THE NAIL GUN MASSACRE (1985) Review

Directed by: Terry Lofton, Bill Leslie
Written by: Terry Lofton
Starring: Rocky Patterson, Ron Queen, Beau Leland, Michelle Meyer, Sebrina Lawless

"CHEAPER THAN A CHAINSAW!"

I love the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, but I also hate it. I love it because of the obvious reasons; it's a fucking great movie, it terrified me as a kid, and that dinner table scene with grandpa and the hammer is still one of the most disturbing scenes of all time. But why then do I hate it? That's easy. I hate it because it opened the floodgates for all manner of terrible horror films with the word 'massacre' in the title. WOODCHIPPER MASSACRE, MICROWAVE MASSACRE, HOSPITAL MASSACRE and countless others, including this steaming turd. The 'massacre' moniker was so popular that some movies were even re-branded to cash in on TCM. At one time even THE PROWLER was known as THE PITCHFORK MASSACRE.

NAIL GUN is typical of a lot of the extremely derivative slasher fare which exploded in the 80s. This (very) low budget shitfest takes influence from a range of earlier films, most obviously TEXAS CHAINSAW. It even references it in the taglines ('Cheaper than a chainsaw!' and 'Forget about that guy with the chainsaw!'). But unlike that other classic NAIL GUN is at the extreme bottom end of the quality spectrum. It uses the basic rape revenge premise (a la I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT) as a basic jumping off point, and then proceeds to incoherently stumble all the way through to the end credits. The middle is padded with bad acting, a 'plot' which doesn't make any sense and some pretty disappointing death scenes. Oh and probably the unsexiest (not to mention hairiest) sex scene ever put to celluloid.

A young woman (I can't remember her name, or the names of any of the other characters for that matter) is gang-raped by some construction workers in the opening moments of the film. Shortly thereafter a killer decked out in a ridiculous outfit goes on a revenge-fueled killing spree. The ridiculous outfit consists of full army style camouflage, a duct-taped motorcycle helmet and a nail gun with bright yellow hose and air canister (basically rendering the camouflage useless). The killer starts knocking people off (seemingly regardless of whether they were involved in the rape or not) with his/her nail gun and uttering the worst one-liners ever conceived in a voice that sounds like it was run through a cheap synthesiser (and probably was). I think the masked voice is supposed to hide the identity of the killer (and whether it's a male or female - more on that later) but damn it is annoying, and almost impossible to understand at times.

NAIL GUN MASSACRE seems to have been made exclusively with people who have no acting experience and are seen reading directly from the script and looking right into the camera when they've finished stumbling over their lines. But that's only the beginning of its problems. The killer's victims are routinely introduced and then offed before any explanation is give for who they are or why they deserve to die. The script feels like it was written 5 minutes before the movie started filming, and the movie makes no sense. And the costumed killer seems to change from a short woman to a tall man in a cheap ploy to throw the audience off. And don't even get me started on the cringe-worthy one-liners the killer spews forth after each kill. The 'comedy' in this is excruciatingly unfunny.

This movie has absolutely no redeemable quality whatsoever. This is the kind of movie where people order grilled cheese sandwiches and for some reason are given hamburgers. This is the kind of movie where the deputy's badge and holster move all over his body through different scenes. This is the kind of movie where a girl tells a guy that it will take a lot more than a cheap meal to get her in the sack - and then she fucks him anyway. This is the kind of movie where the doctor acts absolutely nothing like a doctor. This is the kind of movie where the structure is so bad that you don't know who is getting killed or why. I could go on but I think you get the point. The only conceivable reason I can think of for sitting through this movie is to see just how low slashers could sink.

JAWS (1975) Review

Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
Starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Murray Hamilton, Lorraine Gary

"DON'T GO IN THE WATER"

JAWS? On a slasher blog? Have I gone insane? Well maybe I have but my state of mind has nothing to do with my thinking that this is an appropriate movie to review on a slasher blog, and if you bear with me hopefully I can try and elaborate as to just why JAWS has a place here. Everybody knows that Spielberg's killer shark flick is what kickstarted the whole summer blockbuster movement and it had some pretty far-reaching influences and consequences when it was released (not least of all the paranoia and misinformation about sharks it filled its audience with) but what a lot of people don't seem to recognize is that JAWS (or at least the first two thirds of JAWS) pretty much follows the slasher template with some minor adjustments. And remember, John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN wouldn't come along for another 3 years.

