Nail Gun Massacre (1985)
NAIL GUN MASSACRE
WRITEN BY: Terry Lofton
DIRECTED BY: Bill Leslie & Terry Lofton
STARRING:
Rocky Patterson as Doc
Ron Queen as the Sheriff
Michelle Meyer as Linda
Beau Leland as Bubba
SYNOPSIS: In the middle of nowheresville, Texas, a person dressed in a biker helmet, a camoflaged jumpsuit, and wielding a nail gun goes on a massacre killing off an endless stream of people and stereotypes as the mystery unfolds of who and why this person is commiting these acts.
THE GUTS: Man, this movie opens up without pulling any punches. The very first scene is of a group of construction workers holding a woman down on a pile of dirt as she struggles to get free, and it isn't long before they're ripping her clothes off. It looks like they're raping her, but in typical movie fashion, her pants are still on. This doesn't make the act any less tragic or horrific for the woman, but that convention does make it more stupid.
We leave that scene of uncomfortableness for a house that is either next door to the world's largest bonfire, or just south of London, to judge by all the smoke in the air. Through all that we can see a woman hanging up the laundry while her baby watches.
Indoors, or what I presume is indoors since it would be rather quick for the movie to jump to yet another completely different location so soon, is this movie's bread and butter; redneck stereotypes. Redneck Stereotype #1 is the pissed off husband who doesn't have a clean shirt, and yelling at his woman's carelessness. We also get the lovely image of watching him come out of the toilet and zipping up his pants. Thanks, movie.
Back outside, Mrs. Redneck Stereotype #1 is being watched by more than just us. A camo-clad figure steps into view, loading a row of nails into his nail gun, which might be easier if he wasn't wearing gloves. Or practiced it before filming. Or filmed more than one take.
So, we've got the nails. We've got the gun. Bring on the massacre.
Nothing to see here. Doo dee doo.
As the idiot inside continues his a-hootin' and a-hollerin', Nailgunner Joe creeps closer and closer to the woman and her baby. It is amazing neither of them see the guy. Especially the baby. As he closes in on her, the POV cam turns away, as he's distracted by a squirrel I guess. He circles around the clothesline and moves between it and the house, heading for the latter.
Can you see the problem here?
I can almost get behind not seeing the guy behind her, but there's plenty of tells that tip a person off to such things, but I can almost roll with that, if I have to do so. At this point however, he has moved and stepped directly in front of the woman, smack dab in her line of sight, between her and the house.
This guy has a better perception filter than Torchwood. I mean, come on. Sure, he's wearing camo, but that shit just isn't going to blend in THAT well. Especially with a big, black biker helmet, and the bright, canary yellow of the air tank AND hose required for the nailgun. And that's the part that is facing the woman as he heads houseward.
And yes, the clothesline laden with clothes is between them, but we clearly see the woman look over the clothes. At the house. With our bad guy between the two.
Candygram!
Nailgunner Joe finally enters the run down little shack, and confronts Redneck Stereotype #1, and I swear they've gone and swapped actors between cuts for whomever is under the biker helmet. Either that, or he just looked bigger outside without adequate sense of scale.
Anyways, he pops a few nails into the guy, and if you think my jokes are bad, then Nailgunner Joe's will kill you faster than the nails will. Yes, they are that bad. As an example, he looks down at his first victim, with his hand nailed to the middle of his forehead and says, "Those are the worst headaches, the ones right between the eyes."
Oh, and I guess I'll comment on his voice. It's definitely a down south accent, pretty thick, and on top of that they've modulated it so over the top he sounds like a down south Cyberman. Don't get your hopes up for just how his voice was distorted. The movie will never, ever tell us. Make up your own excuse.
Yes, he is like some lame action hero with his snappy one liners, but instead he's the bad guy.
And I thought it was bad when Corpse Grinders did this and it was just a doll.
