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Edge of the Axe (1988)

Dir: Jose Ramon Larraz.

We start off well enough with an effectively brutal axe slaying inside a car wash, but the enthusiasm ends there.

We are introduced to a young man called Gerald who has just moved to the small town off Paddock and lives with an old man called Brock, who has a hatred of modern machines. Which is unfortunate as Gerald is a computer freak and has just had a new one delivered.
Gerald works as a pest exterminators/fumigator with a man called Richard who is unhappily married to his rich wife Laura. Both play around.

Meanwhile a local man called Trevor goes to the local Sheriff, Frank Mcintosh, because someone has killed one of his pigs and scared his wife by sticking it's head in the bed! The Sheriff isn't interested. Nice to know your taxes aren't being wasted!

Gerald and Richard are sent on a job at the local bar because of a mysterious bad smell. They discover the smell to be the rat eaten body of Mary, the barmaid. They soon get over the shock though and meet two sisters called Susan and Lillian. Richard starts an affair with Susan and Gerald goes out with Lillian, who he gives a computer to so they can keep in touch.

Gerald and Lillian both have mysterious pasts, Gerald won't talk about his parents (we later learn his stepfather worked in a psychiatric hospital) and has a strange scar on his head. Lillian tells Gerald that she once fractured her cousin Charlie's skull while pushing him on a swing and that he spent time in a psychiatric hospital before being released two years ago. I sense a pattern here people!

Richard and Susan while enjoying a bit of boating, then find the floating head of a woman who worked at the psychiatric hospital! The plot thickens. The local easy lay called Rita is then axed by the same masked figure and soon Sheriff Mcintosh is tripping over more dead bodies...

 

Out of all the films I have reviewed this is the only one that just sits there and does nothing. Not extreme in content, not extreme in its badness or greatness, not anything. And coming from the Director of that blood/sex drenched cult classic" Vampyres", this is pretty much unforgivable.

Jose Ramon Larraz is a strange creature indeed. This Spanish Director found himself making his best films in England for English production companies. Larraz loved the English countryside and it's olde worlde mysteries. This love Britain he brought to works like "Vampyres" and "Symptoms", but here Larraz is in an American setting and the love is obviously not there.

This was one of two straight to video Spanish/American co-productions that Larraz did (the other was "Rest In Pieces") under the name 'Joseph Braunstein' and it's obvious his heart was certainly not in this shameful come down. His direction is flat and the photography by Tote Trenas is as uninspiring as most U.S slasher flicks of the 80's. Only in a strange scene at a burial where the camera zooms in on the distorted faces of the various suspects is anything remotely interesting going on in the cinematography department.

The murders are pretty brutal and we actually see the axe strike the victims again and again which adds an explicit reality to the deaths. The scene of one woman having an axe stuck into her back and then pulled out is a nasty highlight, as is a very well done finger-chopping scene. Larraz also shoots with the typical killer POV (point of view) shots and close ups of legs as the victims are being stalked. Nothing here is risky, nothing original. Argento had already used the POV sequence to greater effect in his Giallo films and none of U.S. Productions (even the seminal "Friday the 13th") could match his work. In fact only Carpenter would ever equal Argento in this technique with the wonderful work in "Halloween". Argento would later take this method to its artistic heights with "Opera". Here, with Larraz and Trenas it's simply by the numbers and tedious. The killers bald, white mask is quite effective though and was used as the video cover art.

But between the murders we have a film that goes nowhere and does nothing. The actors are all non entities and even veteran Euro trash actor Jack Taylor (he of "Pieces" and Franco's "Female Vampire") is disgustingly wasted in a part that serves no purpose and whose character only has two brief dialogue scenes. He still sports that cheesy 70's porn star moustache though, which is nice to see.

The music goes from mildly effective, if cheap, synth tunes to a dreadful 80's rock type guitar riffs and appalling country songs.

We also have a laughable attitude to computers. The old man Brock, mumbles away about the annoyance of such machines and they are treated with an almost sci-fi attitude. I know this is in the late 80's but even so. We are also treated to a hysterically bad computer voice-over that speaks the words Lillian and Gerald type with loud booming tones!

The killer is not overly obvious and the two main suspects interchange pretty well with the viewers suspicions up until the ridiculously abrupt ending that's jaw dropping in it's quick fix silliness.

Overall a sad film for the highly talented (and great fun, if you've ever seen him interviewed) Larraz to helm and so far from the gothic blood letting of "Vampyres" it's in a completely different, dross filled, universe.