Axe

It's quite often difficult to ascertain the reasons that many of the films on the video nasties list are there. We all just assume that they are there due to graphic violence, and explicit gore. We also largely assume that they are mostly, intrinsically rubbish. Whilst I have not seen all of the films on the list, the handful that I have, are varying in quality. It's always a surprise when the film is interesting, or has some kind of purpose, or layering of meaning. Axe, or the more ethereal original title, Lisa, Lisa, is one of the ones that at once, looks cheaply made (some sequences had the strange mise-en-scene of a H G Lewis movie), but also has an idea - simplistic but well thought-out - that gives the film a subtle gravitas.

The first part of the film follows three criminals, Steele (Jack Canon), Lomax (Ray Green), and the moral voice to the violence, Billy (played by the writer/director Frederick R. Friedel). On the journey with these characters, we are introduced to their brand of criminal activity. In a convenience store, Steele and Lomax mock and taunt the female clerk, throwing fruit at her, then forcing her to take off her blouse, humiliating her before going further. This shows overtly the misogynistic attitude of the main two. Billy, as throughout the film, is the person against the murdering, and acts as the moral arbiter to the horrific acts.

After this the trio drive up to a large house that is occupied by Lisa (Leslie Lee), who looks after her completely paralysed grandfather. Lisa is a strange, seemingly internal character, who is forced to take the criminals in for the night, and feed them etc. After one Lomax attempts to rape her, she takes it upon herself to kill him, then proceeds to act this out to the rest of the criminals.

There are some very effective scenes, and some that are genuinely disturbing. The first killing of Lomax, Lisa takes a razor blade to the back of his neck. After he has clearly lost consciousness, she continues to saw at the neck. It's making me wince writing about it. So there are some very effective kills, and this is partly where I see the reason for it's contentiousness for the DPP. But I think fundamentally the reasons for the banning was more to do with the contempt for women. This is something that even the BBFC has many issues with.

In conclusion, the film is disturbing at times, and it's moral fibre a little on the side of misogyny. However, the film is quite interesting, and certainly has more going for it in narrative terms than much of the video nasties on offer.

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I saw the 64 mins version for the first time recently aft reading few glowing reviews.

Used to watch a lottuva horror movies on vhs during the late 80s n early 90s. This one got skipped.

Comparisons to Last House.. will crop up but apart from murderers taking asylum in an isolated house, this one is different but a bit boring inspite of being a relatively short film.

One of the best part is the cinematography, the rural isolation with the creepy farmhouse is well captured.

They shud have shown some background story about Lisa's psychology.

Can someone tell me who was the man trying to enter Lisa's farm but got chased away by the two murderers during the meal around 31st min.

Did Lisa informed the cops during their first visit or later after the two murders.

Why did the third bearded trespasser ran out after seeing the dead body in the chimney?

"Axe" is an oddball piece of work that seems to avoid a lot of the horror standards. The flow of the film has a refreshing feeling of randomness that makes it work. Not a lot is explained in this film so viewers are left to discuss the who, what and why amongst themselves and die hard 70's low budget sleaze fans might even try to pick out a story after repeated viewings. "Axe" is competently shot and edited. As an aficionado of 70's b movies I personally felt that it has a great look to it. An atmosphere of paranoid weirdness is developed early on and digs in on the viewer. The film also scores points for it's original soundtracking although the main hook from the intro theme gets a little over used at times. The acting is on par for the course, no remarkable talent here, but some cool characters. The one guy who looks like Bob Ross adds an interesting dynamic to the group of thugs, it's hard to figure out why exactly he's rolling with them. The girl who plays Lisa is rather pretty and her performance is effective enough to draw sympathy from the viewer during the more tense scenes.

Nothing mindblowing here, but fans of the era and genre who have a bit of patience will enjoy this one. Gore fanatics might feel cheated by Axe but lovers of strange "wtf is going on here" movies should give this one a swing.

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.

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.