Meanwhile, the wife is still outside hanging clothes, and completely oblivious to all things executional. She scolds the kid for being in a box and removes him from it. By the arm. And it was a real kid. This caught me so off guard, I could not stop laughing in amazement at what I'd just seen. I had to stop the movie and just take a few moments to marvel at the sheer WTFery of it all, and give my brain time to process it. Not enough time in the world for that, I'm afraid.
Inside the apparently soundproof shack, Nailgunner Joe continues shooting nails into his victim and cackling maniacally. Ok, so maybe the wife wouldn't hear the laughter as she comes closer, but those nailguns aren't exactly the most subtle of devices. Especially when the only thing between the nailgun and the person who might hear it is a screen door.
We don't even see Mrs. Stereotype enter the house. She just rounds a corner and suddenly we get a closeup of her husband's bloody, nailed face, and we hear her scream. Did she run into the footage, or the house? We do see her running away from the house though, choking and gagging over what she saw. It is so obvious that the scenes inside the house and outside were filmed so far apart in terms of time, and location, and with entirely different people. Never do the two locations meet in such a way as to tie the scene together. Nor do the two actors playing the married couple ever see each other on screen.
Naaaaaailgun!
The credits roll, with the modulated laughter and him making spooky ghost like noises being used as music. At the time, this might have just been effective and creepy, and I can kinda get into it, but then I realise that I'm essentially listening to a guy go, 'OoooOOOOoooo, moohoowahahaha!" and it turns that corner into sillytown.
The movie slowly pans around a room, and we can hear two people babbling, but we can't see them yet. They sound like the adults in any given Peanuts cartoon. Thanks, movie.
Oh, I see. It's just two people rutting like weasels. The guy calls off the session when he sees the time. Rather than spend time in bed with his girlfriend, he would rather jump out of bed and go off with his friends into the woods to cut wood. Is that what the kids call it nowadays?
The woman prances around topless for the entire scene, and I presume that's to distract people from her horrible acting. As if that little bit of objectification isn't bad enough, as she stands in front of a mirror to primp and preen for no apparent reason, the camera slowly zooms in. Right on her chest. There's no getting around it, it ain't some happy accident, it zooms RIGHT in, all the way, until they take up the whole screen. Now, I'm not a prude, but I do hate when it is so obvious.
As he leaves, she flops on the couch, and just lays there for a good, long while as the camera continues to film and film her nakedness. She's actually partly covered up by an arm, until it just flops down to the side to reveal her bare chest again. If I didn't know better, I could almost hear the director telling her to move it. The glare past the camera does not dissuade me from this notion, either.
The two guys end up in the middle of nowhere, which just so happens to be right where the other murder happened, and that's why no one else has shown up. No one else is dumb enough to tempt fate, except for these two gomers, who think the odds of the killer striking the same spot twice isn't likely.
Mark, in true redneck fashion, wields the chainsaw and says he'll just fend the killer off with that. With that, his friend heads off into the wood to take a leak, and becomes Redneck Stereotype #2; idiot who goes into the woods to piss.
As #2 passes a tree, we see the familiar yellow air tank, but no one else does. Ok, he's creeping and hiding to avoid notice, but how does Mark not see him? The killer is behind a tree, circling to avoid notice by the other guy going into the woods, but that puts him between Mark and #2, and as he turns to keep the tree between him and his target, that puts him right in Mark's line of sight.
This reminds me of this silly thing my friends and I used to do, goofing around to try and avoid doing something. We'd cover our eyes and declare, "I can't see you, so you can't see me!" Yeah, it doesn't really work that way.
I said where's the PAINTBALL tournament!
So, #2 turns around, and once again I have to wonder how no one sees this guy until their eyes are RIGHT on him. He's right there! He has to be seen! Look at that image there! To add insult to injury, #2 wasn't done doing his #1, and whizzes all over the killer's camo legs. Man, before he was just gonna smack you around like a redheaded stepchild, but now you are so dead. DEAD!