Going over the plot to JAWS is probably a little pointless as I expect everybody in the world to have seen this movie at least once, but let's do it anyway. At the very least it will help fill out this post a bit more.
Amity Island is popular tourist spot, a real summer hotspot. Golden beaches, bronzed bodies and bikini babes are what the island is known for and the town makes most of its income from the summer vacationers who come to visit the picturesque coastal location. But this summer in the lead-up to the fourth of July there's an unwanted summer vacationer who's come to visit. A great white shark has decided to call Amity home and is indiscriminately chomping down on any unwitting people who happen to wander into its path. Police chief Brody (Scheider) has to try to stop the shark from munching down any more tourists while struggling against the mayor (Hamilton) and his cronies who will do anything to keep the money-making vacationers in Amity.

In talking about JAWS as a proto-slasher I want to focus on a few key points of the film. First of all is the killer, in this case being a shark instead of your usual human (or humanoid) villain. Powerful, terrifying and seemingly unstoppable, the shark is the epitome of what a slasher villain should be. Sure it uses its teeth as a weapon instead of the more conventional knives or machetes or whatnot, but they serve the same purpose.
Another common slasher element is the well known and now well used POV shot from the perspective of the killer. HALLOWEEN used it, FRIDAY THE 13TH used it, hell just about every slasher film ever made has used it at least once, and it's used here to great effect.

JAWS also happens to make good use of the leitmotif, in fact it's probably one of the best and most memorable of all time. Everybody knows that when that 'duh dum, duh dum' starts getting faster there's going to be some blood in the water. And of course the leitmotif is a tool used by a number of slasher movies, probably most notably FRIDAY THE 13TH with that iconic 'ch-ch-ch ah-ah-ah'. Is it a direct influence from JAWS? No, but I thought it would be worth mentioning anyway. JAWS is in my humble opinion a definite proto-slasher, and you could even go on to say that JAWS 2 is even closer to a slasher. But that's a discussion for another day.

NIGHT OF FEAR (1972) Review

Directed by: Terry Bourke
Written by: Terry Bourke
Starring: Norman Yemm, Carla Hoogeveen, Mike Dorsey, Briony Behets

"HUNTED AND TRAPPED! HER NIGHTMARE IS JUST BEGINNING!"

In the last review I talked about Mario Bava's A BAY OF BLOOD and (attempted) to give a bit of an idea of where it sits in terms of influence and importance to the slasher genre. Now it's time to travel almost 9,000 miles from Italy to one place you might least expect to find an important piece of the slasher puzzle; Australia.
Director Terry Bourke had an ambitious idea for a television anthology and managed to make a deal with the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) for a 12-part series to be called Fright. As with any series a pilot needed to be made and after 12 days of shooting Bourke had his first episode. Unfortunately the Fright series never materialized, probably due to the censorship issues it endured and the conservative state of Australian television in the 70s.

NIGHT OF FEAR was banned straight away by the censors for 'indecency and obscenity' but was successfully appealed and received a brief theatrical run under an R18+ rating. The film then faded into obscurity before finally receiving a home video release on dvd over 30 years later in 2005. Now I don't know about you but any time a movie is banned for reasons of 'indecency' or 'obscenity' it immediately piques my interest, so I bought myself a copy of the Umbrella release to find out exactly what was so inappropriate for 1970s Australian cinema. And being Australian myself (and an avid horror fan) I was particularly curious to see just what Australia's first horror movie might look like.

You could probably argue the case that WAKE IN FRIGHT is Australia's first horror film but although it does contain a certain streak of the macabre and paranoia it pales in comparison to the non-stop panic and terror presented in NIGHT OF FEAR. It's worth explaining that this isn't a particularly conventional movie in pretty much any sense. To begin with the film's inception as the pilot for a possible series means that it falls well short of your average feature at around only 54 minutes or so. It also happens to have exactly zero dialogue during the course its entire running time, indeed the only vocalizations consist of screaming, grunting and moaning, and there's a lot of it. And (probably due to this lack of dialogue) none of the characters have actual names, instead being credited as The Man and The Woman etc.

Plot-wise NIGHT OF FEAR is pretty bare-bones type stuff. It presents a backwoods-dwelling serial killer (Yemm)who stalks and traps a young woman (Hoogeveen) who happens to be unlucky enough to wanderer too close to his home. Incredibly the themes and tone of NIGHT OF FEAR are reminiscent of a certain horror classic you may well be aware of, that being the legendary TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Even more incredible is that if you look at the dates you will notice that NIGHT OF FEAR actually beat TCM to the punch by a whole two years. Was it an influence on Tobe Hooper's classic? I have no idea, and with its limited exposure it's hard to believe that Hooper would have seen this at the time but I really do like the idea that a low budget horror movie from halfway around the world influenced one of horror's classics.

