Author: Chris Scullion

Chris Scullion is a Scottish video games journalist who's been covering video games professionally for 16 years. For the first six years of his career he worked at the Official Nintendo Magazine in the UK, then became the Games Editor of CVG before its untimely end. After setting up his own site, Tired Old Hack, Chris then joined Video Games Chronicle (VGC) where he is currently Features Editor. He has a passion for retro games and cataloguing their history, hence his ongoing series of console encyclopedia books (search his name on Amazon).

Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon (2006)

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Director: Scott Glosserman

Starring: Nathan Baesel, Angela Goethals, Robert Englund

“Never hang out with a virgin. You got a virgin in your crew, either get somebody in her pants or get the hell away from her.” (Jamie, Behind The Mask)

Behind The Mask is a clever movie. It fools you into thinking it’s only pretty clever, then completely turns things upside down in the final act to show you that, in fact, it’s more than just pretty clever. It’s actually very clever, maybe even ruddy clever.

At first it’s a fly-on-the-wall documentary, with a crew following Leslie Vernon (the oddly appealing Nathan Baesel), an up-and-coming slasher villain who one day dreams of being as famous as Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees. Leslie takes the crew round his local haunts, introduces them to his parents and shows them his target girl, the one he’s chosen to stalk serial killer-style.

Yes, it's the wee woman from Poltergeist. She's a bit of a legend

Leslie plans to attack this “hero girl” in typical slasher style, by breaking into the house during the party she’s set to throw with her friends and killing them off one by one. He’ll use every trick in the slasher book to get them, from cutting the power off so one of them goes into the basement, to hiding the bodies in a way that they’re found at just the right time.

Every scene had me smiling with its constant nods to previous horror films and its overall attention to horror cliche detail. Leslie shows how many of the typical horror set-pieces are really done – when a girl’s on her own and the door slam shuts behind her, it’s because the killer has already set up the door and pulled it shut with some fishing wire, and so forth.

You can always rely on Robert Englund to put in a good performance

It’s all entertaining until the night of the party, when the camera crew and presenter are forced with a moral dilemma – do they allow Leslie to go ahead with his plan and actually kill all these kids, or do they try to interfere and risk pissing him off? The resulting final act is gripping stuff with a fantastic twist that, while one you’re likely to figure out five minutes before the characters do, is still smartly handled.

Behind The Mask is a surprisingly original movie with a strong cast. A notable mention should go to Robert Englund as he performs his best professor-who-knows-the-killer impression in the style of Donald Pleasance in Halloween, while the rest of the cast is similarly appealing. I strongly recommend this if you fancy something different.

Final Destination (2000)

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Director: James Wong

Starring: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Seann William Scott

“Beware. The risk of cheating the plan, disrespecting the design, could initiate a horrifying fury that would terrorise even the Grim Reaper. And you don’t even want to FUCK with that Mack Daddy.” (Bludworth, Final Destination)

Final Destination is one of my guilty pleasures.  I know it’s a load of hokey shite and I know the plot’s so daft it makes Harry Hill look like a no-nonsense dapper English gent, but I still find myself enjoying it when I watch it.

It tells the story of Alex, a young chap about to go on a flight to Paris with the rest of his class and two of his teachers. Before the plane takes off Alex has a premonition (shown in grisly detail) that it’s going to burst into flames in mid-air, so he throws a hissy fit and gets off the plane, along with a few other students and one of the teachers who get caught up in the commotion.

"Is it a bird? Is it a plane?" "Well, it used to be a plane."

As Alex’s chums have a go at him at the terminal for making them miss their flight, they’re immediately stunned into silence when in the distance they see their plane explode in mid-air, just like Alex predicted.

Naturally, the FBI are a bit suspicious so they decide to keep their eye on Alex, but just as they decide he’s innocent the rest of the survivors begin to die one by one. Alex realises that because he and his friends cheated death by getting off the plane, Death itself is a bit pissed off and is trying to kill them off to sort it out.

"Are you serious? THAT's the in-flight movie? But I hate Mr Bean."

