O Massacre

A nice little independent film from Texas? Not even close. Some guy named Terry Lofton wrote the story, screenplay, also directed and even had a bit part in his little movie, about an embittered construction worker who goes around with the title weapon, blasting people who raped a woman in opening moments of the film. The killings should provide you with the best laughs of your life. The gun makes some sort of machine gun noise, and we always see the nails AFTER they have entered the victim's body, never flying thru the air and then hitting them. One dude takes one in the privates, a couple girls get them in the boobs and at one point, two girls, who appear to be walking on a country road in an abondoned area somewhere in another city, show up for the purpose of being pierced. If this was a major motion picture, it might be called a revenge melodrama, but it is in fact a super low budget slasher pic. It contains everything a bottom of the barrell film should: shoddy effects, bad (oops, horrible) acting, awful lighting and an ultra annoying music score that sounds like a keyboard chuckling. But the one saving grace, the killer is hilarious! He's a Freddy Krueger type, cackling wisecracks before doing in his victims. He also doesn't wear the usual psycho garb, as he's decked out in camoflauge and dark helmet, with an oxygen tank in back. Check it out for that sole reason. Be warned though, that the film moves incredibly, agonizingly slow when he's not on screen. When there aren't people getting nailed, we get talky, yawn-a-minute exchanges between cast members. So long, that you'll be glad when they get gunned down. Another problem would be obtaining the film itself, it's a pretty rare find. I bumped into it at a Blockbuster in a little San Diego suburb called Rancho Penasquitos and have yet to come across it again. With all the films' flaws the worst one is that awful acting. It's as if this Lofton guy went around asking his friends "hey, wanna be in my movie??" Even the nude babes are annoying, the first girl with the whitest breasts ever seen, the last girl being VERY impressive. I'd expect a number of sequels if this were a big budget pic, but 15 years later, there has been no follow up to the self proclaimed "penetrating love story".

"The Nail Gun Massacre" is everything it sounds like—a psychopath is roaming the backwoods of Texas with a souped-up nail gun, turning men and women into human pincushions. Could it be related to a brutal rape that occurred some six months prior? An obvious riff in title on "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and boasting an opening rape scene unabashedly culled from "I Spit on Your Grave," "The Nail Gun Massacre" is an unabashedly derivative mid-80s riff on slasher conventions, pulled together on a shoestring budget.

As bad as it sounds, I feel that this film has gotten a lot of heat from web critics who aren't really taking it on its own terms—this is not Bergman, Tarkovsky, or Kubrick—it isn't high art. It's a film whose singular distinguishing element is that its killer's weapon of choice is a nail gun. My point being, "The Nail Gun Massacre" doesn't claim to be anything other than what it is, and most horror audiences (especially those who have a taste for these older exploitation films) should know this.

That aside, the film is not a technical masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. The murder scenes are surprisingly better than one would expect given the shoestring budget, and never cease to be elaborate or grotesque. A pulsing synth score accompanies most of the scenes, and is admittedly a bit overbearing, while the killer hurls goofy one-liners at the victims in an inexplicable robot voice. The acting overall is bad, but passable by eighties slasher standards. Most of the men are buffoons, and the women prancing around naked. In spite of those caveats though, the film does capture the quiet backwoods of Texas rather effectively, and it is an extremely atmospheric film given all of its shortcomings. The photography of the woods captures a strange foreboding that, whether intentional or just a happy accident, is far more nuanced than anything else about the film.

All in all, "The Nail Gun Massacre" is, at least as far as eighties slashers go, not nearly as bad of a film as some may lead you to believe. It's schlocky, gratuitous, and at times badly acted, but isn't that what we love these films for? It at least has the distinguishing feature of a nail gun- obsessed killer, and it also excels at capturing the dreariness of sleepy backwoods Texas, which is more than one would necessarily expect. 5/10.

I read on the "trivia" page at IMDB that the producers demanded more nudity for the first cut of "Nail Gun Massacre". They had the right idea. It was only the nudity that kept me watching.

"But it's a slasher," I hear you say. "What about the violence? What about the KILLS?"

