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Three criminals murder a pair of gay men and
flee to the countryside
to hide out. They take
refuge in an old farmhouse inhabited by a
strange, silent girl named Lisa and her catatonic
grandfather. The
men take advantage of Lisa and
her hospitality, but she's not she
proves to have a
few designs of her own.
Don't be fooled by the "Massacre" sometimes added
to the title...to
me, it felt
like director Friedel was
going for more of a mood piece/rural thriller.
I hated this movie the first time I saw it, mainly
because I felt
cheated out of the gory slasher
movie I was expecting. After seeing it
again,
I didn't exactly develop a love for it, but already
knowing
what I was getting into took a load off
my shoulders. Instead of
focusing on the story
or bloody mayhem (which, if you've seen enough
exploitation movies from the seventies, isn't very
interesting or
different from anything we haven't
seen before or done better) I found
myself more
drawn to the combination of the oddball soundtrack
and
the claustrophobic, almost canned, atmosphere.
There is definitely
a mood here, but unfortunately for us,
it's mostly boredom.
As it starts
out, one might think that they had
accidentally rented
some kind of seventies crime-drama
potboiler as the leads murder
and make their way out of
"the city", intercut with scenes of Lisa
going about
the thankless tasks of her day. Along the way from
point A to B, the crooks make a pitstop at a grocery
store and force
the clerk to play a little William Tell
with a gun. Instead of
killing the poor girl, the man
purposely shoots a bottle of ketchup
sitting above
her head (which I found a little more than ironic,
considering that most of the blood used in the movie
LOOKS like runny
ketchup). The men make their way
into Lisa's home pretty much by
walking in the front
door. Lisa seems to be accommodating, if not a
bit blank, to everything that is going on...more
concentrated on just
ending it all and getting out of
her already shitty existence.
As night wears on, two
of the men prove that they aren't going to be
so
nice and try to attack Lisa...who comes out of
her stupor to exact
some sort of revenge on them.
Not an uncommon
rendition of the typical "Last House
on the Left"-esque,
rape/revenge cycle of movies that
were so popular around it's time,
"California Axe
Massacre" takes an ambivalent stance rather than
a
gory
shockfest (although I suspect this is more because
of lack of budget
and original ideas). While the violence IS a
bit repugnant, that feeling
is pretty much laced throughout
the entire movie. What else is
interesting about this movie is
that it doesn't bog us down with usual
narrative and subplot...
we never really find out what the crooks are
running from
and we don't get the requisite scenes of blowhard cops
trying to find them...we're also not informed as to what's
wrong with
Lisa, her past, or what she's really thinking or
feeling.
Unfortunately, none of these things add up to
anything at all and I
felt like I had just sat through a
60-minute mental masturbation
exercise by its makers.
Technically it's
horrible...I noticed quite a few jump
cuts and odd
close-ups, obviously to create some sort
of tension, but even these
are horribly paced (did I mention
that the movie drags like your ass
after a heavy night
of drinking?). Director Friedel worked on both
sides
of the camera and his direction seems to be almost
non-existent.
Surprisingly, the performances aren't awful
(Leslie Lee as the
disturbed Lisa gives much better
presence than performance) but nobody
seems to
be thrilled about being here either. The sound quality
is
horrible and the years haven't exactly been kind
to the print (although
I suspect that it's already
made it's way to DVD; as if that could
improve things).
Interestingly
enough, this ended up on the British
"Video Nasties" list.
Amazing, because there doesn't
seem like there was much to object to or
cut out...
shit, banning this movie could possibly be the
biggest compliment
you could give it. But as I said
before, I don't sincerely believe that
this was ever intended
to be the type of movie that the title suggests.
A cheat? You betcha...but maybe in some alternate
universe this passes
for entertainment.
Um...not an "Axe Massacre" that's for sure...Lisa
uses her hatchet
to
behead a chicken (!) and later to chop
up an already dead body...we get
a throat slashing and
the result of an offscreen murder...most of the
blood amounts to pools of thick tomato soup (wink, wink).
Seriously, one of the things in this movie that gives
it a bit of a kick
in the ass...much better than hearing the
audio hiss in between...a hypnotic
mixture of high-pitched
organ, piano, subtle percussion, and bongo beats...
a little bit of country music...and sometimes sound FX are
amplified.
You may find it either fascinating or headache-inducing.
If you're a sane person, you should probably just avoid
this one...if you
insist on watching it, don't get your hopes up
and ONLY watch it at night.
I gave this one at least one star
(even though there are many movies that
are much more
entertaining for their sheer stupidity that I've awarded one
star) for it's weird and mundane (how these words manage to
come together
to describe something makes no sense, but
that's this movie in a nutshell)
atmosphere, interesting
soundtrack, and an ending that is better than
anything
proceeding it. But these sure as hell aren't reasons
to recommend
"California Axe Massacre" to anyone.
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