El hacha

Axe is yet another very low budget exploitation flick that would be very obscure today was it not for the fact that it gained lasting notoriety as one of the infamous video nasties. These were of course films deemed criminally obscene by the British authorities back in the early 80's as a consequence of the unregulated home video boom. Furthermore, Axe was one of the 39 titles that remained on the list to the very end and so is regarded by purists as one of the 'true' video nasties. Having just seen it, it doesn't really warrant such a label as, while it has its moments, it's hardly all that shocking even compared with many other similar films from the time. It does appear to have taken a lot of influence from another more notorious video nasty, namely Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972). The story-line has some pretty obvious similarities. Three criminals go on the run after killing two men and wind up at a remote house where an unstable young woman called Lisa lives with her paralyzed grandfather. They subsequently terrorise these people but the gangsters are in for a shock when Lisa enacts vicious revenge on them.

I got the feeling when watching this one that its fashions implied that it might have been made in the early 70's as opposed to the specified release year of 1977. If this is so, it hardly seems so unlikely as this is an ultra-low budget affair with quite a number of deficiencies about it due to the inexperience of the film-makers and the obvious limitations of the production. It's exactly the kind of movie that could conceivably have sat on a shelf for a while before a distributer picked it up. Whatever the case, it seems to have been released as a film that would make up only part of the bill at the American drive-in circuit. It only clocks in at just over an hour and even the credit sequence is very elongated to extend the run-time (so protracted that I even picked up on the very minor trivia fact that the make-up artist was Worth Keeter the future director of the Pamlea Anderson soft-core classic Snapdragon (1993)). Despite the minimal run-time there is a pretty obvious lack of material and the film has many scenes that seem to just be padding. Little is explained in the film in terms of character motivations or background, things just happen. Aside from the lacking story, it's not in all honesty a very well-directed or edited film either.

Yet despite all this, it does have something. The very low-key and minimalist approach does achieve a certain strange atmosphere and it's also shot reasonably well. The lack of any background or explanations does also inadvertently give the whole endeavour a somewhat enigmatic feel, which kind of works in its favour at least to a certain extent. I suppose it mostly falls under the rape/revenge sub-genre of film, which was quite popular at the time. It isn't really a very graphic example of this type of film though. Although I did find think the nastiest scene was the one where two of the bullies terrorise a nice cashier girl in a convenience store. They stop short of either killing or assaulting her but they humiliate her nevertheless. It was a scene I found very unpleasant to tell you the truth. The subsequent, more typical rape/revenge material was done in ways that was less disturbing oddly enough. Overall, while it's undeniable that this is a film with pacing problems, it does have a lo-fi ambiance that ensures that it's worth a watch, especially if you like 70's exploitation.

My review was written in March 1983 after a Greenwich Village screening.

Filmed in Charlotte, North Carolina, about a decade ago (picture was rate by the MPAA in 1974), "Axe" (its alternate title: "Lisa, Lisa") is a fascinating but totally uncommercial film noir exercise in the horror genre, recently reissued to take advantage of public's appetite for gore-shockers. Recalling the B-films of old in its one-hour (plus elongated credits) running time, picture will be of more interest to film students than exploitation-film fans.

Filmmaker Frederick R. Friedel, working on apparently a student film budget, emphasizes detail close shots and inserts with punchy, accelerating editing to maintain tension in the absence of a strong narrative.

Picture opens with abstract tracking shots and moody closeups as a trio of gangsters terrorize an underling in a seedy hotel room. Typical of a no-budgeter, his falling out the 12th-story window takes place entirely off-screen, with a scream and sound effect.

Rest of the film has the gangsters hiding out down south, invading the remote house inhabited by a shy young girl Lisa (Leslie Lee) and her paralyzed, catatonic grandpa.

As the gangsters singly try to attack her, Lisa dispatches two of them with a straight razor and the title axe, while the third (played by director Friedel in an evident economy move) is accidentally offed by the police at film's end.

Abstracting his minimal material, Friedel evidences a good camera eye here. A piano, ondioline-style electronic keyboard and percussion score help to sustain the hypnotic mood, but for general audiences , lack of solid story values combined with amateur acting are bound to be disappointing. One example of the latter is that both Friedel and attractive heroine Lee fall back upon the device of gazing floorward to appear shy and vulnerable.

Little has been heard of Friedel since his promising effort, but cameraman Austin McKinney has made many low-budgeters and makeup man Worth Keeter is still in North Carolina, directing Eal Owenby's 3-D extravaganzas.

As it happens, I was on the crew of LISA,LISA, which has been re-released as AXE (among other titles). I'm billed as Richard W. Helms. I did gaffing, focus pulling, and some sound, as well as some of the driving stunts (there weren't many, and most of them were not included in the finished film).

A lot of the reviewers have mentioned Frederick Friedel's choppy and cryptic direction of this film. Much of this may be due to the contributions by J.G 'Pat' Patterson who, with his wife Nita, performed most of the producing duties. Pat also did most of the cutting on the film - I recall visiting him in the editing bay at his Westinghouse Boulevard studios (actually just a warehouse) while he was piecing the film together. While my memory of events might be tainted after forty years, it does seem that there was a great deal of plot left on the cutting-room floor, because of time constraints placed on Patterson by his distributor. LISA,LISA was planned to play as part of a three-or-four film bill at local drive-ins, and the owners of those drive-ins didn't want people hanging in their cars TOO long without making a trip to the concession counter. It may be that the film's lack of characterization is attributable more to overenthusiastic editing than to inept directing or an incomplete screenplay.

