Axe
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DVD details
Actor: David Hayman, Don Cummins, Jack Canon, Lynne Bradley, Ray GreenBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 68 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-09-25
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Axe
DVD Review: "The lady's sure got some nice melons, Lomax."
Summary: 4 Stars
If you were a regular at the drive-in in the mid 1960s and throughout the 1970s, you probably weren't a stranger to the films released by Harry Novak through his Box Office International film group, enjoying such wonderfully sleazy exploitation fare as Country Cuzzins (1970), The Pigkeeper's Daughter (1972), and Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975), to name just a few. Another Box Office International release was this independent film, titled simply Axe (1977) aka Lisa, Lisa, produced by J.G. Patterson Jr. (The Gruesome Twosome), and written and directed by Frederick R. Friedel (Date with a Kidnapper), who also starred in the film, along with Leslie Lee, in her first and only onscreen role, Jack Canon (Maximum Overdrive, Weekend at Bernie's), Ray Green (The Natural History of Parking Lots), and Douglas Powers.
As the movie begins we see a trio of unfriendly looking men enter an apartment building and break into one of the units, apparently waiting for the occupant of said unit to arrive home. There's Billy (Friedel), the youngest of the three, sporting one of the more hideous perms I've seen in a long time, followed by Lomax (Green), a greasy, middle-aged, paunchy, ceegar chomping sociopath type, and finally Steele (Canon), a wiry man with a receding hairline, cruel eyes, who has a really annoying habit of continually picking at his nails, and who also seems to be in charge. Eventually two seriously effeminate fun boys show up, dressed in typically atrocious 1970s leisure wear, setting off a festival of pain as Steele an Lomax literally beat the hell out of one of the them. Why? Who knows? But I suspect it had something to do with the guy's ridiculously ugly print shirt...as for the other guy, cowering in the corner, well, let's just say he saved himself a beating by taking the express route out of the building. Anyway, the men take their psychotic show on the road, heading for the country, stopping along the way to terrorize a lone female clerk at a small grocery store apparently because of a lack of quality control regarding her fruit (it wasn't fresh enough for Steele). Given the hideous nature of the woman's floral print blouse, I'm beginning to suspect these guys are some sort of fashion terrorists, intent on sadistically humiliating and brutalizing those who would violate decorum and good taste with lousy wardrobes (hey, sounds like what that pasty skag Joan Rivers and her skagette daughter Melissa do whenever there's an award event). The terrible trio eventually ends up at a large, isolated house in the country, inhabited by a quiet, unassuming young woman named Lisa (Lee), and her paralyzed grandfather (Powers), who can't move or speak, and relies on his granddaughter, who feeds him a steady diet of raw eggs, to survive. After evaluating out the situation, Steele decides this is a good place to hole up, and the three men move in...later that night Lomax gets an itch and sneaks into Lisa's room for some mad, sweaty lovin' of the brute force kind, but instead gets a straight edge razor to the neck...ouch...Lisa then drags his corpse into the bathroom, dumps it into the bathtub, and proceeds hack the body up into bits in a sequence I like to call `I Dismember Lomax'...well, I wonder what she has in store for the other two...
Overall I thought this film a very stark and effective feature, and a great example of what can be done on an obviously minimal budget. The characters and the plot were kept simple, and the story wasted little of its meager 68 minute running time on unnecessary elements. One really interesting aspect of the film was how there was absolutely no back story towards any of the characters, especially in terms of the three men. We never truly learn who they are, or why they heaped the beating they did on the man at the beginning, whether it was under instructions from a superior, or just a vendetta against someone who did them wrong...and by the end, it didn't really matter. Instead, the story is essentially a snap shot of events that occur over a three day period, and we, the audience, happen to arrive on the scene just as things begin to get good. I though all the characters interesting and distinctive, given what little he had to go on, with Lisa being particularly so, a young female, alone, except for her mute, invalid grandfather whom she cared for, living a life of quiet desperation and despair, that is until the three men show up. At first she seemed willing to give it up, as if to say after all I've suffered these many years, this is my reward? To be used and abused by three men who just happened to pick my house as a place to hide out? What's the point? But then something snaps, and, in cool, almost calculating fashion, she starts to dispatch those deserving, given the right catalyst, that being a big, sweaty bohunk jumping her in the middle of the night. Most of the movie takes place in and about the lonesome farmhouse, and the director makes the most of the locations with some very decent shots, especially given his seemingly limited experience behind the camera. As far as the blood and gore, there is some of the first, but little of the latter, as any scenes with involving the axe are not actually shown, but shot in such a way as to leave it towards the viewer's imagination. I suspect this as done more out of budgetary constraints rather than artistic reason, but regardless, I didn't mind. There was one really unsettling scene for me, and that was near the end as Lisa is feeding her grandfather tomato soup. Given the events prior to the scene, one can't help but wonder if that's really tomato soup, or perhaps something else, something less appetizing...another element that worked really well for me was the simple musical score, with a tinge of the creepy.
Something Weird Video provides a nice looking fullscreen (1.33:1) transfer here, as the picture is clean, suffering minor flaws. The audio, presented in Dolby Digital audio, on the other hand, comes across a little soft and muddled at times, making it difficult to hear some of the dialog. I don't think this was an issue in the transfer, but something due more to how the material was originally recorded. In terms of extras, Something Weird really goes the distance providing a slew of goodies, including a 2nd, full length feature called The Electric Chair (1977), a bizarre little nugget written and directed by J.G. Patterson Jr., who produced this film. Also included are three, theatrical trailers for Axe under its various titles, along with ones for Behind Locked Doors (1968), Booby Trap (1970), The Child (1977), Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974), Kidnapped Coed (1976), The Mad Butcher (1971), The Toy Box (1971), and Toys are not for and Children (1972). On top of that we have two archival short features, the first titled Mental Health: Keeping Mentally Fit (12:14), the type of propaganda film shown in schools back in the day, and the second titled We Still Don't Believe It (3:40), featuring a female swallowing swords, to which each time she would stick a sword down her throat, an article of clothing would pop off (she stops once she gets to her undergarments), and finally a gallery of horror exploitation art with Horrorama radio spot rarities.
Cookieman108
Description of Axe
Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 07/17/2007 Run time: 68 minutes Rating: NrBestsellers in DVD
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