11.07.2012

NAIL GUN MASSACRE (1985) Review


Directed by: Bill Leslie, Terry Lofton
Starring: Rocky Patterson, Ron Queen, Michelle Meyer

Wow. You know those movies where everything you hear about them is negative and you really can't believe they could be so bad but then it really turns out that they are? Well this is a perfect example of that. Welcome to NAIL GUN MASSACRE.


As far as rape & revenge flicks go the plot couldn't be simpler. A young woman is gang raped by a group of construction workers and then shortly afterwards a masked killer appears to take revenge. That's pretty much the movie in a nutshell. The opening scene shows the rape and then only a couple of minutes later the killer shows up out of nowhere and with no explanation at all. And not only that but the killer appears wearing one of the most outlandish slasher outfits ever. Full camouflage with duct-taped motorcycle helmet wielding an industrial nail gun and a compressed air canister on their back. Oh yeah and the killer also drives a gold hearse. Not exactly subtle.The full body coverage is obviously a way to mask the killer's identity and to keep the audience asking whether it's a he or a she, and to further add to this mystery the filmmakers have used some vocal effect to disguise the killer's voice. The outfit, weapon, car and voice all added together makes for one of the most absurd slasher villains of all time.


After the appearance of this masked villain the movie is basically just a bunch of lame death scenes with a splash of fake blood and what look like cut in half nails glued to body parts. On a positive note there are a couple of sex scenes and a decent amount of on screen boobs, and of course everybody who has sex invariably dies. While all of this killing is going on there is a completely inept cop and an equally inept doctor who follow the trail of bodies and pretend like they're investigating. Unfortunately it takes them a ridiculously long amount of time to even find a link between the murders, and the doctor is such an idiot that in one scene he leaves a dead body laying out in public and states "She's not going anywhere".

The dialogue in this movie is awful and the delivery just as bad. I read somewhere that the script was cut down from 80-something pages to around 25 and as a result most of the dialogue was ad-libbed, and it really shows. We get treated to such classic lines as "Do you remember when you could sit outside and not worry about the mosquitoes and the killers?" or the painful conversation between a girl a guy and his ex-girlfriend. And speaking of bad dialogue I have to mention the killer's awful one-liners. He/she seems to have at least one prepared for every killing and they are all terribly cheesy including "You shouldn't go to pieces... over me" as somebody's hand gets cut off, or telling a victim to "hang around" after their hands are nailed to a tree. I know that sometimes a humorous killer can work (such as Freddy Krueger) but this is just bad. I heard that at some point the director Terry Lofton realized that this movie wouldn't be taken seriously as a horror movie so instead he decided to add some comedy and thus the cheesy one-liners.


I suppose if you got completely hammered you could find something to enjoy about this movie, and it's easy to laugh at its many flaws but I cannot honestly give this a good score. It's a really, really bad movie. One of the worst I've seen in a long time. Fans of low-budget trash may enjoy but otherwise I advise you to stay away.




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