TOOLBOX MURDERS

Director Toby Hooper (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and POLTERGEIST) has decided to throw his hat into the ring once again with TOOL BOX MURDERS, a slasher murder mystery that takes place in an apartment building full of wanna-be actors who scream bloody murder when practicing their lines or when getting slashed.  Our heroine, played by Angela Bettis, and her husband quickly realize that the apartment building has its, shall we say, evil quirks?  I must say that as far as bad horror movies go, TOOL BOX MURDERS delivers.

The movie opens with a typical opening kill in which an innocent vixen is not just killed, but bludgeoned to death by a hammer.  Mr. Hooper, hammer strike #11, 12 and 13 got your point across, #14-21 I was still with you, but #22 and 23 were bordering on FAMILY GUY humor and while noble, I am sure you weren’t going for that…or were you?  So, once the innocent couple moves into the astonishingly cheap apartment building in the City of Angels, noises are heard, policemen are called and people turn up missing. 

My favorite part is when the heroine calls the police on a woman who is getting shot by a nailgun, no less, and the police open the door to the woman’s apartment and upon seeing no one in the living room, they conclude that nothing strange is afoot.  Meanwhile, from the audience P.O.V., we see that the poor woman has been nailgunned to the ceiling…cool.

The greatest morsel of goodness that this movie has to offer is the killer’s lair, how it is configured and how he is able to so quickly find his victims.  I won’t say anymore, but I found it to be incredibly interesting.  The killer uses all the devices that you would expect based on the movie’s title:  drills, the aforementioned nail gun, saws, basically anything that is metal and can tenuously be used as a tool.  The ending scene is quite gory and the movie overall does not suffer from lack of blood.

I found TOOL BOX MURDERS while surfing the channels and I think it was on Showtime.  I definitely recommend it as a cable viewing and dare I say it, you may even want to own this one.  What is the world coming to?  Absolutehorror.com is praising a bad horror movie!

Rating *** (out of four stars)

Comments

[ANDREW]

Sucked with a major S. Dragged on and on. Low budget effects. Resembled a homemade movie.

[Maurice]

Where can i find this movie!!

[Dan]

Maurice, we just put the link up!