They're pretty lame, it has to be said. Yeah, a bunch of people get killed, unrealistically, with a nail gun. It left me wondering why the killer didn't just use a regular gun instead. I think a nailgun would be a pretty inefficient murder weapon. Though perhaps not the nailgun in this movie, which kills perhaps as efficiently as a real gun, and makes sounds like one when it fires - though never actually looks to be firing anything. There's a sound effect and then the movie cuts to the nail protuding out of someone's flesh.

The plot, eh... I dunno. A woman is apparently raped at the beginning of the movie, and then someone in army fatigues and a motorbike helmet that seems to contain some kind of voice distortion device goes around killing people with a nail gun. He should have lent his device to the other actors. Their dialogue is often inaudible, so badly was it recorded.

Often the killer's victims are surprised while having sex, which in at least one scene is surprisingly graphic. Slashers are pretty much expected to have flashes of nudity, but actually only rarely do they show simulated sex. This one also has full-frontal male nudity, as well as female.

And then it's over, totally forgettably. It was probably supposed to be a surprise when the mask came off, but I didn't even recognize the actor underneath. Had he been in the movie before? Who knows? Who cares?

Think that Halloween's the best slasher movie? Well you may well be wrong, because finally I've found an obscure number that can rival definitive flicks such as Friday the 13th or Rosemary's Killer on pure enjoyment value. I kid ye not, when it comes to entertainment, Nail Gun Massacre offers it by the bucket load! What, you think I'm joking? Just let me assure you that this truly is a classic. but sadly, for all the wrong reasons!

In the opening a female is viciously raped by a group of construction workers. In the weeks that follow, all the abusers begin meeting grissly ends at the hands of a helmeted killer that's armed with a gas supplied nail gun. So has the victim taken it upon herself to make her own justice, or is someone else doing it for her?

Wow what a movie! This is arguably, no forget arguably, this *is* the cheesiest of all things slasher and that is one hell of a challenging accolade! There's so much to tell you about this movie that even if I attempted to write every unintentional laugh that I had down on this review, I could almost guarantee that you'd find yourself one or two that I'd missed! The only trouble with a feature as 'enjoyable' as this is, well, where do I start? As the zany ineptness is the most striking attribute, lets start there, shall we?

Firstly there are no 'actors' in this movie. Not even one cast member shows even the slightest sign of having any sort of talent. What on earth was the idea here? Walk around one day asking folks in the street if they'd like to be in a movie? But my favourite budding thespian (!) would have to be the sweet little old shop-keeping lady who cannot use the cash register she's working on and must've been on a weekend break from the local OAP home when they filmed this! Cringe whilst she blurts out in farcical monologue fashion, dialogue such as: `I remember when you could sit outside without worrying about the mosquitoes or the killers!' What? And then for no apparent reason in the same expressionless tone she goofs: `I bet you aint never seen butterflies, wild butterflies in these parts?' repeating words as if she's just that minute finished reading through the script and is already forgetting her lines! To make the scene even more hilarious, every one whom she's talking to COMPLETELY ignores her! If anything could have blossomed after the production of this lowest of lowbrow slashers, then it'd have to be a relationship between that cashier and the wonderfully hammy old guy from the town, who gives another unforgettable performance! I won't begin to try and describe how comical he actually is, but believe me when I tell you that those two would have been a match made in heaven! The 'acting' here is sooooo bad that the characters even have difficulty playing dead! One young girl blinks when she's trying to keep her eyes wide open and another is seen breathing when she's meant to be deceased. The best of the bunch is when the assassin shoots a guy and he falls conveniently over a barbecue. When it begins to topple under his weight, he pushes himself back to stabilise the stand so it doesn't fall over! I wouldn't have thought that a dead guy would really care where he landed, would you! Classic!

The Sheriff - whom you'll notice talks to himself - is a giggle too. He drives just a normal unmarked car and has no uniform, just a plastic looking badge stuck on a brown shirt! And the doctor doesn't wear any distinguishing garb either, but thankfully this is justified when the copper asks him: `When are you going to start dressing like a doctor?' to which he cheerily replies `I got fed up with wearing white!' Hmmm, sure it had nothing to do with a lack of funding Doc? The gruesome twosome can't be very good carers for the community anyway, because they leave a mutilated body UNCOVERED in fall view of the public beside a shop in the middle of town, telling someone that 'an ambulance will pick it up later!'