He gets shot twice in the gut, after another bad line from the killer about being pissed off. And again, I can ALMOST buy #2 not seeing him, but how the hell is Mark missing all this? He was a whole ten feet away. How does he not see the killer? Not hear the nailgun? Not hear the awful, awful jokes? Whhhhyyyyyyy?!
They try to cover it up with a noise that I presume must be the chainsaw, but I thought it was the airtank at first.
Not finished yet, since he's not been noticed, and he fires another nail, this time at #2's crotch and says that should fix his leak. The poor bastard who has now been removed from the gene pool at least, lays there rolling and moaning, which is another thing Mark should hear. Maybe that's why #2 isn't yelling for help? Does he know Mark is deaf as a post? It's the only explaination I got.
And since it looks like Mark has yet to get the chainsaw going, we can scratch that theory off the board. Yep, deaf. He finally gets it running as the killer badly creeps up on him.
Nailgunner Joe comes up right behind him and pops two nails into Mark. This kills him instantly, and he falls forward in the most awkward fashion possible to try and justify the the following scene. Mark is supposed to somehow take his hand off the chainsaw, lean forward, twist the chainsaw around, and bring his wrist DOWN on the blade, so we think he slices his hand off, when it would have been easier to bring the chainsaw down on the hand isntead. Except the camera rolls for too long, and the scene still goes so fast that it's easy to miss what he did, and makes it easy to see both hands as he falls forward.
The next scene has the chainsaw and bloody hand fall into view, and I had to run the film back three times to figure out what just happened, because it didn't look like anything got cut off. Oh, and there's more jokes about Mark falling to pieces.
I'm surprised at his demise, since Mark had hero written all over him.
Two hands!!
Anyways, some time later, Redneck Stereotype #3, the crappy sheriff, finds Mark's truck and calls his find in.
Meanwhile, some guy and his girlfriend, our new hero candidate, is buying groceries as she comes in and tells him she found a place for them to live for free as long as they fix it up. His reaction to her news is one of pure, unbridled, anitpathy. Or bad acting. The lack of enthusiasm in his performance is palpable.
As they're about to leave, the cashier tells them that there's been a bunch of murders out at that house, as casual as can be. How's the weather, the water's fine, there's a killer in your basement.
KITT, it looks like we've driven into another bad movie, keep driving!
Back with sheriff stereotype, another car pulls out, and the county doctor steps out. And I swear he's a young House. In fact since he doesn't get an actual name, much like 95% of the people in this film, I shall dub him Doctor House from here on out. As if the resemblence wasn't bad enough, the sheriff even tells him he needs to start dressing more like a doctor, but he got sick of wearing white. Isn't that exactly what House said in early episodes?
The sheriff tells House about how close they are to the previously mentioned death house. Place your bets now on just what the connection is between the killer and Old Lady Bailey.
They speculate that it could be Old Lady Bailey herself, since her husband was a carpenter, and there's all these nails laying around. Not a bad theory I guess, but the idea that it's an old lady creeping around the woods with a gravelly techno voice cracks me up.
It's not lupus.
While those two goobers are in the woods doing their differential diagnosis, we see Bruce Springsteen wandering along an empty road as Nailgunner Joe's puke yellow hearse rolls up. As he zooms past Bruce, the singer flips the car the bird, and the hearse stops. What good could possibly come from flipping a hearse off in the middle of nowhere?
Anyways, the Boss pretty much gets what he deserves when he rushes up to the car to get in and instead gets a nail in the chest. Does this guy just drive up and down the road looking for people to kill? He really need a hobby.
Maybe he should take up carpentry.
The killer exits the car and circles around as Bruce begs for his life. Look, if the guy you are begging for mercy has already shot you with a nail gun, point blank, in a clearly deliberate fashion, he's not going to hesitate finishing the job. And yes, there's more bad jokes.
Now, where did you say the hardware store was?
