Jackhammer

A "making of" featurette for Jackhammer Massacre would look like an episode of MacGyver in how director Joe Castro and a few side-kicks made a movie with a stick of gum, a few boxes, and a door bell ringer. That in itself is quite an impressive feat, and the final production value quite honestly does not show the laughable budget and resources (laughable by Troma standards no less.) Don't get me wrong, this movie does obviously look and feel low budget (really low budget) – it does not come across as a couple guys who borrowed the digital camcorder and shot at home using the props found in the glove-box, back seat, and trunk. And while praising the film, let me also add that the film has some good moments of gore (specifically, the gore not affiliated with the jackhammer.) Sadly, this praise does not mean this has yielded a good film.

Jackhammer Massacre presumes that we care about Jack and his tragedy while it flashes back to his formerly successful life as a prick businessman destined to screw himself over with bad choices and become the psychotic prick killer. Jackhammer presumes wrong.

While roughly a third of the running time is dedicated to the unsympathetic tragedy that is our killer Jack and his cartoony (not to mention comical) delusions, the victims show up just long enough to be killed. Or in other words Jack is treated as the main character, it develops him with a prepackaged uninteresting scenario of how his friend ODed and he became addicted . . . and the movie assumes we'll sympathize with everyone else because "they're walking into a death trap." Jackhammer assumes wrong.

Ever hear the overstated remark "The hero is only as good as the villain he faces"? Jackhammer built up their villain but forgot the hero entirely, resulting in a narratively unbalanced film. It's not the fact that Jack's development is screwed that hurts the film – don't get me wrong, though, that alone cripples it – the real nail in the coffin is the fact there's really no one with any cinematic weight and screen presence to metaphorically oppose him. The head of the salvage crew gets a heroic introduction shot, and that's the extent of her character development.

Jack's sister and her friend? The movie literally throws them away before the audience can gain any emotional investment in them. Jack's boss? We see his face long enough to memorize it before he bites the dust. The guy buying the shop and his assistant? They walk in, perform the horror gimmick of looking around and then die. The salvage crew? They live a little bit longer, but to say these characters are introduced would be a severe and misleading overstatement. A very precise tagline for the film would be "Show up and die." Outside, LA life goes on. Across the globe, the sun sets, and the world keeps on turning. And nobody cares about the handful of strangers we never met whom we'll never see again.

Slasher films need to kill characters to be effective. Jackhammer kills cameo appearances.

Then there was Jack's delusions, his dead buddy who returns from the grave to haunt him with phrases like "You let me die" spoken in a tone that sounds curiously similar to that smug and sarcastic Randal in Kevin Smith's Clerks. As a direct result, the scenes came across not as a delusion haunting a man to drive him insane, rather as a smart-ass ghost heckling the living for kicks. Granted a number of scenes in the film were intentionally comical (Jack's hallucination of running from the spotlight, for example), I don't sense Joe Castro intended the ghostly apparition to have that caliber of goofiness.

While speaking on the comedy element, it never quite hits its mark. The presentation of the horror/comedy blend feels eerily similar to those unintentionally lame 80s rip offs of Friday the 13th made by incompetent hacks who fail to realize how idiotic a situation they've presented. And only through the overwhelmingly ludicrous scenarios and cutting does it become apparent that the Jackhammer Massacre has its tongue in its cheek . . . in places. In other places, like with the previously discussed tragedy of Jack and the heckling ghost of Overdosed past, does the film realize how ineffective that is? I have my doubts.

With Jackhammer's various misfires, it's not surprising how tempting it becomes to target the things the film never cared about. For example, how impractical is it to kill with an 80lb jackhammer? Who is stupid enough to fall in a puddle of blood mixed with intestines and then peel off his soaked shirt as if he just had a coffee stain? How long is that extension cord? And of course, Jackhammer's obedience to the horror formula with a set of characters making out because they can.

Jackhammer is a slasher, and thank God it knows it's a slasher; however, it's still apparent that it doesn't know how to be a good slasher, which is okay. It has a ton of brothers and sisters on the rental shelf next to it to keep it company.

"The Jackhammer Massacre"

Jack is a yuppie with a secure job and a penchant for occasional heavy drugfests with his best buddy. When his friend overdoses, Jack flees the scene and leaves him to die, not wanting to get caught with illegal substances. Unable to live with the guilt, Jack becomes a full-time junkie. He loses his professional job, garbage picks for food, and starts sporting a nasty infection (read: gigantic puss-filled growth) on his arm. As he downward spirals, he begins to hear the voice of his dead best friend, telling him to...well...murder people with a jackhammer!