The most entertaining moments in Final Destination, then, are the numerous death scenes, each of which would seem accidental were we not aware that Death’s causing them. Each death scene is a clever “will they, won’t they” balance where it’s not quite clear when and how the victim is peg it. The numerous red herrings keep the audience guessing, turning something as simple as a strangulation into an elaborate game where the viewer spots hazards and tries to figure out which one will lead to each character’s inevitable death.

After an exciting first 45 minutes, the back half of Final Destination loses its steam a little. Once Alex figures out what’s going on and how it all works he becomes a member of the tinfoil hat brigade, opening tins of food while wearing thick gloves and standing candles in the middle of water-filled bowls in case they fall. This is where things start to get a little wayward and eventually the final 20 minutes are a shadow of the fantastic action in the first 45.

Still, Final Destination is worth a look if you’ve never seen it. It was popular enough to spawn three sequels, but you should definitely start with this one. Its tale of an angry death looking to cover up its mistake may be a silly one and the acting may be poorer than Detroit at times, but it’s daft fun.

Creepshow 3 (2006)

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Directors: James Dudelson, Ana Clavell

Starring: Stephanie Pettee, AJ Bowen, Kris Allen

“Nurse Jacobs, I can’t write a prescription for ugly.” (Dr Farwell, Creepshow 3)

James Dudelson and Ana Clavell should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. In 2005 Dudelson bought the rights to the Day Of The Dead name and released Day Of The Dead: Contagium, an unofficial sequel that completely pissed on everything George Romero’s classic stood for.

After this, having also obtained the rights to Creepshow (the fantastic anthology series previously written by Stephen King and directed by Romero), Dudelson and chum Clavell got to work on a script for Creepshow 3. If the aim was to once again destroy the great reputation of a classic film by releasing an atrocious sequel that’s so bad you actually feel angry as you watch it, then mission accomplished. Creepshow 3 is an embarrassment.

These guys genuinely get this far before they realise they're cutting up a woman and not a robot. Good work chaps

Like its two predecessors, Creepshow 3 is an anthology consisting of numerous short stories (five in this instance) rather than one long film. Whereas each of the stories in Creepshow 1 and 2 were self-contained tales with messages of morality though, the five mini-insults here each make very little sense whatsoever.

The first, entitled “Alice”, tells the story of a teenager whose father has bought a new TV remote. Every time he presses a button on the remote she’s transported to an alternate dimension where her family are black, Hispanic and so forth. Oh, and for some reason she starts mutating and turning into a rabbit. The ending is completely bewildering and explains nothing.

"That sunscreen you got me didn't really work that well, I'm afraid"

Then there’s “The Radio”, which is probably the best of the bunch and the only story of the five on offer that actually makes sense and has a plot that can be followed from start to finish. A guy buys a new radio that talks to him and instructs him to murder people and steal money. It actually ends on a pretty clever note and for a second it looks like Creepshow 3 might have redeemed itself.

This notion is immediately kicked down a flight of stairs with “Call Girl”, in which a serial killing prostitute meets her match when a vampire chap requests her services. This one’s thankfully pretty short: it’s a shame, because while the concept is a good one the execution is weak.

The fourth tale is “The Professor’s Wife”, in which a weird professor chap (easily the worst actor in the film) invites two of his ex-students over to meet his fiancee in advance of their wedding. Convinced she’s a robot, the students proceed to hack her to bits to find how the professor put her together, going so far beyond the point where it’d become clear a mistake has been made that the whole thing becomes ridiculous.

I don't care if you're dying mate, I genuinely don't know CPR. No, it's not because of your mouth, I'm insulted you'd suggest that

Finally there’s “Haunted Dog”, which is among the most cringeworthy twenty minutes you’ll ever experience in a film. An arrogant doctor leaves a tramp to choke on a hot dog and is haunted by him from that point on. Again, it’s a good idea, but it’s ruined by the guy they got to play the doctor, who’s so painfully unfunny during the countless “look how much of a cock this guy is” montages that watching him poorly insult patient after patient for far too long becomes a true exercise in patience.

The film attempts to tie all five stories together Pulp Fiction style by having characters from each story appearing in cameo roles in others, but it only serves to add to the confusion. Why is the doctor attending the vampire kid’s all-vampire party? How come the Hispanic alternate dimension mother is at the professor’s wedding along with the real mother? The whole thing’s a mess.