After nailing the poor bastard's hands together and making jokes about praying, he then puts one more nail in the guy's shoulder. This totally non-fatal wound kills him instantly. Which is good, because there's no way the nail could hold his hands down to the pavement.
Back in town, Sheriff Stereotype and House pull up on another dead body, which we didn't get to see killed. On the one hand, I'm upset we missed the fun, but not the bad jokes.
The doc looks over the body and says they have an apparent epidemic. Oh yeah, I instantly want to avoid this doctor. I'm not sure what's worse, that he might be cracking jokes over a dead body, or that he might be serious that this is an epidemic. No wait, I do know. The latter option is way worse.
There is no such epidemic that would make people sprout growths that look exactly like nails from their faces. What next, gas masks growing out of nowhere?
Redneck Stereotype #4 shows up and gives House a hard time about the body. The doc says he assumes the woman died the same way as all the others, from puncture wounds. Gee, ya think?
The sheriff gets the call about Bruce being dead on the highway, and as the pair are about to leave and investigate the new body, the farmer asks about the girl on the ground. The sheriff cavalierly says that she's not going anywhere, and they'll be back with the ambulance later. And with that, I'm officially on the killer's side. The people in this town are officially too stupid to live.
At least RS #4 calls the sheriff an asshole.
They come upon the Boss, and House says none of his wounds are fatal, and he must have died a very slow death. I see the road are heavily trafficked here.
Hey, remember that trio in the grocery store? Our potential heroes? Well, they've finally settled into their house, and having a lovely cheapo dinner of Spaghetti-os. They hear a noise outside, and presume its an animal. Despite a half dozen bodies being found almost on their doorstep so far.
We cut to a very wide shot of the house from the outside, and even though it's kinda dark, and the house is far away, I can still tell that it's Nailgunner Joe lurking around outside the house. I can see him better than anyone else in this movie. Oh, and the house is the same one from the start of the movie.
The next day the gang is at the hardware store getting supplies, and a woman rushes out yelling and ranting about how they forgot their receipt, almost taking it personally that they forgot. I wonder what that's all about, and so do the two schlubs in the truck. They forgot the receipt, it isn't like they didn't pay.
They pull off and drive right by the killer's distinctive hearse. I guess we know where he buys his nails. Another group of people drive up and ask about work. The guy there sends them up to the Old Bailey House to help with the repairs. Since the people that are there fixing the place up can't afford anything more than Spaghetti-os to eat, I doubt their hiring.
And what is with all the new people coming in and out of this movie? The movie is tossing people into the cat food grinder so fast that we don't even get names for anyone, and we don't even care about them before they're nailed. This is one of the highest turnover rates ever.
As that group of people drives off, we get a closeup on the guy and he delivers an ominous line, "I'll see you sooner than you think." Did...did the movie just blow their big mystery in the most ham fisted, unsubtle, random way possible? A mere third of the way through the movie? I refuse to accept that.
The woman who got uppity over the receipt asks about the kids, then scornfully adds, "Are they...CONSTRUCTION WORKERS?" Oh...oh geeze. They're related to the woman who got pants-raped, aren't they? They're seeking crazy revenge on people who build stuff, I guess? They're the Batman of East Texas.
Construction workers are a superstitious and cowardly lot.
The second group around at the now-infamous Old Bailey Place, somehow beating the people actually living there, who left first. Since there was no one there to stop them, they thought it would be a great idea to kick back and have a picnic on the front lawn. You know, I wouldn't hunker down and have a picnic on a Texan's lawn. They have shotguns. And apparently nailguns.
They dive right into their food, and it isn't long before they start groping and rolling around. I'm sure sex isn't far from their minds. Boy, that would be an interesting conversation to have if they get interupted by their potential employers. Sorry we were boinking like rabbits under your big maple tree.
The couples split up, with one staying on the blanket to smoke a joint, and the others venture off into the woods to probably have a little sex in something resembling priv...WHOA sudden nakedness. They lost every last stitch of clothing right quick.
