The Weekend It Lives

To call "Ax 'Em" the worst movie in the history of motion pictures would be too easy. Because that would imply that it's unwatchable, which on so many levels it is. Yet it's the absolute utter incompetence on all levels, from the direction to the script to the acting, that makes it just so damn entertaining, because you are simply stupified that anyone thought this could ever make a coherent film. If you enjoy watching a film for its mistakes, "Ax 'Em" will never leave your DVD player, because from the mis-spelled words and incomprehsible grammar, to the nonsensical ending 72 minutes later, "Ax 'Em" proves that no matter how incompetent you are with a video camera, someone will distribute it.

What makes this film so wonderfully special is that the director's father, Kweisi Mfume, was a U.S. Congressman, and former head of the NAACP! There are moments of D.W. Griffith-esque racism that were they not made by a filmmaker of color, would pass as a scenes from a training video for the Klan. It is nearly impossible to understand what anyone says, simply because the video camera is set up for a wide shot, and nobody talks anywhere near a microphone. The film, if you could call it that, makes no sense on any level, but moments like the fat guy walking around in the back of one shot holding the slate will have you laughing for hours.

This is bad filmmaking at its best. Thank you, Michael Mfume, for this wonderful gift.

Without exaggeration, I can safely say that this is the absolutely worst, most low-rent movie I have ever seen in my life. It simply has to be seen to be believed, and even when I was watching it I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Everything about it is atrocious from the effects to the "acting".

For one thing, I have never seen a movie that had a box around the picture. It's really hard to believe that this isn't someones bad student picture that accidently got on the shelves of the video store. The fact that this movie was actually distributed boggles my mind. The sound is so bad you can't hear half of what's being said. The direction is non-existent. The characters are the dumbest, most annoying jerks ever. The effects are so cheap they belong in an Ed Wood movie, not in a film made in 2002. The production values are worse that Manos: the Hands of Fate (chew on that for awhile). I can't say enough how phenomenally bad this movie is. Michael MFume, I hope you are hanging your head in shame.

Shocking. Bizarre. Nonsense.

Those are the first three words that came to my head after watching this truly amateur production.

Shocking because this "film" was actually released to the general public and available in video stores around the nation.

Bizarre because of the storyline. A person kills his family and himself and then comes back from his grave 13 years later to exact revenge. On who? Himself? His dead family? His dead self? Nonsense because of the completely random dialogue and scenes. Why does the movie start at a random party and then jump to some dance completion at Morgan State University? Please don't try to answer that question.

Nonsense because there are four grammatical errors in the opening sequence explaining the events of the movie.

Nonsense because after one scene you can actually hear the director clearly say "cut." Nonsense because you cannot understand what the characters are saying unless they are three feet from the camera. And when you can hear them clearly, which is only about 24 percent of the time, its all Ebonics and curse words.

Think of the worst movie you have ever seen. Think Plan Nine from Outer Space. And then lower your standards. That's how horrible this movie is. It's in a completely alternate stratosphere than even the lowest F-grade movies you've seen. This picture honestly looks like a high school cinema class production that drags on for 70 minutes and I say that with 100 percent seriousness.

It deserves 0/10, but that's not possible, so I'm forced to give it 1/10. I am literally going to go back and change every movie I ever gave 1/10 and give it an extra star or two simply because even those awful pictures are 10 times better than this garbage.

AX EM, an "urban" flick purportedly about a slasher, is one of only two movies I have given a "1" rating here. The other is NIGHT OF THE GHOULS. I would place MANOS in the same category, but I forget if I ever wrote about it here. AX EM is not a film, and it is hardly even a home movie. It was shot using a camcorder and the cam's mike, so that the sound -- uncorrected, natch -- is beyond the point of muddy. AX EM makes that dancing killer scarecrow movie and that pot-bellied mummy movie look like CITIZEN KANE. A big piece of the running time is given over to footage of an actual urban parade! AX EM is truly unwatchable. I should have known better. I rented it from a store, behind which sits a huge Section 8 housing project. Truly a numbnuts film for numbnuts.

When I watched "Ax 'Em" I found myself wondering one simple thing: How did this movie get distributed? Honestly, it is that bad. The film quality and sound quality are non-existent. Honestly, I've seen better quality from a VHS camcorder in a dark room recording Barbies. The plot is so asinine that I can't believe Michael Mfume actually got as many people to be in it as he did. I guess the best comparison of this movie is "The Evil Dead" made by Sam Raimi and a bunch of his friends (including Bruce Campbell) when they were in college. You could compare it to that, the only difference is while "The Evil Dead" is extremely well done for its budget and limited crew, this movie is just plain awful.

The title is spelled differently on the box than it is on the movie itself. There is really no ax in the movie at all, there is a small hatchet though. Words are misspelled everywhere in the movie's introduction. The opening credits look like something that could have been made on a 1986 camcorder and there is no editing. The same scene appears in the movie twice in a row. You really can't understand anything that the characters say, the sound is that bad.

The movie starts out with a bunch of young people dancing when a "Yo Momma" contest breaks out, and from here it actually goes downhill if you can believe that. When a group of characters like Rock and Breakfast go on a trip to a cabin in the middle of nowhere they are stalked by some guy. I'm not really sure if there was some connection there, but it was just basically some guy whose family was killed or something and now he's out for revenge.

This is a good movie for people who like bad movies. There are many parts that are so bad they are funny, although usually this isn't a good things in movies. If there was a way to give this film a zero I would.

1 out of 10.