This B-grade movie is pretty bad and starts out really slow. After the first few sequences, it starts showing an offbeat charm and the rest proves to be entertaining. The gore is more amusing than realistic, and it is nasty to watch Jack poke at his "infection" with a cotton swab and watch it ooze grossness. The hallucination scenes are twisted. If you have a fear of needles, or a fear of someone lurching at you and stabbing you with a syringe filled with an unknown substance, then that is the only real scare factor in "The Jackhammer Massacre."

The acting is below average but you can't help but laugh at the curious casting choices. All the members of the male cast look like gay porn stars and at some point all (10 or so) of them find it appropriate to take their shirts off and show their waxed, ripped torsos. It is hilarious and rather bizarre, as this movie is marketed as a straightforward slasher. A guy ODs, he takes his shirt off. A guy gets drenched in blood, he removes several layers until his chest is bare. Every single male cast member has his moment where he gets to remove his shirt. I found these inexplicable topless scenes highly amusing, as they reminded me how ridiculous it is when female characters randomly strip for no reason in genre movies. Jack also seems to have a fondness for stripping his male victims down to their undies for no apparent reason. And it is hard to ignore the sexual innuendo of Jack's Hammer--often murdering his victims by forcing his tool through their mouths. Is Jack repressing his sexuality? Does the voice of his dead (shirtless) friend represent more than what it seems? If the director is intending homoerotic undertones, he doesn't bother to clarify why, and it doesn't really matter because this movie is just a goofy spectacle.

For a movie that is basically saying "drugs are bad and will ruin your life," this doesn't take itself too seriously, so it is easy to laugh at its ridiculousness and be grossed out. And isn't that what B-horror movies are supposed to be about? Bonus points for featuring two characters that just so happen to be lesbians.

My Rating: 5.5/10

the movie is kinda weird with crappy acting and the basically the fist half hour is jack and some junkies shootin up or smoking. Then it gets interesting. Jack is a paranoid junkie who kills on drugs hes almost powered by drugs. He also uses his jack hammer to kill his victims. Some of his victims r friends and family. jack is basically trippin the whole movie, making up some crazy paranoid story and killing anyone in his way.

The Gore effects are pretty good ,some of the killings look great. Some other things to notice in the movie that catch out r, a scene where jack cleans out his shoot- up arm with poor equipment, a lesbo couple, Jacks dead Friend that talks to him and only Jack can see.

so if u like to see a movie about a tripped out homicidal confused junkie who kills people with a jackhammer, then its worth seeing.Overall i thought it was pretty good and original story. RATING: 6/10

The Jackhammer Massacre (aka Jackhammer) follows the exploits of Jack the Junkie. Always high and looking to score Jack takes a leap off the deep end when a friend OD's. The first thirty minutes are basically him conning to get a score, boring. Back and forth he sways with the ethereal wind until one of his suppliers comes calling g for his cash. Oddly enough even as a full-time junkie Jack can find a job as a security guard at a warehouse with construction weapons, err tools. It seems Jack's paranoia really kicks in with a little help from his OD'd friend's ghost. Well hey this is where that jackhammer of the title rears its head and Jack goes to town thinking everyone's DEA.

The first 30 are slow and boring, who wants to see someone continuously shooting up. I don't at least. An interesting arm infection is a highlight of the first reel, not even bare chests and breasts can help that. But when the slaughter begins you can at least start cracking the power cord jokes (a la MST3K) and giggle and snicker at the bad dialogue and horrible delivery.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the theatre, there's Jack Hammer.

A movie about a Jack, whose drug addiction leads to homelessness, weakness, and murder.

He lives as a security guard in a abandoned machine shop after losing his cushy day job to drugs, when his best friend OD's and dies on the street in a bad part of town.

He had it all, nice car, a yellow Viper, I wouldn't have gone with yellow, but okay - the great job, but he lacked self esteem, his ego being a little too big for his britches syndrome if you will. He had no real direction. So far it seems a pretty realistic approach, but soon the movie flails like a fish out of water - to become a cliché, and unredeemable display of stupidity so profound, I am ashamed for the actor who had to play Jack.

I'm just gonna get real nitpicky here a second and say - JackHammer was one of the worse movies I have ever seen in my entire life.