While those two are writhing against a tree, which can not be comfortable for the naked girl, the nailgunner sneaks up on them, and watches them go at it for awhile. Standing right behind them. He could tap the guy on the shoulder he's so close. But he goes completely unnoticed. Again. But hey, at least he's getting his jollies.
I can almost, once again, go along with this. The guy's back is turned to the killer at least, and the woman's eyes are closed most of the time while she's getting nailed. But this is in broad daylight, and he could reach out and beep the girl's nose. Hell, he's just a few steps away from making it a threeway.
Speaking of getting nailed - yes I went there - the killer finally has enough after two minutes of voyeurism and pops a nail right into the back of the guy's head, causing yet another instant death. Which is at least somewhat plausible, unlike the rest.
As the guy slumps against the woman, she finally sees their assailant, and covers her mouth up to scream. The nailgunner fires off a shot right through her hand as she screams, and somehow nails her hand to her face. Yeah, I can't figure out how that works if she was screaming, and the nail going through her hand into an open mouth. I guess if it was one really long nail and went through all the way back to her head.
Once she falls over dead from either the inconsequential wound to her hand or even more bad jokes from the killer, it's back to the other couple. They've been sitting there for the past two hours, which means the other two went really deep into the woods, or have been having sex for a very long time.
The guy goes off into the woods to find the other two, leaving his girl alone to wait for them all, or the other group that live there to return. I apologise for all the pronouns, but the movie still can't be bothered to give names to their cannon fodder so I'm making due.
Random victim #...fuck, I dunno. 13? stumbles across the killer, and has what could actually pass for a conversation with him. It's still mostly pleading, but we do get a few plot points, most notably that this is all about revenge.
Anyways, he has the guy hug a tree and nails his hands to the trunk, being sure to tell him to hang around for awhile as he slowly bleeds out. At least it isn't an instant death this time.
The last of the picanickers is still sitting there having a good old freak out as she cries and shouts for everyone to come back for her. I bet this took all of five seconds for her to start having a breakdown.
And finally, the first group return from their errands, and one of them foolishly sneaks up on the girl and grabs her shoulder. Her freakout goes from 10 to 20, thinking she's about to be killed.
She tells them she heard gunshots, and it's about time someone heard something. The boarders brush that aside, because they live in redneck central and there are always gunshots whizzing about. In fact, the guy who snuck up on her tells her they can't do anything without a bullet whizzing by their heads. I know he's just being silly, but is that really the thing to tell someone having a panic attack that all her friends are dead?
Meanwhile, the sherrif has been seen occasionally, driving around the town aimlessly and stuffing his face. He's not investigating the serial slayings, or calling for help. He's just eating and driving. He complains about junker cars a lot too, but the two times he's done that it has been the exact same car. And to top it off, it's the Nailgunner's ugly hearse that he's bitching about.
He arrives at the Old Bailey Place to see all the new bodies that have piled up while he should be doing his job. He's told repeatedly that they're all nailed to trees, and the first dead body we see is laying on the ground covered in a sheet.
He ain't dead, he's just resting.
To add insult to injury, the bodies were discovered yesterday, and it has taken Sheriff Stereotype this long to show up and check them out.
He wonders why people keep coming out to these woods and dying, and says its like they're being given directions. Well sure, except for the Boss nailed to the highway, and the girl you left rotting in town. Did you ever pick her up?
The group finally get around to unloading the supplies and wood from their truck that they picked up yesterday. I'll let that slide since they were distracted by the corpses piling up at their doorstep. One of them notices the nailgun is missing, and it's not where anyone remembers leaving it.
Are they trying to imply the killer stole their nailgun? Why? He already has one, and he had it before these goobers even came to town. What he needs is a supply of nails. Unless he intends to frame them by using the nailgun they bought, and the receipt that proves they owned it, which the woman had a fit over them forgetting.