Stay away from Creepshow 3, especially if you saw and enjoyed the first two. The second story may be half-decent but overall the film is a complete insult to the series and should have been shit-canned at the idea-gathering stage.

Return To Sleepaway Camp (2008)

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Director: Robert Hiltzik

Starring: Paul DeAngelo, Vincent Pastore, Isaac Hayes, Michael Gibney

RANDY: “Are you really that stupid?”

ALAN: “Not as stupid as you, you big penis!”

Although the cult classic horror Sleepaway Camp has had a couple of sequels, neither were really seen as true spiritual successors since none of the original cast and crew were involved. With the first film’s director, writer and key cast members making a comeback for Return To Sleepaway Camp though, it could probably be considered the first ‘canon’ sequel to the original movie.

(Heads up – there are some spoilers for the original Sleepaway Camp below)

Isaac Hayes quit as Chef in South Park, then played a chef in this instead. D’oh

Taking place 25 years after Sleepaway Camp, Return is set in Camp Manabe, a new summer camp part-run by Ronnie, the head counselor in the original film’s Camp Arawak. Ronnie (played once again by Paul DeAngelo, who seemingly hasn’t learned any new acting tricks in the past two and a half decades) gets suspicious when kids at the camp start dying in gruesome ways, just like they did back at Camp Arawak.

Ronnie’s certain that Angela is to blame for the killings, even though her cousin Ricky (who is also played by the original actor, now in his mid-30s and more camp than Butlins) assures them that she’s still locked up in an asylum and has been since her rather awkward public display of nudity.

This police guy looks and sounds a bit weird. Wonder why…

This makes the prime suspect Alan – a big fat simple lad who’s constantly bullied by the other campers. Throughout the film this gets to Alan and he snaps on a regular basis, often screaming at his bullies and sometimes even pointing a knife at them. But is Alan upset enough to actually kill anyone? That’d be telling.

Much like the original, everything in Return To Sleepaway Camp is pleasantly bad. The acting remains as abysmal as ever, the dramatic music blares over scenes of standard dialogue for no reason at all, the script is atrocious (check the example above to see what I mean) and while the inevitable “twist” ending was clearly never going to match the original in terms of shock value, it should still please some fans of the first film.

This was the worst telescope Duncan had ever used

A slasher film generally lives and dies by the inventiveness of its death scenes, and Return To Sleepaway Camp makes a decent attempt at it. Whether it’s the wince-inducing scene involving a length of wire tied to both the manhood of a poor chap tied to a tree and a truck set to drive off, or the will-they-won’t-they moment where two kids keep looking through a hole in the ground where they can see a sharpened a broom handle lying under their cabin, the kill scenes are fun enough to keep you watching even if they’re not amazingly well-executed (pun very much intended).

Return To Sleepaway Camp isn’t trying to be the greatest film ever made, it’s a fun and sometimes tongue-in-cheek love letter to fans of the first film who continue to keep its legend alive. For this reason I’d recommend watching the original first, and only giving this a shot if you decide you want more of the same.

The Gingerdead Man (2005)

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Director: Charles Band

Starring: Gary Busey, Robin Sydney, Ryan Locke

“Daddy, you’ve got to come and get me. I’m at Betty’s Bakery and we’ve got homicidal baked goods after us.” (Lorna, The Gingerdead Man)

Sometimes a film title is so great you just know in your heart that the film has to be fantastic. Often though, especially in the B-movie horror genre, the movie fails to deliver on the quality of the title. The Gingerdead Man is unfortunately a prime example of this.

The film starts off with a flashback of a killer (played by Gary Busey) shooting up a restaurant then shooting a girl called Sarah as he leaves. Sarah survives, unlike the rest of her family, and is working in her bakery later when she hears that the killer is getting the electric chair.

Susan Boyle's makeover could have gone better

As luck would have it, the killer is executed just as she’s cooking a gingerbread man. After getting into a scrap with a local beauty queen, Sarah accidentally sends a power surge into the oven, causing the killer’s soul to travel through the electricity and into the gingerbread man she’s cooking. Cue ridiculous scenes with a tiny pastry swearing at people and threatening to cut their fingers off.

