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The Toolbox Murders (1978)

Dir: Dennis Donnelly

Basic Story: A balaclava wearing nut named Vance Kingsley ('Housewives favourite', Cameron Mitchell, about as far from wholesome TV Westerns as you can get!), goes around an apartment complex bumping off various females. Er, that's it!...

Banned in the in the UK during the 80's (even in a slightly cut form) and put on the infamous 'Video Nasties' list, "The Toolbox Murders" is, at least for it's opening 25 minutes, a rare thing; it's a film that not only lives up to it's 'nasty' reputation, but blows the lid off it.

The opening, is simply a series of amazingly sadistic murders, one after another. The victims are killed with various implements from Cameron's handy Toolbox.
First up we have a drill killing, where the Women's arm is drilled before she is finally holed in the back.
Next a young women is shown changing her top (yeah, breasts on show in true exploitation fashion) before, in a shockingly casual scene, she is knocked out and carried into a stairwell where she has her head smashed in with a claw hammer. The body is dragged back into her apartment where next a friend appears and finds the body, she tries to flee but is grabbed by the killer, bashed to the floor, and has a screwdriver slowly pushed into her stomach.

Next (All these murders happen with absolutely no let up) we get to the scene of infamy, all the other stuff before pales against this. It is ESSENTIAL to describe this sequence in full to show pure Sxploitation film making in full flow... A women is shown taking a bath where, in a long scene, she masturbates and as she climaxes the killer comes in. She is chased around the apartment, always shown completely naked, as the killer tries to shoot her with a nail gun.
She jumps onto the bed, still shown with truly exploitative full frontal shots (and she's a hairy girl, which makes it even more in your face...so to speak) where she begs for her life as the killer fondles her. She then tries to run again but gets a nail in her back that goes through her stomach. She staggers around the room, pouring blood, and slides down onto a desk unit, her back against the wall. Still shown with full frontal shotsl, the killer bends over her, rubs up against her and puts the nailgun to her head. He fires, splattering blood over the back wall. She is shown dying with blood dripping over her nakedness.

The point of describing this murder is to push home the sheer nerve of the film makers in their blatant showcasing of the kind of politically incorrect, exploitation for exploitation's sake, movie making that made the 70's the most outrageous decade in Horror and Exploitation.
The murders (especially the nail gun) are made with a relish for the more exploitative aspects of the victims suffering, most of the footage is completely gratuitous.
It's Exploitation film making at it's purest and most honest.
If only the film had kept this extreme power alive though. Sadly it does not.

Th emovie now really slows down, alot. We are introduced to another suspect, Vance's Nephew, Kent (Wesley Eure). But the very idea of having Mitchell in the film, and so far only having him in one brief scene, shows he has to be the killer.
Another girl is kidnapped, because she reminds vance of his dead Daughter, and she is tied up to a bed where she has to endure (like the audience) vances/Mitchell's mad chatter and out of tune, sad and most definately mad, singing!
A twist is added near the end to try and liven things up and it's actually very good and turned the film away from where you were sure it was going. I shall give no more away.

So we have a very good and extreme start for sure, but this fast paced violence is short lived resulting in a film that's sadly rather dull for the rest of its running time..
But Mitchell is worth watching, and the brutal murder sequences deliver the exploitation goods in spades. Or whatever other implement you wish to use.