In case you're wondering, the stolen nailgun never comes up again.
That potentially interesting plot direction is never taken.
It's completely forgotten and we never find out where the nailgun went, or why they bothered asking. There's red herring, and then there's just plain crap.
Sigh. Anyways, the movie cuts away from this stupidity to even more stupidity as we see two idiots at a construction site having a nailgun fight. Is one of these the stolen nailgun? If so did they steal the other one? Or is it just two construction workers wasting time, money, nails, and possibly medical insurance? They do realise these aren't paintballs, right? The guns sound like they are firing off like machine guns. This is downright crazy. What do they do if they run out of nails, chase each other around with band saws?
The really scary part is that the director saw some friends actually doing this, and that's what inspired this movie. So this scene actually happened. Sigh some more.
One of the idiots somehow steps on a rake and nails himself in the crotch, ending the nailgun fight. Oh, and they drop out pretty casually that the two of them were involved in the pants-raping earlier.
Ooga booga, can't see me! Man, this camoflage is awesome!
The pair of them actually decide to do some real work, and Nailgunner Joe literally jumps out of nowhere just to the side of the camera, and declares it's time to play a little game called Nevermore. Which we never quite learn what that means, since he just nails the idiots. I know he means they'll not be raping anyone else again, but it's not like he actually played a game with these wastes of braincells.
You know, since they're pretty much morons, putting themselves and possibly others in danger, to say nothing of being admitted and gloating rapists, I'm pretty much all for killing them off. If anyone in any movie ever deserved it, it's these two. Bring it, oh mighty nailgunner.
And bring it he does, putting a few nails in them. When they beg for mercy, he says no one came to his aid when he screamed. Which confuses me, since (Spoiler alert!) we find out that he is NOT the girl who was raped.
Oh no, the barest trickles of blood. I can not survive these grievous wounds.
With those two new introductions already dead, the movie introduces YET ANOTHER couple, driving along the road, complaining about their friends not showing up. Just what is the average life expectancy in this film??
So yes, this guy is Redneck Stereotype #5, the guy with too many girlfriends and exes. Or the rare southern manwhore, if you like. He takes his current girlfriend to a cheap burger joint for dinner, where he forgot one of his exes works, and hilarity ensues. He tries to hide the current girl by making her duck down. At a place where the waitress comes up to the car. Did he think she wouldn't notice the girl, and just think it's a pile of clothes?
After the order is taken, the driver shouts out the strangest line ever, "See if I ever use you in one of my movies again!" Umm, what movies? Is there a thriving mini-Hollywood in East Texas? Or does he just make sex tapes? Is this some weird self-referrential director cameo? See, this is what happens when you don't spend any time with characters. When you try and shove out details like that, it just sounds weird.
It's suddenly night and the car is parked elsewhere, as the pair are making out. For starters, as clothes are quickly shed and tossed aside. Rather than stay in the car, the guy has the brilliant idea of having sex on the hood, which is at least a step up from sex on a tree.
And as a random note of oddness, the radio in the car plays a song, stops, the announcer says a few things, and then the same song starts playing again. Hello, low budget filmmaking.
Excuse me, can I see your license for that?
Fortunately, Nailgunner Joe finally shows up to put this lovefest to rest after it's gone on for too long. He tells them to put their pants on, but um...they already are. They're unbuttoned, but not really pushed down at all. Not to mention the underwear. Ahhh, the long proud tradition of pants sex continues.
He sends the girl back to the car while he fires a single nail into her boyfriend's shoulder, and down he goes with the instant kill. Wait, I thought he was a director, not a construction worker? So why was he killed? The girl runs back at the nailgunner, ot the Avenger as he likes to be called, with no real plan of attack besides running and shouting indignantly at the masked rider.
All that gets her is two nails. Geeze, he was there to kill the redneck, and he only got one nail. What did the girl do to get a doubletap?