Despite the admittedly ace title The Gingerdead Man is an atrocious film, with acting that verges on the level of a primary school play and special effects that look like someone spent half an hour learning how to use a Mac for the first time.

What’s more, the Gingerdead Man himself is a rubbish character. His face is boring, his dialogue is horrible (“well, I sure ain’t the Pillsbury fucking Doughboy”) and most of the time you can tell he’s just a rubbish hand puppet that someone’s working from the inside. When he fires a gun in one scene you can even make out the hand holding the gun in place at one point.

Mary had been complaining of a sharp pain in her head for a while

The characters are vapid, their mock southern accents are horrible, one guy is an absolute cock yet manages to get the wholesome girl without really doing anything, and the ‘twist’ ending is so laughably bad that I had to rewind it to make sure it was definitely meant to be a twist.

The only positive thing about The Gingerdead Man is that at just under 70 minutes long it’s mercifully short, leaving you more time afterwards to watch genuinely entertaining films. This one should have been left in the oven to burn yet, amazingly, it has two sequels (The Passion Of The Crust and Saturday Night Cleaver), which both also seem to have had more work spent on the title than the film.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

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Director: Robert Hiltzik

Starring: Felissa Rose, Jonathan Tiersten, Karen Fields

Also known as: Nightmare Vacation (UK VHS)

BILL: “Eat shit and die, Ricky!”
RICKY: “Eat shit and live, Bill.”

My first encounter with Sleepaway Camp was an unassuming purchase at a second-hand DVD shop in a Glasgow market. I was a member of a horror forum at the time and I vaguely remembered it being a part of someone’s list of horror films that were worth checking out. I had slight recollections that there was a reason it was such essential viewing but for the life of me I couldn’t remember why.

This (wo)man is guilty of the worst acting ever committed to celluloid

I took it home and there it sat for a few weeks, until eventually I watched it with my brother late one night. We were used to watching cheesy ’80s camp slashers and for the first 80 minutes of its 84-minute duration Sleepaway Camp is a prime example of this, with its hilariously bad acting and inventive, gruesome deaths. And then the ending came, with an image that will forever be burnt into the minds of my brother and I for the rest of our lives.

Angela and her cousin Ricky… but who’s the killer?

The general plot seems fairly run-of-the-mill. After a man and one of his children die in a horrible boat accident, the man’s sister takes in the other, orphaned child and raises it as one of her own. Fast-forward to ten years later and the child, Angela, heads off to summer camp with her cousin Ricky. As you’d expect, shit starts to go down at the camp and people start dropping off in gruesome ways, but who’s behind the killings?

The new series of Bullseye had started horribly wrong

Sleepaway Camp feels like a real labour of love. Despite the sub-standard acting which ranges from wooden (most of the counsellors are as one-dimensional as an x-axis) to ridiculously over-the-top (the actress – at least, I think it’s a woman – playing Angela’s aunt really has to be seen to be believed), it’s clear that everyone’s having a ball making this film and this comes across in the relationships with the children. Sure, they can’t act, but you find yourself not really caring.

Without even taking the ending into account (I’ll get to that later… no spoilers though, of course), Sleepaway Camp is littered with scenes that are surprisingly dark and grisly for a standard slasher film, especially considering most of the victims aren’t the older teen camp counsellors we’re used to in this sort of film, but actually the children attending the camp.

You’ll squirm as one of the girls gets hair curlers thrust into an unmentionable area, wince as a young lad is stung to death by bees, cheer as the paedophile chef (yes, really) gets what’s coming to him and gasp as you see a brief glimpse of a group of mutilated eight-year-olds. Yes, it might be cheesy and low-budget, but Sleepaway Camp isn’t fucking around.

