The Weekend It Lives

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.

I was once happy. There was a time for me when life seemed worth living. There was a time when my mind wasn't constantly flooded with images of my own eviscerated corpse hanging from a noose. That was the time before I saw Ax 'Em.

The term "worst movie ever made" is thrown around quite often to describe films of this nature. No one ever anticipates, however, that somewhere in the world, there honestly is a worst movie ever made. I'm not one to make assumptions, but I seriously believe that this is, in fact, the greatest cinematic travesty in history. It's like this Mfume guy sat down and wrote a list of every movie-making no-no that could ever be committed, and then made it a point to stuff every single one of these into one incredibly terrible film (and I use the term "film" quite loosely).

The first thing you'll notice is that there seem to be about six or seven different cameras used, each one more awful than the last. The sound quality is horrendous in ways that simply cannot be understood until you see the movie. The plot seems to be that a bunch of African American individuals dressed in clothing that would've been considered fashionable in 1991 running around trying not to get killed by some sort of zombie/psycho or something. I think. I'm really not sure.

Despite the title, the killer guy only uses an ax like, once. He mostly uses a machete or a gun.

The horrid nature of this film is absolutely mind-boggling in a way that makes you wonder how such a thing even exists.

I've still not completely banished the theory that Mfune made this with the intention of creating some sort of bizarre ironic comedy movie. If this is true, then he should be hailed as a genius.

Normally I'm very cinematically tolerant, I can find good in very bad movies. For example I think "Invasion Of The Blood Farmers" is a great film. "Ax Em" has nothing redeeming about it. This is a backyard production but that does not always mean a bad viewing experience, there are several creative amateur productions on the video market. This is not one of them. The sound is inaudible most of the time, yet you can clearly hear the director say "cut" after every painful scene. The cast frequently all talks at once making it impossible to understand anything. There is not one effectively executed sequence in the whole production. It is absolutely amazing this film got distributed WIDELY on home video by a company which specializes in "Urban" features. If you subtract all the technical ineptness, you still have a poorly written, poorly directed, poorly photographed, creatively sterile waste of time. Take it from me I have watched 20 years worth of B horror movies.

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.