Axe

Axe is, if you axe me (har-har) a pretty darn good little horror flick with an unfortunate bad moment involving a convenience store (or rather, grocery store clerk) and a couple of Mafia hojoes who may be the OTHER Resevoir Dogs.

The scene in question involves a rather plump young woman (Carol Miller) who seems mentally impaired, who later is stripped down to her black bra, and a "William Tell Routine" that might have made Burroughs proud (maybe not the right word to use here). Here, shooting an apple off the head really does involve shooting an apple off the woman's head. But, in true ironic twist fashion, it also involves a ketchup bottle, too.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Axe is a film I first discovered because it was on the Something Weird coming attractions DVD from Something Weird Video that I got on video because it was 2011 or thereabouts and I wanted, no needed, to see something weird. And Axe was a movie that stood out, baby. Swinging! (No pun.)

It had a ginchy, blood-drippy sort of animated title, and it had the forlorn and melancholic and somewhat zombified visage of actress Lisa Lee, who was an ingenue and a newcomer and not just another pretty, sad, haunting face. (Rumors circulated after the release of the film of her untimely death, but director and star Frederick Friedel put the lie to that nonsense, assuring us that, at least as of 2015, she was operating a skiff or yacht or floating seafood shack or something in Mexico, according to Wikipedia, that unimpeachable internet source for all relevant facts and true information.)

Anyway, getting back to it, Axe is about three Memphis Mafia hillbilly goombahs, (well, Friedel actually looks as if he could be a young Rabbinical scholar) who torture-kill Aubrey (Frank Jones) by sticking a cigar in his face and having his buddy (George J. Monaghan) jump from the window. Steele and Lomax and Billy are their names (played respectively by Jack Canon, Ray Green, and the director Frederick Friedel), and Steele and Lomax are pretty much sociopathic and psychopathic, while Billy seems to bellyache about the murder (then why is he in the mob to begin with one may wonder).

They drive out to rural North Carolina, torment a shop girl in a scene that makes little sense (typically hoods on the lam for murder want to AVOID drawing attention to themselves while trying to make their getaway), and come across a very beautiful, really unrealistically so, farmhouse, well kept-up, with no chipped paint or overgrown yard, or sagging porch. Nunya.

That's odd because the only occupants are a paralyzed old soldier (former full-bird colonel, we learn, played by Douglas Powers), and his obviously mentally-ill daughter (the aforementioned Lisa Lee), who cares for the silent old geezer. They watch television all day and eat a lot of soup.

The trio of criminal fruitcake goons invade, take hostages, and the girl dissuades the police out of fear, when they come looking. The rest of it is sort of predictable, and sort of not, because, well, like, you remember how shocked you were to find out Lana Turner's little girl had dispatched that Wise Guy ogre Johnny Stompanato? Like, how could a little girl like that manage such an extraordinary feat? Same deal here.

Axe, lets cut clean to it, is a tad amateurish (as one salacious critic of dubious judgement noted), with wooden perfomances, laughable dialog, bad direction, and scenes that make little sense. For all of that, though, it has a certain disquieting effectiveness, and I consider it a "good movie." At least, an entertaining one. Lisa Lee's forlorn and hypnotically disturbed expression is somewhat classic here; the grandfather is a paralytic symbol of a man having a nightmare of the inversion of his life. The picture-perfect farmhouse is the voiceless, immobile fantasy in his televised skull (the only way the outside world penetrates their world).

The revenge plot is as brutal and inverse as that portrayed in The Last House on the Left, that quintessential American exploitation shocker from a young Wes Craven that defined this sort of brutal horror vengeance exploitation subgenre. (I'm not saying Axe is equal in artistry to Last House by any stretch of the imagination, just that the comparison can be drawn.)

And the blood is all proper splattery red. And if that's too much though, don't complain to me: you watch the film, you're axing for it.

Har. Har. Har.

By the way, it was banned in Britain. Big surprise.

Axe | Full Revenge Thriller Movie | HD

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