Aside from directing, Terry Lofton also did the special effects for this movie. Well actually, he wrote the screenplay, did some stunts, produced and executively produced and even acted in a small part. Does anyone get the feeling that this is an independent feature? Anyway back to the effects that include rubber nails that we never see enter the victims. In one bit, a guy gets shot in the back whilst he's holding a chainsaw. He looses control of the tool and next thing we know we're treated to a shot of a plastic looking hand lying on the floor splashed in blood. Meanwhile the arm that it was severed from is helpfully tucked behind a tree so we don't get to see the stump spurting, lucky for the producers, huh! This really has got to be the cheapest film made anywhere, ever. Why else would the maniac not have a tinted visor, but instead have insulating tape blacking it out? Unbelievable! The sound in the movie is atrocious, the score must've been made on a Casio keyboard and kicks in at the most unwelcome of times and when it's playing you can't hear the dialogue properly because the medley's been recorded much louder than the actors! They also ran the killer's voice through a synthesiser to make it sound deep and creepy, but half of the time, we can't make out what he is saying!

As for plus points: You get to have a stab at guessing the mystery of 'who's the killer' even though it's pathetically easy. I can't say why because I wouldn't want to spoil it for you, and it does add a little spice to the plot. But sadly even the 'plot' is ludicrous. Suspicion points us towards an old bag called Mrs Bailey, but we never get to meet her. Well I don't think we did, but it's impossible to tell, because characters only appear for 2 minutes tops and then as soon as they're killed new victims are introduced without any rhyme or reason! Sorry, I was meant to be describing the good bits.err let me see. Well, there were also loads of naked young lassies - which look like they were auditioning to be porn stars - that satisfy most viewers. And there's the cheaply effective gore that always brightens things up! What I really did enjoy was the corny black humoured one-liners from the assassin that are genuinely pretty funny. When the guy mentioned earlier chops his hand off, the psycho quips `Don't fall to pieces.over me!' And when he nails a hitch hiker to the road he cracks `All you hitch hikers are the same. Stuck on the road!' Maybe the reason he's psychotic is because he never got too fulfill his role in life and become a comedian!

What ingredients generally make a movie good? Well I suppose you have to enjoy watching it and it has to be entertaining. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Nail gun massacre and was 'entertained' from start to finish. It may not be award-winning excellence, but it's got to be the funniest 90 minutes I've had since I watched The Naked Gun for the first time. To make it even better, all the laughs here were shockingly unintentional! Put it this way, it would've been impossible for me to list every humourous moment, there are so many to choose from! It certainly isn't effective as any sort of horror movie, with plot holes that would drown an armada, but worth its weight in gold in the comedy stakes. Enjoy!

Nail Gun Massacre (1985)

** (out of 4)

A young woman is gang-raped by a construction crew and soon after those men start to show up murdered. The weapon? A nail gun of course. If anyone grew up renting low-budget horror films in the 1980's then I'm sure they came across this film, which has become quite notorious over the years due to how incredibly campy it is. Yes, this film deserves a BOMB rating because it's just downright horrid but I have to respect the crew members for actually making a film and making one this hilarious. Made in Texas, this thing can go right down with Manos: The Hands of Fate as the biggest turkeys the state every delivered. I'm really not sure where to start on this thing because this is a movie that you really need to see in order to believe everything. There are countless hilarious things in the movie but the best stuff has to be the one-liners the killer spits out while killing everyone. He catches one guy going to the bathroom, shots him you know where and then adds "that will plug up the leak". Another classic goof is when a couple are in a car about to have sex yet the car is "rocking" before they even start. Some more laughs come from the countless death scenes where people die but yet we continue to see them either move or breathe. I really don't think there's a murder here where this doesn't happen. Another funny item is that the killer appears to change shape and size each time he/she shows up. Is that enough laughs? Lord no, just wait until you see the old grocery store woman who keeps messing up her lines. The death scenes themselves are all rather silly but the directors were smart enough to throw in some gratuitous sex scenes to keep the entertainment level up. All of this stuff just comes down as low-budget fun and I really wouldn't blame the filmmakers too much because they did deliver a movie, which is a lot more than many people can say. Is this a good movie? No. Is it somewhat fun? It is if you enjoy campy, direct to VHS movies.