The Toolbox Murders (1978)

Cam the Man Mitchell lives in this apartment building with a lot of young types. The majority of them are single, and very randy women. And most of them seem to be flight attendants. Perpetuating a stereotype here it seems.Cam ain't happy with the looseness of said ladies so he slowly (and I do mean slowly) invades their space and kills them. The title gives away the implements used so I would not be remiss mentioning the drill and nail-gun scenes. And I go anyone in the room double or nothing the producers of 'Nail Gun Massacre' got their idea here.Some of the actresses were porno vets either trying to do 'legit' films or hired due to their willingness to show it all and touch same. The lass killed by the aforementioned nail gun was masturbating in the bath at the time.Cam covers himself with a ski mask which makes his appearance almost trite these days. But while there were enough scares to make this decent....it did move a bit to slow and got repetitious by the third act. For Cam Mitchell and slasher prototype fans only.

Some reviews call this movie sleazy; to some degree it is. Some might say it lacks action in the last two acts; that's partially true as well. But this film is something different entirely. In the genre of serial killer-exploitation, female characters are routinely objectified. But "The Toolbox Murders" is a rare feminist exploitation film. It twists the genre on it's head and gives it an entirely different angle on female roles in horror.The film starts with some suitably gory murders, seemingly setting the stage for a by-the-books slasher movie. But after these first murders (SPOILERS) the killer kidnaps a young girl and keeps her in his home as his surrogate daughter (his own died in a car accident). The killer reveals that he chose his female victims because of supposed moral transgressions. These transgressions are sins of the "modern woman" (sexual freedom, freedom of choice, etc.) and he wants to keep his new "daughter" as a pure, virginal woman.The movie twists and turns, but it's mostly psychological. It plays with genre conventions, such as a woman's savior almost always being a male figure, and changes them. In the end, she is seen by her attackers as a porcelain doll to be manipulated, not a real human being. (SPOILERS) She eventually is capable of saving herself; no man is needed.The direction is fine, the acting is okay for a low-budget '70's horror movie, but the uniqueness of this film is its greatest quality. Many viewers came to this movie expecting a cookie-cutter serial killer movie, and that's not what "The Toolbox Murders" gives you.

For me, watching "The Toolbox Murders" is a maddening experience. How can you *not* be vexed by a film that gets off to a solid (if unspectacular) start, approaches brilliance, fizzles into dullness, tepidly attempts to redeem itself, and finally screeches to a halt in laughably awful fashion? I like the fact that director Dennis Donnelly employs a nontraditional storytelling formula (at least for the horror film) here; it makes "The Toolbox Murders" oddly compelling, if not consistently interesting. I also like the setting: there's something about the slightly run-down apartment complex that makes the lives of the victims seem so sordid and hopeless. The horror to which the viewer is subjected in this movie is distinctly American--it is the horror of a nation that saw the '60s come to a grisly end with the rampages of the Zodiac Killer and the Manson Family, a nation struggling with the hangover from the previous decade that Son of Sam represents. This ghastly emptiness is underscored in the film's one near-great moment, when Cameron Mitchell kills adult film star Kelly Nichols with a nail gun. I don't think I've ever heard a song used to such potent and fascinating effect in a film as George Deaton's 'Pretty Lady' in this scene. Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there. The movie shifts from the deadly seriousness of the murders and Pamelyn Ferdin's abduction to Nicolas Beauvy and Wesley Eure awkwardly exploring the apartments where the killings occurred, and this portion of the film bears more resemblance to an episode of "ABC Afterschool Specials" than anything else (which I'm sure was not Donnelly's intention). There's a slight improvement when Mitchell delivers a lengthy monologue to the bound and gagged Ferdin, but the material isn't written well enough to impart any truly special quality to the scene; it passes muster only because Mitchell handles his lines so deftly. The bottom drops out of the film altogether during its final ten or fifteen minutes, when things cease to make any sense. Why is Eure's character as crazy as his uncle (Mitchell)? Is it something genetic, or is the viewer just supposed to assume that the death of Mitchell's young daughter--Eure's cousin and secret lover--drove them *both* off the deep end? And why does Eure set Beauvy on fire, citing his responsibility to protect his uncle, only to taunt and kill Mitchell just minutes later? What was probably intended to frighten the audience ("Look, the whole family's insaaaaane!!!") and make them wince in shocked disbelief is an abysmal failure. If you're in a good mood, you'll snicker at the ridiculous conclusion. If not, you'll wonder bitterly why the director and screenwriters botched a film that had such potential. The considerable strength of "The Toolbox Murders" lies in its early scenes; after that, it really becomes a different movie, and not a particularly good one. But every horror aficionado should see it, if for no other reason than to be convinced that a graphic murder scene involving a nude woman can be handled tastefully, and with depth. The stark opening and closing theme (synthesizer overlaid with piano and strings) is very effective, too.

I watched the horror film, The Toolbox Murders the other night and i found it to be not to bad a film. It is about a man lunatic runs around an apartment complex, While he is there, the lunatic tries to kill all the tenants with the contents of a toolbox that he has with him. all of the people that he seems to pick on are women which he violently attacks. This film looked like it was done on a small budget, It was originally one of the 'Video Nasties' that was banned in 1982. I found this to be quite a good horror film by the end. I thought the film was quite disturbing at times, all thought it looks very dated by today's horror films 4/10