And gee, since they're dead, it must be time to introduce YET ANOTHER pair of people, talking about the killings as they read the paper. This movie just sets them up and knocks them down. The guy thinks it's all connected to the construction site, which pretty much proves he should be the sheriff, or at least on the list ahead of the current guy. Continuing to prove that, he gets hungry and goes to the grill.
The poor guy isn't out by the pool for more than two seconds before the Avenger bursts up out of the water and puts about a dozen nails into the guy. He falls right over onto the grill and starts sizzling.
Are the steaks done? Did you add the barbecue sauce?
In another bit of classic low budget movie hilarity, the grill topples over from the guy landing on it, and the guy who is supposed to be sizzling away, very VERY clearly pushes back against the fence to right himself and the grill. Oops.
While his daughter finds him and gives him a good shake to make sure he's done evenly, we see Doctor House busily at work on a TRS-80. Wow that brings back memories.
He flips through crime scene photos, and finally takes the intiative to call someone for a consult. The phone call doesn't really go anywhere since all he can tell his friend is that people are dying from a nailgun. Gee, thanks.
At least House noticed that a number of the victims all worked at the same construction site, which is better than Deputy Do-Right has figured out. Although that still leaves a number of people that have NOTHING to do with the site.
House hears about the BBQ in town and rushes out before all the redneck burgers are gone. He sees all the water splashed around and correctly assumes the guy must have been waiting in the pool. Anyone else see the number of problems here? First off, there's the whole needing to breathe thing, and the last I checked the Avenger isn't a blitzball player. Second of all, water is transparent, and not the best hiding spot.
Rather than do anything to actually try and catch the guy, Doc and the sheriff (Who they keep calling a deputy) instead head off to the nearest cafe for coffee and pie. At least they actually discuss the case and argue that it might be the girl who got raped.
Oh hey, you know what this movie hasn't done in awhile? Introduced two disposable characters to die in a matter of minutes from entering the film. Look, here comes two of them now! Either that, or someone spliced a different movie onto my DVD.
The pair somehow stumble onto a home in the middle of nowhere, with the stereotypical pile of redneck junk and cars strewn about. We can see the familiar garb of the Avenger in the foreground, and his distinctive car in the background. They somehow are completely unable to see the guy standing right there. I can give some leeway to the other killings, but he is standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. It would be like me wondering where my computer monitor is.
I sure am glad there ain't no psycho killer standing right in front of us, Daisy!
You know the drill by now. Screams, nails, bad puns, dead bodies. Wheel in the next batch of newbies to join them. Wash, rinse, repeat, reload the nailgun.
With those two disposed of, the Avenger says it's time to take care of the sheriff and the doc. Um...why the wait? Was he waiting until it was after lunchtime? Why did he come out here to the middle of nowhere? How did he just happen to be there when two random girls who were lost and only came upon the house by accident, so he could kill them? This scene makes absolutely no sense, and in this movie that is saying something.
Why not just go straight for the others? Did these two have to die first for some reason? And what do they have to do with the rape? I...you know what, I give up. Let's move along and not dwell on this anymore.
The doctor goes to confront the rape victim, whom he thinks couldn't have done it because he gave her a psyche profile after the incident. Nice to see he's an expert in several fields. She denies doing anything, and when asked about where her brother Bubba is, she says he drove off in his hearse. Which begs the question why the sheriff never recognised the car any of the times they drove by it, since he clearly knows the family due to the rape, but somehoe never recognised the car any of the times he complained about the junker.
Turn around, KITT! That was the Ghostbusters!
So the doctor forcibly grabs the rape victim and shoves her into his car. Because force is such a good idea with someone recovering from that sort of trauma. They drive off and the hearse soon zooms past them in the opposite direction. House turns around and gives chase, which makes me wonder if a junker of a hearse could seriously outrun a Trans Am for any length of time.
