running time: 91 minutes
Genre: horror, slasher, Video Nasty

What’s Happening, Hot Stuff? Late one night, some campers play a prank on an unliked caretaker, Cropsy. The prank goes awry, however, and Cropsy ends up doused in gasoline and in flames (because normal people sleep next to cans of gas). Rather than like, help the poor human torch, the guilty campers run away, and Cropsy is hospitalized for five years. Unfortunately, even with 1981’s technology, skin grafts could only take him so far, and Cropsy is left a hideously scarred shell of a man. When he is released from care at the hospital, Cropsy immediately heads for Times Square (in the fun old days–who wouldn’t?) and murders a harlot. Seems like that revolting cicatrice may conceal a burning lust for revenge. Against hookers. Or whomever.

Meanwhile, at Camp Stonewater, summer proceeds as usual. Boys chasing girls, girls chasing boys, lots of wholesome outdoor activities, and lots of short shorts, tubesocks, and unfettered boobies. You’ve got your full complement of characters who manage to nearly transcend their roles as loathesome Lothario, hopeless dweeb, wiseacre, virginal Final Girl, and so on. Everything about the camp seems alternately idyllic and ordinary, until someone spots a hideous face in a window. Of course, no one believes him, the poor dweeb, and so a group of campers sets out on a canoe trip.

The first night downriver, the campers gather round a campfire, and the Ken Doll–I mean, Todd–tells a spooky story about a caretaker named Cropsy who lurks in the woods in the area … after the story, Demure Karen and Sleazy Eddy take a walk and a skinny dip, and well, one of them doesn’t come back. In the morning, all the canoes are missing, so our intrepid campers utilize their woodcraft and build a raft to get help … but Cropsy’s already there, and he’s got his shears. Let the stabbings and the slashings and the cuttings commence!

Tastes Like Burning! Tastes like AWESOME. Though often dismissed as merely a Friday the 13th wannabe, The Burning is a delightful and brutal addition to the slasher pantheon. Featuring a surprisingly solid cast (though not in light of their future endeavors), gory kills fashioned by Maestro Tom Savini, a classic story, and soundtrack by Rick “Eat Your Heart Out” Wakeman (I can’t help but think of DK whenever I hear his name), The Burning remains fresh long after other summer camp slaying clones went stale.

Fisty: OH. MY. GOD. The Burning is the ne plus ultra of summer camp slashers. Forget F13! For reals. At risk of being iconoclastic, I will state officially that I think The Burning is the superior of the two. That isn’t to say that it’s perfect, but it is surprisingly well-crafted and everything a slasher ought to be.

Bill: Well, I don’t want to start a full-on debate here, but I have to disagree.  The Burning is damn fine fun and an excellent slasher, but Friday the 13th is still better.  But, please, go on and explain why The Burning is so fantastic.  Aside from the softball playin’, panty-clad, booty wiggle, I mean.  That was totally my favorite part.  It reminds me of my favorite part from Night of The Demons: Linnea’s bent over, pink panty, shopliftin’ ass shake.  When I was going through my early pubescent, manic jackin’ period, I would watch that scene, rewind it, rewatch it and repeat (the real three Rs, fuck recycling) until I was satisfied.  I really wish I’d have had a copy of The Burningon VHS back then.  It would’ve gotten a lot of use.  Probably for the tan line scenes, too.  Sadly, I didn’t see it for the first time until a few years ago.

panties of contention

Fisty: What the hell is up with that panty shot? Those are so clearly NOT bikini bottoms. I actually had a circa ’81 bikini I inherited from my older sister, and back then they were all about the crocheted, itty-bitty, low-rise, string bikini (not the thing to wear swimming with a bunch of evil-minded high school boys, let me tell you). But it was pretty hott, as these things go.

What I love about The Burning: What’s left unsaid. That’s right. There’s a lot of ambiguity in it, comparatively speaking. Cropsy, for instance. The only indicators we have that we was in fact a sadistic asshole is that the kids–and the legend–say so. Kids always say that about authority figures. (And they also say he’s dead and haunting the woods, when he was hospitalized. UNRELIABLE NARRATORS!) Oh, and that he goes on a murderous rampage, but after what he went through, who wouldn’t? Some might complain that the plot’s nonsensical–why does Cropsy go after this apparently random camper group? Or the hooker for that matter? (For reals, the hooker? Super authentic. She looked like someone who would have worked the lol-iday inn.) But it all makes perfect sense in Adolescent Logic, and it’s adolescents, both in the movie and in the audience, who tell the tale.