NIGHT OF FEAR may not be a particularly great movie by most people's standards but it is a brilliant example of experimental filmmaking in the 70s. Apart from the lack of dialogue and character names the film also experiments with unusual camera angles (including one from inside a rotary phone looking out through the transparent dial) and a fast-paced synth soundtrack - pretty uncommon for the time. It also contains some unique set design in the form of the killer's cabin which is filled with an array of unusual and macabre items - burned dolls heads, newspaper clippings, taxidermy - which may seem like standard fare in today's horror movies, but in 1972? No way. NIGHT OF FEAR was way ahead of its time and is an extremely important part of Australian (and international) horror which precedes many slashers and it's definitely worth checking out if you have any interest in horror cinema history or experimental filmmaking

A BAY OF BLOOD (1971) Review

Directed by: Mario Bava
Written by: Franco Barberi, Mario Bava, Filippo Ottoni, Dardano Sacchetti, Giuseppe Zaccariello
Starring: Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Claudio Camaso, Anna Maria Rosati, Chris Avram, Leopoldo Trieste

"TERROR FLOWS DEEP"

I figured that a fitting way to start off this blog would be to take a look at the movie from which it borrows its title; Mario Bava's A BAY OF BLOOD (also known as TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE and about a dozen other titles). While it's not exactly what most people might call a slasher movie there's no doubt that it had an important influence on the genre (and a certain franchise in particular, but we'll get to that later). BAY is Bava's most graphically violent piece of work and apart from being an integral proto-slasher it's also a brilliant film in it's own right. In fact if you have a particular interest in slashers, giallo or just great horror films in general and you still haven't seen this one I suggest that you put it right at the top of your To Do list. Go ahead, do it right now (don't worry I'll wait).

An elderly, wheelchair-bound woman rolls across the floor of a room inside her expansive mansion, stopping briefly to take a look out the window. A black-gloved man appears from behind, loops a rope around the woman's neck and strings her up. With the woman now dead a tightly framed shot shows the as yet unknown man removing his gloves before unexpectedly panning up to reveal his face, but not for long. Another unknown killer appears and stabs the man who collapses onto the floor, bleeding to death while looking up into the face of the woman he himself just murdered. Thus begins A BAY OF BLOOD, Mario Bava's blood-soaked murderfest. And it's a suitable beginning because it gives you a taste of just how the rest of the movie is about to unfold.

A BAY OF BLOOD's wafer-thin plot involves a bay which - along with the surrounding property - is owned by a wealthy countess (that's the old dead woman). The property is prime development real estate but the countess has repeatedly refused to sell up. With the old woman dead the ownership of the bay is up for grabs and there are a number of contenders including her stepdaughter, her illegitimate son and a local architect - all of whom could potentially be willing to murder to get what they want. But things soon escalate when the body count rises and suddenly it's apparent that there is more than one murderer stalking the bay. But with everybody having their own possible motives for murder it's quite a tiring job trying to follow just who is killing who. But in all honesty the plot isn't important except as a framework to hold together a series of violent murder scenes.

The bay which is the centrepiece of the film is a pretty murky looking waterhole not too far removed from a particular lake with which you may be familiar. Replace the homes and shacks surrounding the water with cabins and you know what you get? You essentially get the infamous stomping ground of a certain Mr Jason Voorhees. But the FRIDAY THE 13TH influences don't stop there oh no. Remember that one scene in FRIDAY PART II where Jeff and Sandra are speared together mid-coitus? Well it happened here first folks. And when Mark gets a machete to the face in that same movie? Yep that happened here first as well (see below). And despite what some people would like to argue the two scenes in question are much too similar to be explained by just plain old coincidence. Rip-offs? Maybe, but I'd like to think of them more as loving tributes or homages if you will.

Apart from it's obvious influence on the slasher genre A BAY OF BLOOD is also noteworthy because rather than having a single villain there are multiple killers. None of the characters are particularly likeable, they are all devious, self-serving and they all have their own motives, all of which revolve in some way around the countess' bay. The multiple killer approach happens by way of a bloody chain reaction (indeed the film's original Italian title REAZIONE A CATENA translates to CHAIN REACTION) with some original ideas all soaked in a thick marinade of black comedy.

You're not going to want to see A BAY OF BLOOD for the acting (which is pretty ordinary at best) or for the story (which is pretty much non-existent) but it does have some impressive and artistic cinematography and a smorgasbord of gruesome murders which any slasher would be proud of. It also happens to have a completely ridiculous (yet somehow genius) ending which you will never see coming. And of course its status as an important and influential proto-slasher is as good a reason as any to take the time to check it out.