Genuine dialogue: “She’s a real carpenter’s dream… flat as a board and needs a screw”

And then there’s the ending (which I refuse to even hint at). It’s a true shock becomes it comes completely out of nowhere, yet still makes sense in the context of the story. The film lulls you into a false sense of superiority as you’re more or less certain to guess the killer within the film’s first 25 minutes. It’s so obvious it’s almost laughable, and you sit patiently waiting for the ‘shock’ reveal when they’re exposed as the perpetrator. But then it throws a curveball at the last minute by revealing that the killer’s identity was never supposed to be the big twist, it was always meant to be something entirely different and far more shocking.

I urge you to track down Sleepaway Camp. It’s 80 minutes of fun, cheesy camp slasher gold, topped off with what’s genuinely one of the most memorable endings in cinematic history. You will not get that final image out of your head, I guarantee it.

Troll 2 (1990)

Published on by Chris Scullion8 Comments

Director: Claudio Fragasso

Starring: Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey, Robert Ormsby

“Do you see this writing? Do you know what it means? Hospitality! And you can’t piss on hospitality! I won’t allow it!” (Michael, Troll 2)

A lot of films are considered awful, but Troll 2 is so bad that calling it awful feels like going easy on it. Not content with simply being a bad film, Troll 2 was actually at one point the #1 worst-rated film on the entire Internet Movie Database site.

That’s one hell of an achievement, and one that most people who’ve seen the film wouldn’t argue with, but that dubious honour only tells half the story. It doesn’t explain, for example, that despite (or indeed because of) its flaws it’s one of the most entertaining films you’ll see.

This Jimmy Saville goblin is easily my favourite of the bunch

The plot is up there with Citizen Kane. Young Joshua and his family head to the tiny country town of Nilbog to do a house swap with a family there. All is not as it seems though, as Joshua’s dead grandfather appears in a vision to tell him that the town is actually inhabited by goblins pretending to be humans. What’s more, these goblins want to turn Joshua and his family (as well as a group of teenage lads who’ve also driven to Nilbog) into plants so they can eat them. Because they’re vegetarian goblins, you see.

The slowest rescue scene ever committed to film

The truly impressive thing about Troll 2 is the consistency with which it delivers comically bad moments. From the opening scene in which Joshua’s grandpa tells him the story of the goblins, to the moment where Joshua literally pisses  on a dinner table to stop his parents from eating tainted goblin food (leading to the classic line at the top of this review), to the sister’s amazingly bad dance routine, to the hilarious goblin costumes, to the blatantly obvious ‘revelation’ when Joshua looks in a car mirror and realises why the town’s called Nilbog, every single scene features at least one thing that’s laughably awful.

To give Troll 2 a little credit (and only a little, mind) there are some moments that are clearly supposed to be ridiculous. The part where a young lad in a camper van is seduced by a woman wielding an ear of sweetcorn, in which their passionate encounter ends up getting so steamy that the entire van somehow fills up with popcorn, couldn’t possibly have meant to be serious.

Not a good actor among this bunch, yet they're all lovable in their own way

Indeed, the more you watch Troll 2 and the more hilariously bad moments you encounter, the more suspicious you get and you start to fear you’ve been the victim of an elaborate practical joke, that the movie that was designed to be deliberately bad and you’ve fallen for it. Thankfully, as proven by the recent (fantastic) documentary Best Worst Movie, it’s clear this wasn’t the case and the cast and crew were actually trying their hardest.

Troll 2 is the perfect film to watch with a group of friends. While most cheesy films suffer from bad acting or a daft plot, Troll 2 is rare in that every single element – the direction, music, acting, special effects, script, plot and editing – is fantastically terrible. It’s the movie equivalent of all the planets lining up as they revolve around the sun – it’s so rare that every single element that could be shit is present and accounted for. As a result, it’s a joy to watch from start to finish.

(technical ability)

(pure joy)

Killjoy (2000)

Published on by Chris Scullion7 Comments

Director: Craig Ross Jr

Starring: Angel Vargas, Vera Yell, Lee Marks

“That’s how you bust caps, mother FUCKER!” (Killjoy, Killjoy)

Killjoy is a film about a bullied boy who summons the spirit of an evil voodoo ghetto clown from the ‘hood. If you managed to read that without flinching then you must have truly seen everything the world has to offer.