Then there’s the acting, which is head and shoulders above F13 (thanks in part to some fledgling actors who went on to make big[ish] names for themselves on both the big and small screens). Notice that the characters are better developed and more realistic; they don’t just wander off alone to become murder fodder, but instead try to stick together and act sensible.

Bill: It does have an awesome cast.  I mean, Fisher “The Plague” Fucking Stevens is in it.  (Hack the planet!)  And Brian Backer, an early prototype of David Krumholtz, is both believably creepy and sad, as the bullied weirdo.  Overall, all the characters and their portrayals are better than most of what you see in Friday the 13th, but Friday has a couple of standouts, like Betsy Palmer as Mrs. Voorhees and Walt Gorney as Crazy Ralph,  who, individually, are far more memorable and as well acted or better than anyone in The Burning. 

the boys of summer camp

Fisty: I also appreciate the way the characters defy the genre conventions. I can’t just up and TELL you–at least, Bill won’t let me–but there are surprises in the bodycount. I honestly was not expecting the hero/ine scenario to play out the way it did; years of watching slashers had taught me particular rules, shall we say, about who lives and who dies and why and how. And The Burning disregards those cherished fundamentals, to excellent effect.

Bill: NO SPOILERS!  (Dumbledore dies.)

Fisty: And he’s gay. But like I said, it isn’t a perfect film, and I think the two are very close. I happen to think The Burning has a slight edge in most areas, but F13 does other things well. Tension and suspense are somewhat lacking in The Burning, since you know who the ostensible killer is from the outset. Notable exceptions include Tiger searching for the ball and Rhoda’s shower. It does make a nod to twisting the possibilities, but it’s poorly executed (though I will admit, I wondered till the end whether they might play it through). It’s nice that it doesn’t take literally the slasher rule of “A death every ten minutes!,” instead starting with a bang and then going into plot and character development for a long stretch before the kills begin in earnest. And when it comes to the kills, though Savini worked his usual magic, the ones in F13 (though often ludicrous) were much better directed. The deaths in The Burning had great potential–especially the much-vaunted and ban-worthy raft scene–but were so sloppily directed that they were often obscured, pulling the punches.

we’re not showing what happens

Bill: I think Friday the 13th is a little better than The Burning, but I am a pretty hardcore F13 fanboy (even watched the fan-made Friday the 13th: Mothers Day).  Regardless of which flick either of us put first, they’re probably the two best Twitch of the Death Nerve imitators we’ll ever see.

Fisty: I think we can both agree that–regardless of your thoughts on F13—The Burning is not just a worthwhile slasher for any fan to see, but a crowning moment in the genre.

SPOILER MOMENT—-LOOK AWAY!!! LOOK AWAY!!!

The ending is especially nifty, with a nice nod to meta fiction, in that it clearly acknowledges the power of storytelling and urban myth among teenagers by making Cropsy’s existence–and the entire movie–ambiguous. Was the whole thing a campfire story? Or was it a truth that became a legend? Who knows? The kids themselves are our storytellers, and as we have seen, they are highly unreliable narrators.

And since this is marked SPOILERS, how about how those characters generally contravene the laws of slasher folk as generally set down in 1980? Karen, who we assume is at least quasi-virginal and therefore a Final Girl contender, is the first camper to die! After denying Eddy the sex! And Rhoda and Glazer, who only engage in extremely unsatisfying sex, are lambs to the slaughter. While the insipid Michelle and Todd live to the see the end. And how about that weirdly buddy climax? Whoda thunk it?

END SPOILERS—YOU MAY LOOK NOW!!! LOOK NOW!!!

And I swear to god, this was filmed where my dad’s family is from. If he had succeeded in persuading my mom to stay on the Mainland, this could have been my fate!

oh SHI–!!!

The Burning is available on Netflix Watch Instantly right now!

Don’t Go in the House

don’t … don’t … DON’T!

