The Toolbox Murders (1978)
** (out of 4)
Notorious horror film has a couple young men trying to solve a grisly series of murders that have happened at the same apartment complex. A group of women were murdered by tools found in a toolbox so the men try to find out the person doing the crimes.
THE TOOLBOX MURDERS was a surprise hit when it was released. It got praise from Stephen King who called it one of the scariest movies ever made. It also gained a bit of notoriety because of its violence towards women. This was still a few years before Friday THE 13TH but there's no question this film became a cult item and it remains that after all of these years. To me, this film should have been one of the greatest exploitation films ever made but a strange switch in its direction prevented that but more on that a bit later.
What makes the film so memorable is the first thirty-minutes where we get a really bizarre Texas atmosphere mixed in with some graphic death scenes. What I enjoyed most about the film was the look of the killer. The killer is dressed in black just like you'd see in a giallo but then there's the ski mask, which gives him a very creepy look. I really thought the direction early on was terrific and especially how we would slowly see the killer standing among his victims. The death scenes are graphic at times with the most famous one being the bathtub/masturbation sequence with Kelly Nichols, which certainly packs a strange punch.
What really kills the film is that it switches to a mystery/detective film and it falls apart. Everything in the final hour is just boring and contains way too many boring dialogue scenes. It's really too bad that the creepiness of the start wasn't continued throughout the rest of the picture. We do get Cameron Mitchell delivering a fairly weird performance but I'm sure this job was mainly just a paycheck.
THE TOOLBOX MURDERS isn't a masterpiece and it's not the worthless piece of trash some call it. The film starts off so well that you can't help but be really disappointed towards the end.
** (out of 4)
Notorious horror film has a couple young men trying to solve a grisly series of murders that have happened at the same apartment complex. A group of women were murdered by tools found in a toolbox so the men try to find out the person doing the crimes.
THE TOOLBOX MURDERS was a surprise hit when it was released. It got praise from Stephen King who called it one of the scariest movies ever made. It also gained a bit of notoriety because of its violence towards women. This was still a few years before Friday THE 13TH but there's no question this film became a cult item and it remains that after all of these years. To me, this film should have been one of the greatest exploitation films ever made but a strange switch in its direction prevented that but more on that a bit later.
What makes the film so memorable is the first thirty-minutes where we get a really bizarre Texas atmosphere mixed in with some graphic death scenes. What I enjoyed most about the film was the look of the killer. The killer is dressed in black just like you'd see in a giallo but then there's the ski mask, which gives him a very creepy look. I really thought the direction early on was terrific and especially how we would slowly see the killer standing among his victims. The death scenes are graphic at times with the most famous one being the bathtub/masturbation sequence with Kelly Nichols, which certainly packs a strange punch.
What really kills the film is that it switches to a mystery/detective film and it falls apart. Everything in the final hour is just boring and contains way too many boring dialogue scenes. It's really too bad that the creepiness of the start wasn't continued throughout the rest of the picture. We do get Cameron Mitchell delivering a fairly weird performance but I'm sure this job was mainly just a paycheck.
THE TOOLBOX MURDERS isn't a masterpiece and it's not the worthless piece of trash some call it. The film starts off so well that you can't help but be really disappointed towards the end.