The story goes that young Michael fancies the girlfriend of Lorenzo, the baddest motherfucker in the whole… um, street. Lorenzo threatens Michael with a gun and tells him that if he ever goes near his lady again he’ll put more holes in him than this movie’s plot.

Easily in the top five things you don't want to look up and see during sex

Eager to get his own back on Lorenzo and the girl (even though she didn’t really do anything), Michael decides to summon Killoy, an evil spirit that messes people up in a way that’s never really explained too well. After sitting a hilariously cheap-looking doll in a room full of candles and asking Killjoy to come, Michael’s prayers are answered and Killjoy starts fucking people up.

Doug enjoyed Turkish Delight a bit too much

This is where the movie starts to make even less sense than it already did. It’s hard to tell whether everyone’s in some sort of dream world, or the real world, or a different dimension or something, and the film can’t really make its own mind up either. One minute the characters are entering an ice cream truck and teleporting into a different room, the next their corpses are turning up in real life. Confusion runs rife.

"My hair? Oh, I was giving my radio a bath"

Also bizarre is Killjoy himself. He’s essentially some sort of ‘gangsta’  clown and as such has some ridiculous lines that make him about as terrifying as a Kriss Kross music video. Watch as he slaps a man to the ground then says “biiiiiii-iiitch”, or attacks a female character before saying “that’s some good pussy”. There’s nothing terrifying about him at all, he’s just a proper pain in the arse.

I can’t really recommend Killjoy, not even as a “so bad it’s good” film, unless you see genuine humour in the idea of a killer clown talking like Chris Rock. It’s so low budget that it goes beyond “how charming” and wanders into “they’re not even fucking trying to make it look good” territory, and as such is more annoying than amusing to watch. Check out the trailer below and you’ll more or less get the full joke.

Night Of The Bloody Apes (1969) (Video Nasty review #4)

Published on by Chris Scullion4 Comments

Director: René Cardona

Starring: José Elisa Moreno, Carlos Lopez Moctezuma, Norma Lazareno

“I’ll say that’s absurd, the proofs are circumstantial, it’s more probable that of late more and more you’ve been watching on your television many of those pictures of terror.” (Dr Martinez, Night Of The Bloody Apes)

Night Of The Bloody Apes is easily in my top ten Mexican-luchador-wrestling-ape-based monster movies, and I can assure you that’s a highly competitive list. Given its title though, it’s actually a little disappointing since there’s only one ape in the film and it’s not really a proper one. Let me explain.

The movie has two main plotlines. Lucy, a masked wrestler, is having problems living with herself after she puts another wrestler in hospital by throwing her out of the ring during a match. Meanwhile, in the same hospital, the mad scientist Dr Krellman is upset that his son is dying of lukemia and so decides that the only way to save his life is by giving him a heart transplant.

"I hope everyone likes my new church outfit"

Maybe hearts aren’t too easy to come by in Mexico – I’m no Top Gear presenter so I’m not really touching that one – but for some reason Dr Krellman decides that, rather than waiting for a human heart to become available, he’ll kill a gorilla and take its heart instead. Because that’ll definitely work and won’t fuck things up.

After the transplant, it quickly becomes clear that it definitely hasn’t worked and things are very much fucked up when Krellman’s son becomes a sort of half-man half-gorilla. His face turns into that of a strange monkey man and he has the sort of rage that can only be matched by watching someone watching two hours’ worth of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.

"I only came here for bunion surgery"

Monkey chap then escapes the hospital and goes on the warpath, raping and mutilating various ladyfolk living nearby. It’s up to Dr Krellman to find out how to stop him… possibly by replacing his monkey heart with another human one. If only there was some sort of hospitalised female wrestler close to death with a heart that could be sneakily removed and used instead…

Wayne Rooney relaxes at home

Night Of The Bloody Apes is just silly from start to finish and while it’s understandable why it was considered a video nasty at the time it’s still very tame compared to some of the others. The ‘rape’ scenes are thankfully clothed and very brief and the blood is a bit unrealistic. In fact, perhaps the most controversial moments in the film are the two heart transplant scenes, which actually use stock footage of real-life human heart transplants for added realism. If you’re a bit squeamish when watching operation footage then, this isn’t for you.