Don’t Go in the House
aka The Burning
aka Pyromaniac
Director: Joseph Ellison
Released: 1980
Starring: Dan Grimaldi, Robert Osth, Ruth Dardick, Charles Bonet, Bill Ricci
Running time: 82 minutes
Genre: Horror, Don’t-movie, Video Nasty

I’ll Burn the Sin(opsis) Out of You: Donny Kohler (Grimaldi) is a nice enough, if socially awkward mama’s boy, who incinerates trash for a living and occasionally hears creepy whispers, like we all do.  Also, just like the rest of us, Donny is completely obsessed with fire.  Unlike most of us, with Donny, it’s because his crazy-ass mother would hold his arms over a lit stove to punish him when he was being “evil.”  When Donny sees an accident that sets one of his co-workers ablaze, he’s transfixed, watching him burn, rather than helping.  This doesn’t sit well with the boss and nasty words are spoken, blame is assigned and men are accused of homosexual activities.  Good ol’ Bobby (Osth), being a nice guy and feeling sorry for Donny, decides to make friends and try to help the poor misfit out.  When Donny goes home, that night, he discovers that his abusive, overbearing mother has died. Without her to control him, Donny is free to do whatever he wants.  He starts to listen more closely to the whispers telling him that he’s “The master of the flame”  and, while he struggles against his deteriorating sanity, eventually his mind, as well as a few local ladies (A)…go up in flames.  (B)…are lost to an inferno of madness.  (C)…are toast.  Personally, I like C.

Hott Stuff: Don’t Go in the House is a low budget, nasty, Psycho wannabe with a cool house, a (very slightly) sympathetic madman, a room lined with sheet metal, a sitting room full of charred corpses, some creepy goings on, laughable disco goodness, and one hell of an unforgettable murder that got the movie included on the UK’s list of notorious Video Nasties.

Bill: I am on a quest!  In fact, I am on two quests.   Quest #1:  I want to see every horror movie with a title that begins with the word don’t. Quest #2:  I want to see every movie to have made the British Director of Public Prosecutions’ list of Video Nasties.  Since Don’t Go in the House is on both lists, I had to see it.

It’s a better movie than I was expecting it to be.  Having watched a bunch of the movies on my quest lists, many, if not most of them, are complete trash.  That’s not to say that they aren’t entertaining trash.  Night of the Demon, another Video Nasty, may be one of the most entertaining movies I have ever seen, but it’s also, in every possible way, a very, very bad movie.  Driller Killer…  Hell, that one isn’t even that entertaining and it’s also a bad, bad movie.  DGitH, by contrast, could be The Silence of the Lambs. It isn’t really bad in any major ways, with a few clunky line deliveries being the biggest problem.  All of the actors do a decent enough job for the movie they’re in.  The lack of budget does show in some of the effects scenes towards the end of the film, but those scenes still manage to be effective and creepy anyway.

The movie takes awhile to get moving.  If someone is easily bored, this might not be the flick for him.  The pace does quicken later on, but it takes, I believe, 27 minutes just to get to the first kill.  It’s not like nothing had happened by that point.  There was plenty of set up going on, but it was mostly dull set up.  I guess you could call DGitH a slow burn.  The loud disco, chair jumping, though, was awesome.  That shit looked fun.

Fisty: Yeah, DGitH moves along at a leisurely pace compared to say, a slasher, and it takes its time setting up Donny’s story. It’s a way more psychological flick than you’d expect from a Video Nasty, being very character driven. Despite its limitations, DGitH isn’t too ham-fisted about hammering the point home: Donny had a crappy life with an abusive mother, and now he’s screwy. Ellison actually kindles pity for Donny in the audience–something too rarely achieved in other grindhouse flicks–though by the end of the film, after watching his terrible metamorphosis, our pity is extinguished by Donny’s terrible actions. Especially touching for me is the way Bobby keeps trying to reach out to Donny. Though the acting is amateurish, the incidences heighten the contrast between the life Donny chooses to lead and the one he could have had. Even though we know what’s going to happen, we can still hope Donny will be okay. But he isn’t. And he does some terrible shit.

Bill: Oh, yes, he does.  His first kill really sticks with you.  It’s a superbly crafted grindhouse murder.

After selling Donny some flowers for his sick, dead mother, Kathy the flower girl misses her bus home.  There’s a few questionable characters on the street making her nervous, so, even though she may not trust him either, when our man Donny sees his chance and offers her a ride home, she accepts.  With a little insistence and a string of white lies, Donny gets her in his house.  She should not have went in.  I’m not even sure whether he always intended to kill her or if he was just lonely.