Rather than try and outrun the doc on the open roads, the hearse drives into the construction site which is completely blocked off except for the way they came in. For a guy with an almost uncannily presient ability to be in the right place at the right time to kill random people, he sure didn't think this move through.
The hearse gets stuck in the giant sand piles randomly dotting the site, and the Avenger runs off, with the doctor leaving his own car and giving chase on foot. Which is less dumb than it sounds, since the doc didn't want to get his own car stuck in the dirt.
The Avenger, or Bubba I guess, continues to box himself in more and more by climbing over a piece of construction equipment scaffolding that pretty much ends up with the only way off being the way he came through the doc, other than jumping to his doom.
I regret everything!!
So the chase ends pretty much the only way it could...with Bubba jumping to his doom.
The sheriff somehow knew where to go and steps onto the scene to take all the credit, while the woman clutches her dead brother's broken body. Good timing, Deputy Doofus.
House says he's glad the killing is finally over, despite the way it had to end. The sheriff actually has the gall to ask, "Is it? Is it over?"
YES.
YES IT IS.
And so is this review, as House and the girl walk triumphantly into the suddenly appearing sunrise. He somehow gets the girl, despite there being no romantic subplot, and he only eve met the girl a whopping five minutes ago. And uh, wasn't your car back in the other direction, doc?
AUTOPSY REPORT
Video: Surprisingly good, for a really low budget movie filmed in the 80s. There's some grain, and the colours are on the washed out side, but overall this is a solid looking movie.
Audio: Again, pretty solid for a mono track. The quality was good, and pretty clear, aside from the killer's voice getting garbled, but that's not the disc's fault. Hearing nails whizz by my head in 5.1 surround would have been fun, but overall a decent sounding movie.
Special Features: A behind the scenes feature, and some outtakes with comments from the director going more in depth into the making of this film. I had some playback issues with my disc so can't quite comment on these yet, but what I could get was some interesting tidbits.
Best Line: Any sentence out of the Avenger's mouth is autmoatically disqualified for being an awful, awful pun. But besides that there are some great lines in this film besides that, and the one that cracked me up for being so random, and so descriptive of people in this film comes from the farmer to the sheriff, "All you wanna do is drive around in that damn police car, you asshole."
First Kill: A nicely paced three and a half minutes into the film, when he kills the idiot redneck husband. Nice way to start off the film, by diving right in.
Best Kill: Oh so many choices. There is no lack of deaths in this film. But my pick for best? That would be the two construction workers who were playing nailgun shootout. Because they so fucking deserved it, on multiple counts.
Blood Type: You would think a movie where people are getting killed with a nailgun every five minutes there'd be some nice gore to discuss, but no. The blood is sparse, and barely trickles out. The makeup effects on the nails in people are nice, but there's just not much blood. Oh well.
Sex Appeal: But what this movie lacks in blood it makes up for in boobs. Director Terry Lofton admits he went back and added more scenes of T&A to make the film more marketable, because everyone knew the movie was garbage, so they crammed in breasts whenever they could. And it shows, since most of the murders around the breasts have nothing to do with the plot, or revenge. They're just shoehorned in. And to be fair, there's plenty of naked men too.
Movie Rating: This movie is awful, in almost every way. The plot makes zero sense. The acting is awful. The directing is bad. There is zero redeeming qualities about this movie as a piece of film. Every scene is pain. And puns. So much stuff goes unexplained, and when they do explain things, that just makes other stuff make even less sense. One out of five nails to the face.
Entertainment Rating: Night and day, folks. This movie is hilarious to watch. Every scene you wonder just what you've gotten yourself into. It's like watching a trainwreck with bad puns. As bad as this movie is, that just makes it all the more entertaining. This is one of the most bizarre movies to see, an interesting footnote to the era, and you just have to see this movie to believe someone actually made it. Four out of five dead, nameless victims. Check it out.
That last sentence terrifies me more than anything in the film. A sequel? Noooo!
NAAAAAILGUN!