By far the best thing about the film is the terrible dialogue. Since it was originally filmed in Mexico it’s all dubbed, but the translation to English is so literal that many of the lines make no real sense (like the example at the top of this review). This results in some quotable classics, like the scene where Dr Krellman tries to convince his accomplice to take the injured wrestler’s heart: “A little slither of bone lies in her cerebrum. And if by some miracle she lives she’ll be an idiot for the rest of her life.”

If a big group of you want to have a laugh while watching something pleasantly crap, Night Of The Bloody Apes is a good shout. Watch it on your own though and the novelty will wear off about half an hour in. Naturally, the trailer makes it look a lot more exciting than it really is:

Axe (1977) (Video Nasty review #3)

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Director: Frederick R Friedel

Starring: Leslie Lee, Jack Canon, Ray Green, Frederick R Friedel

(a tortured man jumps out a window to his death)
LOMAX: “Why’d he do that? That was twelve floors.”
STEELE: “Nah, it was only nine.”

There’s nothing like the power of advertising. Axe was originally called Lisa, Lisa and was meant to be an artsy fartsy look at the way people under attack can do disturbing things to protect themselves and their family. It didn’t do too well so it was rebranded Axe and started doing the drive-in circuit in America under the guise of a horror film. In some parts it was even renamed again, this time to California Axe Massacre, despite the fact there’s no massacre in it and it’s set nowhere near California.

Derek wasn't a fan of Radox's new strawberry-scented bath gel

The story is similar to many of the ‘revenge’ movies at the time. A gang of three ne’er-do-wells is on the run from the police so after killing a chap by beating him to death with a doll (seriously) and cutting his nose off, then traumatising a supermarket woman by shooting a bottle of ketchup above her head, they seek solace in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

The problem is, the farmhouse is the home of teenage Lisa and her fully paralysed granddad. Well, I say fully paralysed, but he’s got a different facial expression in every scene and can sometimes be seen moving his eyes or shaking, meaning instead he just looks like a man sitting there not doing anything.

Anyway, the three decide to take over the house and torment Lisa and her granddad. She’s not having it though, and after one of them tries a bit of illicit fiddling she kills him and cuts him into pieces with an axe. I’d have gone for the pepper spray myself, but I’ve never been in that situation so what do I know.

Cheer up missus, you'll get to star in a good film one day. Actually, you won't

The rest of the movie entails Lisa trying to make sure the other two gang members aren’t suspicious while also protecting her granddad from any harm. Yet despite being a brisk 68 minutes long, Axe somehow still has the ability to feel sluggish and boring at times. The acting is beyond woeful – I really hope the ‘actress’ playing Lisa was trying to make her sound a bit mental and that wasn’t her actual acting style – and that goes for everyone including the director, Frederick F Friedel, who stars as Billy, the member of the gang who has a conscience and starts to feel sorry for Lisa. Meanwhile, this poor acting is underlined with is a bizarre soundtrack consisting mainly of bongo drums and saxophones.

It’s clear that had Axe kept its original title of Lisa, Lisa it probably would have escaped the DPP’s Video Nasties list and would never been banned in the UK. Everything that could be controversial is actually pretty tame: there are only three killings and they mostly take place off-screen, the attempted sexual assault scene is a fully clothed affair and doesn’t rely on exploitative nudity to titillate audiences, and as a result it’s dwarved by most of today’s horror films (and many of those released at the same time as it) when it comes to notorious material.

Axe isn’t a completely terrible film: the first fifteen minutes are interesting and the supermarket scene is genuinely emotional. It’s certainly not enough to recommend a film on one scene though, and as a result I’d only recommend watching it if, like me, you’re trying to see as many Video Nasties as possible. In fact, the trailer’s much more fun to watch than the film, so be sure to watch it below.

HOW NASTY IS IT? – Not really nasty at all. There’s one scene involving a flick knife, and all the rest of the kills happen off-screen. There’s a fair amount of (unrealistic) blood but it’s rarely seen coming out of anyone, it’s generally just seen as stains on the floor or on the killers’ clothing. It’s no worse than the likes of Halloween and really should never have been banned in the first place, which is why these days it’s once again readily available to buy uncut.