Fisty: He was totally going to kill her. He has this nervous energy about him; it’s almost sexual.

Bill: You think?  I thought, when he was running around his house and freaking out, that he had no idea what to say or do now that she was there, that, maybe he was just wondering how to get out of the lies he told to get her inside.  But maybe you’re right and he was just giddy with excitement.

Regardless, when she gets fed up and demands he let her call a cab to take her home, our boy gets a little upset (because he totally just wanted her to hang out and keep him company) and decides she needs to be punished.  After a quick thump on the head, Kathy the flower girl ends up stripped nude and chained to the ceiling in the sheet metal-lined room that Donny decided to put together after getting a little encouragement from the whispers.  She cries and screams and writhes and shakes them titties as Don, now clad in his flame-retardant killer suit, douses her with gasoline and proceeds to set her on fire with a flamethrower, and, oh, the camera lingers!  This is the highlight of the film, right here.  It titillates, then terrorizes, then totally horrifies.  None of the other murders are shown in such detail, but they really don’t need to be.  Once you see Donny’s MO, you’re not going to forget it and you know exactly what his other victims go through.  It is not pleasant.

Fisty: The effects on that death were pretty amazing. You can see some superimposed flames, but overall, it’s very impressive–and quite striking. The later deaths are nothing so impressive, as Ellison’s major concern is to detail Donny’s tempering in his crucible that takes him from a sad schlemiel to an inhuman monster. Unfortunately, he’s a bit heavy on the moments of “terrible psychological torment” as indicated by hallucinations. I’m also leery of explaining everything away with abuse, which was quite the fad for a while. Some people are just evil. However, due to Ellison’s fairly light hand on the reins, it mostly works in DGitH.

Bill: The argument could be made that it doesn’t totally blame his abuse, that maybe there was real evil at work.  I don’t want to spoil the ending too much, but those whispers really made me wonder if his mother was really as crazy as she seemed.  Maybe there was evil to be burnt out of him.  Perhaps  his hallucinations weren’t entirely imaginary and there were some supernatural forces coming into play in this movie.  It seemed more ambiguous to me.

And didn’t I say that exact same thing to you before about Session 9?

Fisty: I don’t listen when you talk, Bill. But yeah, I had almost forgotten that bit at the end, but I’m going to relegate it to the cheap twist pile, an attempt by someone (Montoro?!) to cash in on the demonic fad of the Seventies a la The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, Abby, Lisa and the Devil, The Devil within Her, et alia. Or it’s just a product of your fevered imagination. Throughout the film, there is no indication of there being anything else afoot, and the bit at the end includes child abuse. I’ll quote RATT when I say, “What goes around comes around.” The cycle of abuse continues, and that’s what I am sticking with.

In the end, it’s kind of a weird movie, far more a Seventies flick than an Eighties one (it was filmed in ’79), but overall an effective one, using psychological horror instead of cheap scares, lurid sexuality, and gory effects (sad face!). Though the disco elements may date it for some, I think they also ground DGitH as representing a particular attitude toward horror, especially in that relentless need to explain away our fears with psychobabble.

Bill: It was EVIL!  Evil whispers!

And evil disco!  Man, that club scene was the shit.  I want to go to there.  Does that date me, too?  If so, I don’t care.  I dug Don’t Go in the House and I totally want to get struck by boogie lightning, baby.

Fisty: Yeah, I was down with the soundtrack of this one. It would definitely go at the dark end of the disco movie spectrum.

One last thing, though. Accusations of misogyny get thrown around willy-nilly, especially about this movie. And god knows I like to suck the fun out of things with extra close readings that discover misogyny in virtually any text. But! Just because a movie depicts violence against women does not make it misogynistic. None of Donny’s victims are depicted as being particularly awful, rather, they seem like ordinary young women. The evil Donny sees in them is strictly a product of his fevered imagination, his psychosis. And with the exception of the first death, there is no gleeful lingering over the sufferings of the victims. Only that first one, to shock viewers into realizing just what Donny is capable of, is so terrible. The movie’s end, which features a male abuser, treats the case as one of power, not gender.