To give you an idea just how low-budget this film was, all of the principle filming was completed in a little over a week and a half, at four locations - the soon-to-be torn down Hotel Charlotte in uptown Charlotte, NC; a convenience store in Charlotte; a lovely and very expensive Tudor home on Queens Road in Charlotte; and a vacated farmhouse near Waxhaw, south of Charlotte.

Most of the crew was paid a flat rate of $80-$100. That's not a per diem. It was $80 - $100 for the entire shooting schedule. This was late 1973, and a hundred bucks meant a lot more back then than it does now, but it was still chickenfeed. I have no idea what the actors were paid, but it wouldn't have been much more - certainly no more than a thousand for the principles and somewhat less for day players.

The film stock was rationed like water in a desert. Most of it was bought as left-over surplus stock from better-heeled production companies, and kept in a refrigerator in Pat Patterson's office. Retakes were discouraged.

The target audience, as has been noted several times by other reviewers, was the drive-in crowd who needed some background noise while they made out. For that reason, Patterson - through Rick Friedel - may have seen little need for such dramatic devices as back story and character development. In those days, people attending drive-in movies paid for darkness and privacy, not great cinema. Some have already alluded to Harry Novak's exploitation films, and he was involved with the distribution of this little gem.

One very important note is that the Director of Photography was Austin McKinney, who went on to work on a number of James Cameron films, including the Terminator series, and with John Carpenter in Escape From New York. Sadly, McKinney passed away late in 2013.

Some interesting notes - several people associated with this film died quite soon after it was completed, including Leslie Lee who played the main character, Lisa. She committed suicide sometime in the late 1970s.(NOTE!!!! Update 01/06/2013: I later discovered that this was not the case. This was the result of a conversation I had with another crew member in the 1980s, in which I was told that Leslie had killed herself. Leslie Lee, I am happy to say, is still alive and well, and lives alternately in Southern California and in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico). Two crew members, George Shaw and John Willhelm, died in a car crash on the way to Columbia, SC, in mid-1976. Pat Patterson died of cancer sometime in 1975, as memory serves. Rick Friedel, the titular director, was alive the last time I checked, but his career in feature films was pretty scant after the release of LISA, LISA / AXE.

LISA, LISA premiered at the Viking Twin Drive-In Theatre on Freedom Drive in Charlotte, NC, sometime in the fall of 1974. It played on a bill with a really silly movie called WHEN WOMEN HAD TAILS, or HOW WOMEN LOST THEIR TAILS - I can't recall the exact title - and a re-release of one of the PREACHERMAN films.

Despite the film's weaknesses - and there are many - I distinctly recall a strong sense among the crew at the time that we were doing something creative and interesting. Many crew members went on to work on other low-budget films, so we clearly didn't find this to be a negative experience.

For true fans of the bizarre drive-in exploitation films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, I'd suggest getting a copy of AXE. If nothing else, it shows that a bunch of college students can put together a movie that will last at least forty years.

AXE (aka: LISA, LISA) is the story of three desperate criminals, two of whom are sadistic murderers, and one with a working conscience. After committing mayhem, the trio decide to hide out at an isolated farmhouse inhabited by a young woman named Lisa (Leslie Lee) and her paralyzed grandfather. Unbeknownst to these crooks, Lisa is a tad unbalanced. All goes well until one of the miscreants tries to rape her, causing Lisa to show these bums some cold, hard steel!

Ms. Lee could have played Lisa to the hilt, but downplays her madness instead. She's quiet, rarely uttering a word. This actually makes her creepier! A decent low-budget feature worth checking out...

Axe (1974)

** (out of 4)

Extremely low-budget thriller about three crazy criminals who are on the run and decide to stop in at a farm house where they take things over. Lisa (Leslie Lee) stays at the house taking care of her paralyzed grandfather but the three criminals don't know what they've gotten themselves into.

AXE was released under countless titles back in the day when low-budget movies like this could play across the country on drive-in screens for years. At just 67 minutes there's really not too much plot wise as what we've basically got a mix between THE DESPERATE HOURS and THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. Even though this film got on the Video Nasties list it really isn't all that shocking, graphic or gross.

Again, there's really not too much here and there's really zero character development or any sort of story. The three criminals harass some people. They wind up at the house and you can guess what happens to them. Director Frederick R. Friedel isn't Stanley Kubrick but I thought he did an okay job with the material and at least tried to make it somewhat different than your run of the mill psycho movie. I thought the music score was rather effective and I liked that the director at least tried to create some stuff through the editing.

I also thought Lee was better than average in the lead. She really doesn't get too many lines and instead she goes around as the silent type but I thought she was effective enough. Jack Canon was also good as the criminal Steele. As I said, there's some minor gore footage but nothing all that believable. The highlight is the sequence where the criminals harass a store clerk and the "shot" joke was rather funny.

AXE certainly isn't a masterpiece or even a good movie but if you enjoy this type of low-budget stuff then there's certainly much worse out there.